just sayin'

Honolulu Is Nice

2012-01-30T12:11:00.000-05:00

We're back from our vacation to Hawaii—got home just yesterday afternoon where the sky was gray, the wind was howling through the trees and snow was falling in clumps. We didn't get much more than a dusting in the end, but it looked like it was going to be a real blowout for a few minutes. I've spent the morning running every errand—pet store, post office, dry cleaners, liquor store, grocery store—and now I can catch my breath and reintroduce myself to the puppy. We think he grew in height and weight while we were away.

So, we went to Hawaii, Honolulu more specifically, and the Kahala Resort to be exact. It's a hotel on the southeastern end of the island in a quiet residential area. The resort has a private beach, three restaurants, and a helpful concierge, so all you need is handy.

View from our balcony.

Every morning, we would wake up, open the doors to the balcony and have a gander at the ocean—I was surprised by the view every single day. "Oh yeah, there's an ocean here!" We'd go downstairs and have breakfast at an outside table, stop by the pool area to reserve a cabana for the day and slowly make our way back up to our room. We'd eventually make it out to the beach and settle into the cabana, which came with a cooler with water, and we'd raise the flag. Each cabana was equipped with a little flagpole and a little yellow flag. When you wanted something, you raised the flag, and within a few minutes, a cabana boy would come running to take your order. It was lovely.

On really sunny days, we might position ourselves in the shade of a palm tree or expose our tender Ohio skin to the full rays of the sun. We'd test the water, feel the sand, sip some coconut water, think about what we might have for lunch and read. I read Benjamin Hale's The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore and began Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. We became familiar with the other guests who all seemed to be either from Australia or Japan, determining which of their little kids were sweethearts and which were terrorists—Charlie from Australia should have been strung up by his thumbs for his bad deeds, but the Japanese brother and sister set were a delight.

Palm trees on the little Kahala peninsula.

After awhile, we'd walk a few steps to the outdoor restaurant and order lunch, and then we'd walk a few steps back to the cabana and recommence with the vacation. By five o'clock or so, we'd be back up in the room to shower and dress for dinner, which we had usually arranged to have around seven o'clock. Then we'd go to claim our reservations. There was a particularly wonderful restaurant called Hoku's, and we had amazing meals there. For those of you who know about the molten chocolate cake I make, I they make it here, too. Here is fried fish for two that was really great:

But sometimes we'd have dinner at Plumeria, which was meant as more of an everyday spot, still good but not as grand or pricey. They celebrated the Chinese New Year there with fireworks, Chinese musicians and a buffet. Here is one of the dragons from the special presentation—it's the year of the dragon:

It only looks like the dragon is eating the woman.

We ventured out from time to time, driving around Diamond Head and having dinner in Waikiki, where I fell in love with the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. We had one of the most amazing meals there at this magical place set back from the main drag. The area is like 5th Avenue mixed with Times Square—lots of high-end shops and noise and crowds and tourists. But if you follow a passageway back away from all that noise, you discover a courtyard lined with trees and lit with lamps, and it opens up to present the Royal Hawaiian, calm and peaceful with palace-like passageway and a beach. If we ever return to Honolulu, I would love to stay at this hotel.

And we found a few things to amuse ourselves. We went on a helicopter ride that toured all of Oahu.

We are not wearing fanny packs! These are life preservers.

Waikiki as seen from the helicopter.

A steep hillside and the tiny shadow of our helicopter.

We went whale watching:

Two humpback whales near Pearl Harbor.

And we visited the Arizona Memorial:

The memorial, which was haunting and solemn, I felt.

Visible remains of the USS Arizona
where more than 1,000 men are entombed.

And we got to all of these destinations in a Mustang convertible. So, yes, Honolulu is nice. I'll look forward to the next time we get to go there.

Howard Thurman—Leader Behind the Leader

2012-01-19T11:59:00.003-05:00

After three years of writing columns for Small Town Newspaper, I've done Martin Luther King day. There isn't much else I can say about it other than what I've already said. And with so many people still living who knew the man personally, it seems best to let them speak to the occasion of MLK Day.

But despite all the talk—all the interviews and news stories and columns—I haven't heard anything about one of King's great mentors, Howard Thurman, the man who met Gandhi personally and counseled King decades before the civil rights became a national movement.

So, here is my column for today's edition.

A Park For All Seasons

2012-01-18T16:21:00.003-05:00

I prefer not to walk Baxter, the big puppy, in my own neighbor despite the obvious convenience—slip on the harness, hook on the leash and off we go—because I hate walking the hills, and for some reason, the place seems desolate. Beside the occasional passing car, you could get to feel like you're the sole survivor after a global catastrophe. So when it's time to walk the dog, I'll often put us in the car and drive five minutes to the town park.

Beyond the tennis courts, there is ball field after ball field, a wonderful playground funded by a women's group that literally baked cookies to raise money, and then a walking area with a kidney-shaped pond, trees and benches. You can walk up one hill to an access road to the town pool, then take that road down the hill to a little bridge, cross a tiny creek, and follow a path back to where you parked the car near the pond. On some days, I'm the only person walking there, but it never feels desolate. That is to say, I never feel as if I'm the only remaining human being when I'm walking at the park.

Baxter seems to like the park. When we pull into the parking area, he can't wait to jump out and smell every smell left by every dog in town. And on some days, like today for example, he went completely nuts over a colony of squirrels chasing each other around tree trunks in spiral fashion.

Since walking at the park these last few months, we've seen it in all of its stages—summer, fall and winter. Here is what we've seen:

The tree line in fall colors.

The water frozen just enough to support sticks people
have thrown onto it, like skipping rocks.

These leaves left over from fall are completely
frozen just below the surface.

Baxter smells the world in every leaf.

And finally, winter is here.

More Than A Sandwich

2012-01-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

I made a sandwich for lunch today. Nothing to write home about, I know, but the process reminded me of the way my father would make sandwiches, and there's a story there.

Daddy loved food, and I mean loved it. He would get up very early in the morning to pack his construction worker lunch, and he would knock around in the kitchen like he was making a feast for a whole family. He'sdmake two sandwiches, pack some chips, some Archway cookies, an apple, a Mars Bar or a Twinkie or both, and a big thermos full of coffee. It was never a chore for him. It was always a delightful task.

On Sundays, we would often have a roast for lunch with the traditional sides, and we'd sit down at the table after church for the big meal of the day. Mama would pack away the leftovers, and later for dinner it was everyman for himself. Daddy would pull out sandwich fixin's from the fridge and lay them all out on the counter. There would be whole wheat bread, roast beef sliced thin, cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, mustard and corn relish.

He would build the sandwich of his dreams and talk and sing his way through it, remarking on how good this sandwich was going to be, especially with potato chips and an ice, cold glass of RC Cola drunk from an amber glass that matched the gold tones of that crazy sofa set in the living room. The tomatoes were best in the summer, but the corn relish was mighty fine all year long. We would all follow suit and take our plates to the TV room where we'd watch The Wonderful World of Disney—Old Yeller, Davy Crockett, Donald Duck—or 60 Minutes. And Daddy loved every bite.

Lately, I have been wondering if I spend too much time thinking about food. I'm not gluttonous about it, but I do think about planning and options and flavors that work together. Take this sandwich, for example. I started with a pork roast from yesterday. I let it sit in a brine of apple cider with maple syrup and brown sugar all day and then roasted it for dinner. Today, I sliced it thin, toasted some wheat bread, added a little mayo, a slice of Muenster and some lettuce. I cut the thing in two and put it on a plate with sweet potato chips and sat down with my lunch and some diet root beer.

Daddy would have been proud, so maybe I don't think about food too much. Maybe it's just in my blood to appreciate it as fine and dandy.

But It's Only January

2012-01-16T18:51:00.001-05:00

This afternoon, a guy from Invisible Fence was here installing a "fence" so that Baxter can run wild in his own yard. As it is, the big puppy can only run wild on the patio and in a mulched area so sloped that he looks like a goat when he stands at the highest point. In fact, we have occasionally called him Goat Puppy.

An invisible fence is really an electric wire buried in the ground that interacts with a collar that reminds the dog where his boundaries are. That's a polite way of saying that it zaps the dog if he gets too close and ignores the warning beeps. When the guy finished with the wiring, we walked Baxter around the perimeter of the yard to introduce him to the beeps and the flags, and I wore my winter boots and coat and scarf because we were trudging and sliding through what's left of two inches of snow, now less than an inch and slushy and mushy. It was raining at the time and cold and a little windy, and I was very happy to be finished with the exercise and to be back inside where I could get warm.

We'll be Gidget and Moondoggie.

I was also happy to remember that next week at this time, we'll be in Hawaii. Honolulu, to be exact. On the beach. In the sun. Where it's 80 degrees during the day and 70 at night. With no coats or scarves or snow boots.

A few days before Christmas, Husband said he really could use a break from cold weather and hard knocks and would like to go to Hawaii in January. I did not point out that we have only begun with winter in Ohio—it's only January!—and instead I said "OK." Of course, I did. And now I'm planning by reviving my summer clothes and arranging to board the dog and the cat. I'm scheduled to get my hair cut tomorrow, so I called ahead and threw in a pedicure, too. Why not? And I've read the details of the resort where we'll be staying—they offer two-hour horseback rides, which I feel I must do, and they have a beach and pools and restaurants with delicate teas and sushi and yummy things I won't be cooking, just eating.

Between now and this trip to an island in the sea, I'll be training Baxter inside the fence with melting snow and mud and rain and cold weather. It won't be pleasant, but I'll keep next week in mind. Besides, it's only January.

New Boots—Watch Your Step

2012-01-13T12:54:00.001-05:00

I have new boots. I've never been one to care about boots and have only kept a dusty pair in the closet for those few days a year when I would shovel deep snow from the driveway. But now that I have a dog, I think I might be trudging through snow and sludge much more often than in previous years—so, boots. I like them. In fact, I put them on today just to break them in a little, even though I probably won't be going out until the current snowfall subsides. Baxter seems content to romp around on the patio on his own, so I'll stay warm and dry for as long as I can today.

But when I put on my new boots this morning, a terrible image flashed through my mind, one that might keep me from wearing them inside for much longer, or at least keep me from wearing them while walking downstairs. I have a bad association with boots and stairs, you see.

When I was in fifth grade, I lived in a neighborhood filled with kids, and we would invent games to play, like jump rope in the street or hide-and-seek in all the yards at night and war. We would pick someone's basement, one that was marginally finished, and we would pretend to hunt each other down like the allies versus the axis, the Yanks versus the Nazis. There weren't any rules, really, you just used your imagination, stalked behind couches and furnaces, looking for the enemy and acting out a shooting right through the dirty Kraut's pointy helmet.

One winter day as our school bus approached our stop, Linda from next door asked if I wanted to go to her house and play war. So, I climbed off the bus, ran home to drop off my books, and I put on my boots. Wearing boots would be more effective in the game, I thought, as if my snowboots even remotely resembled army boots from 1942. I went across the street to Linda's house, and she had a snack ready. We would be eating orange Jello during the skirmish, so I took my bowl of Jello and headed for the basement. Linda went down the steep carpeted steps first, and then I followed, not holding on to any rail because of the Jello.

One of my clunky boots caught on the carpet, and I fell head over heal toward the bottom with nothing to stop me. I dropped the Jello on my way down, bounced on a few steps, tried to stop myself with my right hand and then slammed my skull on the cement floor at the bottom. It all happened very quickly, but it felt as if I were tumbling in slow motion, seeing every step and feeling every painful landing.

When I hit the floor, I screamed and grabbed my arm, although I was sure I must have had a concussion, I hit my head so hard. Linda screamed, too, and immediately ran and got ice to put on my arm. Both of our mothers were at work, so she called the next-door mother who was off that day, and Mrs. Quigley came running. She also called my mother at work, and Mama got there as quick as she could.

The ladies got me to the car, and my mother rushed me to the doctor's office. No one bothered with my head, but it was clear I had broken my arm pretty badly. In trying to stop my fall, I jammed my arm bone into my hand, breaking something in the wrist and possibly stunting growth in my arm. and the pain was more than I can say. I was sent to the hospital for an x-ray and then given a cast and a sling.

My mother made most of my clothes then, so she used scraps from my school dresses to make matching slings, and I had one for every day of the week. I did all of my homework writing with my left hand, which earned points with my teacher, Mr. Shumway, and I never missed a beat.

After six weeks, the cast came off, and my arm went on to grow normally with no permanent damage, but boots and stairs still give me the shivers. With my level of grace and poise, I think it best I save my new boots for snow shoveling and dog walking outside, and I definitely should not carry a bowl of orange Jello when I should be holding onto the rails.

It's National Clean Off Your Desk Day

2012-01-12T13:38:00.002-05:00

No, it's not really. That was Monday, but my weekly columns for Small Town Newspaper don't appear on Mondays anymore. They now appear on Thursdays, so I'm reworking my schedule and thinking in new terms. For two years, I have written with Mondays in mind—what happened on a particular Monday, what Monday holiday are we celebrating, and the like. It's a new day.

So, for this first new day with the new schedule, here is my column as written for Small Town Newspaper, the Thursday edition. It's about being messy and about how there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In my living room and kitchen, I'm pretty tidy. My bathroom, my side of the counter at least, is free and clear of debris. But my desk is my space and my space alone, and if I choose to spread out and be a mess, that's my business.

It's where I keep the things that belong solely to me. Not only are my music and knitting and a few recipes there, I have little toys—a miniature Etch-A-Sketch, some wooden thing-a-majigs, some colored markers, rejections from my attempts to find a literary agent are all at home there as well. It's a comfortable home, my messy desk. It needs no day for cleaning, I say.

Where Old Things Go To...

2012-01-09T09:47:00.000-05:00

be bought, maybe?

The other day, Eustacia said whadayasay we go to the antique mall? We've got a huge one here that Husband estimated must be 40,000 square feet or some such. It used to be something like a K-Mart before whatever it was went out of business, and someone had the bright idea of turning the space into a central place for dealers to sell their wares.

These aren't all antiques by the official definition. Some of it is cool vintage like ladies' hats or a metal dollhouse just like the one I had when I was eight, and some is flea market stuff like a collection of Star Wars juice glasses and Johnnie Mathis albums, and some of it is just old like the chipped dishes that no one wanted to throw away but should have. Regardless, it's all fun to see.

The store is set up in aisles labeled as streets, and you start on First Street and walk down, and then walk up Second and back down Third and so on. If you look at everything, you'll be in there all day.

Eustacia was looking for old National Geographics, which she found. Someone was selling bound editions from the 1920s (actually bound in the 20s so that the leather was cracking and the pages were yellowed). She bought one edition with July through December from 1925.

I wasn't looking for anything in particular because I have put my china tea cup collection out of sight for now and shouldn't add to it, but I still found interesting things. I am amazed at 1) what people make 2) what people keep 3) what people find to sell 4) what people spend money on.

Here are some treasures from our local antique mall.

A framed black cat.

Chickens—I'm considering buying the gold ones.

A Styrofoam model of something from
Easter Island—must be six feet high.

Among glassware, the kind of hair dryer
my mother used when I was a kid.

I really just don't know.

A Peggy Lee doll.

A huge wooden Punch.
Even the black cat is scared.

Too Much Chocolate!

2012-01-06T10:41:00.001-05:00

In preparation for the holidays when both girls were at home, and we would be foraging for interesting treats in the kitchen, I bought massive amounts of groceries. In most cases, I planned correctly and didn't have a lot of leftover ingredients, but in others I went hog wild for no apparent reason. I had bought way too much buttermilk and now have a one-quart container in the fridge—what to do. I'll be using most of it to brine a chicken, but I used some this morning to make biscuits. I also miscalculated heavily on the amount of chocolate we would need, and now I have bars and bars of Ghiradelli dark and semi-sweet stacked up. Good thing it keeps.

Yesterday, I decided to use some of that up in biscotti. I had intended to make this the week of Christmas and never found the time, so now I have a batch for no special occasion. Correction—for the occasion of enjoying a biscotti with a mid-morning coffee break all by myself. I love the stuff.

Chocolate-Cherry Biscotti

1 3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 eggs
2 egg whites
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2/3 cup dried cherries, coarsely chopped
semisweet chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 300˚. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper

In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Place one quarter of the flour mixture and the chocolate pieces in a food processor and process until fine. Combine with remaining flour mixture and set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together eggs, egg whites, sugar, vanilla and almond extract until frothy. Slowly stir in flour mixture and dried cherries.

Spoon batter into three 12-2 1/2 inch rectangles about 3 inches apart (2 on one cookie sheet, and 1 on the other). Even out the shapes with a wet knife. Bake for 45 minutes. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes.

Cut each rectangle into 1/2-inch diagonal slices and place them cut side down on baking sheets. Bake for 12 minutes. Turn and bake 12 more minutes. Cool on wire racks and drizzle with melted chocolate.

Visiting Fallingwater

2012-01-04T06:43:00.000-05:00

I have heard of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater all of my life, so when I discovered the house was just a short drive from where we spent New Year's weekend, I reserved tickets for a tour—just $20 a person.

The house is tucked away in the woods over Bear Run waterfall. The Kaufman family (of the department store fame) had a woodsy cottage near the waterfall and commissioned Wright to design and build a more substantial and modern summer house near there. Wright chose to build his masterpiece actually on top of the falls, not just beside it, and worked the house in and around the existing landscape without trying to transform it. In the summer, the family could open up doors in the living room and walk straight down into the stream that was part of the water system. Amazing.

From here, it looks as if the house were many levels, but it's actually two houses, the main residence and then a guest house and staff quarters behind, connected by a covered walkway. The floors are all stone, the walls as well, and a good bit of the furniture is built in, including couches, tables, desks, headboards for the beds, and bookshelves.

The fireplaces extend out into the rooms to give the feel of a campfire, with red grates holding the logs completely exposed to the room. The grandest one is in the main living room that was built around a boulder—you can see the bulk of the boulder on the outside of the house, and Wright built around it, allowing it to seep into the house and become part of the hearth.

The Kaufman's had one son, Edgar, Jr., who was in his early 20s when the house was built, and he was an architectural student of Wright's. He moved into the upper level of the house and added some of his own touches, like additional bookcases that blocked some of Wright's windows, and he turned what was meant to be his bedroom into a study and moved his bedroom down a narrow hallway so that he could have the whole floor to himself.

We weren't allowed to take photographs inside the house, but after the tour, we went for a short walk down these steps to a landing point on the other side of the river to take pictures of the place. This is the view from the spot:

Eustacia got a new camera for Christmas, and here she is working with it to get the best shot.

There are plenty of amazing things about Fallingwater—its proximity to the falls, its use of light and innovative windows, its spring-fed pools, how the outside comes in, and what's inside reflects what's out. In the late 1930s, the house cost $150,000, what was considered astronomical at the time, and it was interesting to hear reactions from people on the tour. Fallingwater was built during the Depression when only people like the Kaufman's could afford a house like this. The tour mumbling went something like this—the retail business must have been pretty good then for them to have cash to spend on this house...they must have been lucky with investments...it just goes to show that no matter how bad times are, there is always someone with cash laying around. I'm guessing you'd hear the same things from people when touring a mansion built today.

One of the best things about Fallingwater is that Edgar, Jr. understood the historical significance of the place, and he gave it to a conservancy he trusted to maintain it and preserve it. He was active with the tours and the preservation into his old age.

A Weekend Away

2012-01-03T08:46:00.000-05:00

While the girls were with us (still are), we thought we should do something for New Year's weekend. We've done some interesting things for New Year's over the years—a couple of Caribbean cruises, a trip to Disneyland, a weekend in Sonoma, a week in Hawaii. This year, we stayed closer to home and drove three hours east to Nemacolin Woodland Resort in Farmington, PA.

I made reservations sort of late, and we all wanted to stay together, so our only choice was to rent one of the townhouses on the sprawling property. There are a lot of good things about this resort, but the townhouses are not one of them—it was like staying at an old Quality Inn along the interstate in a forgotten town in Nebraska where the pool is lined with algae and the doors don't fit the frames and something smells but for four times the price. I may be exaggerating.

The townhouses are near a golf course just about five minutes from the main hotel, so we got to know the property pretty well. It's strange.

As you make your way out of the main complex with a large hotel, a spa, a shopping area and conference center, you find yourself passing a miniature golf course with the statue of a golfer beside it, a running path with the statue of a running woman beside it, a pond with the statue of a contemplative visitor beside it, and so on. Lots of statues. Then you pass a section with a safari theme, a building with antique cars, a building with an antique plane, a section of the Berlin wall, more statues, and then you find you are among wild animals in large pens—black bears, bison, mountain goats, a white lion pacing in his fenced in yard.

Our townhouse was within walking distance of the animals, and we could watch the lion pacing from a seat at our kitchen table. When we stepped out onto the back deck, this is what we saw—camels and zebra grazing together. What you can't see is a statue of a fisherman with a line in the pond.

Typically, we would drive to the main lodging after a leisurely breakfast, park the car, and hang out. It's a very long building that winds around a bit with nooks here and there and restaurants and lounges and shops. It feels distinctly like a cruise ship in that regard, so we started referring to it as The Ship. No. 1 even imagined the floor was swaying was we walked past one of the shops, as if we were on a lower deck that moves with the ocean current more than do the upper decks.

After dinner the first evening, No. 1 and I attended a Champagne and chocolate tasting, which is exactly the kind of thing a cruise ship would offer. A sommelier poured two types of Champagne paired with truffles from one of the restaurants onboard ship, and he told us how Champagne is made. It was all very interesting, and we had a hearty laugh over the drunk guy who tried to crash the event.

The next afternoon, Eustacia and I attended a cooking demonstration with the executive sous chef who talked about brines. We were seated at cafe tables on stage beside a portable kitchen, and we were served a feast. The guy made pork roast with cheese grits, fried chicken filets with mashed red skin potatoes, roasted salmon with an arugula salad and a simple roasted chicken so flavorful from the brine, it needed no other seasoning. It was a great, and I believe I'll be brining salmon from now on.

Husband and I on New Year's Eve.

We went all out for dinner on New Year's Eve and sat for a tasting menu at Lautrec, a five-star restaurant at the resort. I'm telling you, this was the most amazing dining experience I believe I've ever had. For two hours, staff brought small plates of tasty things, each paired with a different wine. First, the sommelier would pour the wine, describe it, and tell us why it was chosen to go with the course. Then the course would arrive, something lovely on an interesting plate and described in detail by the server. There was an amuse bouche—a small tin with crab and caviar—then a salad, an incredible soup, a large scallop with a bean cassoulet and a finishing sauce, pork belly with sour kraut puree, Kobe beef with tiny broccoli florets and potato butter, fresh pasta with truffle shavings and a poached egg, a tiny glass of maple soda with a tiny straw, and finally a mint chocolate terrine and a little box of truffles. Oh my goodness. I mean, Oh My Goodness.

It all sort of fell apart the next day, however, when we woke to the news the whole place was under a winter storm warning and was expecting 8 to 12 inches of snow the next morning beginning early. We decided to leave Sunday afternoon instead of Monday and hit the road. This is the last piece of Nemacolin I saw, a tree with a furrowed brow and its tongue sticking out telling us to beat it, whydon'tcha.

We went from there to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, which is about 15 minutes from the resort. More on that later.

Overall, it was a good weekend at a place like a ship with an odd menagerie of things to see. Nemacolin could stand to update their townhouses, and it was a shame the weather wasn't more cooperative, but I'd go back.

Hanging My Hopes On A Gadget

2012-01-02T08:33:00.000-05:00

Microsoft is researching uses for its new camera, a thing they call SenseCam. You wear it like a badge, and it senses your surroundings, automatically snapping photos of what you see all day long. Then, you download the images to a computer and review your day. There really are good uses for such a thing, and I've written today's column for Small Town Newspaper about it.

When my father had Alzheimer's, he had trouble recognizing people he knew, and we could gauge the progression of his disease by which people he had lost in his head. If he couldn't remember the name of his neighbor, that was one thing, but when he couldn't remember our names or failed to recognize us as people he knew at all, that was something else entirely. And when he reached the stage where he didn't recognize his own reflection in the mirror, then we knew he was pretty far in the reaches of the disease.

For a long time, my mother liked to tell a story about how my father would talk to himself in the mirror, as if he were introducing himself to the man in front of him. It was sad to watch, and you had to decide whether to let him go because what was the harm or explain to him that he was seeing himself. Knowing he was looking at his own reflection might have confused him on certain days because he didn't think of himself as an 80-year-old man. In fact, he would sometimes look at my mother across the room and ask us, "Who is that old woman over there?" as if he thought he should be married to someone more his age, someone in their 40s or 50s.

One day he was talking to the stranger in the mirror, and my uncle, my mother's brother, watched with amused interest and later mocked my father—that's the part of the story my mother liked to tell because it made her so angry (as if she had always been a sensitive soul who was generous and kind with our father, but that's another story).

My sisters put together a photo album for him to help him identify people, but I don't recall that it helped him very much. We may have given it too late because he would look at pictures, and even though they were labeled with names, he still wouldn't understand what he was seeing. I remember his staring at a framed photo of one of us for the longest time, holding it up to the light and trying to figure out why the picture would be sitting on the coffee table in the living room. And then finally, he blurted out, "Who the hell is this?"

Well, after learning something about the new automatic camera and how it might help delay the progression of Alzheimer's, I'm hanging my hopes on the research and hoping that such a thing, if used early enough, might help people with this nasty disease that runs in my family bloodline. I'd prefer a definitive cure, but until then, give me the camera.

Making the Best of It

2011-12-30T08:49:00.002-05:00

JP Auclair Street Segment (from All.I.Can.)Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.

I watched this video this morning and was moved, moved to find ways to make the most of it. Here is this guy skiing down hill, which is nothing spectacular, but he's not skiing down a frosted slope lined with pines, hearing only the sound of his own skis swishing through the snow. He's going down hill in a town dreary from a long winter, surrounded by houses and cars, hearing barking dogs and the noises of small-town traffic.

I'm imagining his peripheral vision as a wash of color painted with a wet brush—he sees the smear of grungy snow and ice piled high along the road, carved into at crosswalks and side streets. It's interrupted by leftover Christmas decorations, stop signs, clothes on the line. Under a sky the color of dishwater, he dodges a threatening snowball, maneuvers down steps and over parked cars.

He finally gets to the bottom and unclamps his skis, and then he boards a bus headed back uphill, to do it all over again. It's going to be great, even better the second time.

I know this video clip is part of a feature-length film about climate change—I've read the description and would like to see the full version. But for the moment, this clip represents something else to me. It represents an approach to the day-to-day. It represents determination and one of my favorite characteristics humans possess, a need and an ability to take something seemingly unpleasant and turn it into something palatable.

In 2012, we're all going to find ourselves in some unpleasant, or at least not preferable, situations. You know we are. The trick is going to be turning those situations into something palatable, or even better, something preferable. I'll choose that. I'll choose it so much that I'll get on the Up Hill bus to go back to the top and do it all over again.

Happy New Year, Blogville and all those who stop by looking for Trail bologna or a recipe for Johnny Marzetti or information about Romania and find me instead. Let's make the best of it.

A Full House

2011-12-29T14:33:00.004-05:00

Usually when the girls come home for Christmas, they only stay a few days, or one will stay for the duration of her winter break while the other will come and go. This year, both girls are here for about a week and a half, the same week and a half. I normally have the house to myself, and I can keep it as tidy as I like, but I've happily given the place over and let them dump their crap wherever. And boy, do they have crap. There are coats on the dining table, dirty glasses on the kitchen counter and shoes just about everywhere. No, wait. Those are mine. I'm no good at putting my shoes away.

Here's No. 1 settling into her spot in the family room—books, laptop, iPod, shoes... Eustacia usually sits on the opposing couch with her own paraphernalia, and the puppy runs between the couches looking for and giving lots of attention. Here he is getting some from Eustacia:

There seems to always be someone making a sandwich or digging in the fridge for something. There is always noise. There is always something to sweep up or wipe off or fold or put away. This is not the house I have come to enjoy, but it's a house I thoroughly enjoy this holiday season. And I will miss my girls and their stuff when they leave.

Until then, we'll be spending New Year's at a resort in Pennsylvania being lazy and eating great food and going for walks in the woods. We'll visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, take the dog for walks, and get gussied up for New Year's Eve dinner.

Here is what my family gave me for Christmas—the cross stitched chicken goes well on my kitchen cabinets with the other chickens, and the bath wash is intoxicating:

And here are the Uggs Husband gave me. I never want to take them off:

The Meaning of Christmas Is Food

2011-12-26T22:47:00.001-05:00

I realize this isn't really true—Christmas is about different things to different people, things like the birth of Jesus, time with family, the comfort of nostaglia, the joy of celebration—but at just this moment, coming off of a weekend spent largely in the kitchen, it feels as though Christmas might be about food. There were four of us in the house for two days, and that means a lot of cooking, mostly on Sunday.

We began with a late breakfast of French toast made with croissants. I wouldn't have come up with that idea on my own, but I found a recipe in Bon Appetit. It was your basic French toast recipe but with croissants cut in half horizontally into this slices of butter, flaky goodness.

Then later in the day, we created a vegetarian buffet. No. 1 and Eustacia are vegetarians these days, so this seemed appropriate. I assigned them each a dish to make, and we worked side by side so that all three dishes were ready at the same time. No. 1 made a Parmesan-olive torte—pie crust stuffed with leeks, fennel, olives and cheese. I made simple tomato tarts with puff pastry, Roma tomatoes, Parmesan and fresh mozzarella. And Eustacia made a wonderful artichoke dip with roasted red peppers, green onions, spinach and Asiago cheese. We filled our plates with all the tasty samples, like a Christmas tapas setting, and had a nice lunch by the tree.

There was time to rest up after all of that food prep and clean up before launching into the big feast for the evening meal, so no one could claim they slaved all day in the kitchen. It was all nicely paced. Here is what we had for our Christmas dinner—Ina Garten's roast turkey breast and gravy (except for the vegetarians, of course), sage stuffing made with fresh buttermilk cornbread (using vegetable stock instead of chicken), sauteed green beans, dinner rolls, cranberry chutney, and sweet potatoes with blue cheese and pecans. It was all great except for the potatoes, and I was so looking forward to them. Sweet potatoes and blue cheese—I mean, how can you go wrong? The weird thing about this recipe is that it calls for a huge hunk of cream cheese, so much so that the color of the potatoes changes from a rusty orange to a bright color like candy, and it just doesn't look appetizing. I loved the flavor and got past the color, but not so with everyone else at the table. I think this dish would be great with just butter added to the roasted potatoes and then the blue cheese and pecans as called for. Next time.

So, the kitchen was buzzing for hours on end, but after dessert—pumpkin cheesecake—and the final clean up, I declared it closed to consumers. In fact, it's still closed, and we went out for Japanese this evening. Tomorrow, maybe we'll order in, or maybe some kind soul will open up the room again and create another meal we'll enjoy, vegetarians and omnivores alike.

Christmas may not be specifically about food, but good food sure helps make the celebration something to, well, celebrate.

•••

Most of the recipes I used were keepers, but the artichoke dip was a real hit. Here's how it goes:

1/2 cup Asiago cheese, grated
2 tablespoons flour
1 14 oz. jar artichoke hearts rinsed, drained and coarsely chopped
1 8 oz. container sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup roasted red peppers drained and finely chopped
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 cup frozen spinach thawed and drained

Preheat oven to 350˚F. In a large bowl, toss together the cheese and flour. Stir in all other ingredients until well combined and pour into a 9-inch pie plate. Top with additional cheese if desired and bake for 25 minutes. Top with additional sliced green onions and serve with crackers.

Charles Babbage and My Modern Life

2011-12-26T09:04:00.000-05:00

I love this photo of Charles Babbage because he looks like the quintessential Dickens character, sitting firmly in his chair, hands clasped, mouth set against the rabble that gets on his last nerve. He actually compiled a list of 165 nuisances he encountered over an 80-day period all perpetrated by "the mob," as he called the common classes. He particularly disliked organ grinders, saying, "It is difficult to estimate the misery inflicted upon thousands of persons, and the absolute pecuniary penalty imposed upon multitudes of intellectual workers by the loss of their time, destroyed by organ-grinders and other similar nuisances."

So, basically he sat in the chambers of his Better People Societies, glared out the window and barked, "Get off my lawn!" Although, if you look closely, there is a hint of mischievous humor in his expression. It may take mischievous humor to make a list of things that annoy you.

It may also take some of that to think against the grain and dream big, and Babbage definitely dreamed big. He was also a man ahead of his time, and today is his birthday. In his honor, here is today's column for Small Town Newspaper. I realize I've skipped over quite a few steps from Babbage's original computers to the Mactop I hold in my hands today, but I think you get the point.

Merry Christmas To Us All

2011-12-23T21:45:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty rusty at the piano these days, and my singing voice is even worse, so as a way to wish you all a merry Christmas—or happy holiday, whichever you prefer—here is a repeat of my personal Christmas card to Blogville recorded back when I was slightly more practiced.

My wish for us all is that we each have a delightfully memorable holiday, a much-needed rest from the day-to-day and that we get or give at least one gift that makes us happy.

A Mountain of Food

2011-12-22T15:10:00.001-05:00

For as long as I can remember—seriously, all of my life—my sisters have gotten together for Christmas. First, the ones who had moved out of our parents' house came back for the holiday, and later we all came back with our husbands and children. Christmas was often the only time we would see each other all year, and we would spend two solid days cackling and singing and telling stories. Fun.

Well, this year my family unit has decided to do something different and stay home for Christmas. We did this once before—after 9/11, the Chicago sister was uneasy about flying, so we all agreed to spend the holiday at our respective houses instead of traveling to Georgia. That was the one Christmas meal I cooked for my family, and this year I get to do it again.

It's just one meal for one day, but I've been planning, searching for recipes and menu ideas, making a grocery list that fills an entire 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, making a schedule for when to make what. I can make the cranberry chutney in advance, for example, and I'll need to make the pumpkin cheesecake on Saturday so it will be ready on Sunday.

Today, according to my schedule, I pushed a large cart through the grocery store and filled that massive list, piling the cart high with the goods—fennel, leeks, lemons, cranberries, onions, ginger, sweet potatoes, candied pecans, chocolate...—and heaving it around each corner of every aisle. I don't buy a lot of prepackaged stuff, so I usually buy groceries around the perimeter of the store, skipping all the middle aisles with all the junk. But this morning, I covered every square foot of the store, possibly twice. I would get all the way to the cookie aisle and remember I hadn't picked up crystalized ginger in the baking aisle, and I'd have to go back. The same thing happened with the vegetable broth and the ginger snaps.

When I buy groceries, I do what my kids call "power shopping." I waste no time dilly dallying in the store, and I walk with purpose. If I'm going in for milk, I go in for milk, and don't get in my way as I go. That's not to say I don't get sidetracked by shiny things now and then, but I tend to move quickly even in my distractions. Today, however, the place was packed with people, and the lines were long at the check out, so I had to take a deep breath and go with the flow, or relax with the flow as the case was.

Maybe that slower pace will stick with me when I start working in the kitchen for this grand feast, and I will enjoy the whole process. Maybe. Or maybe I'll charge full speed and mix the snack mix (thus, the Bugles) and make the tomato tarts (thus, the puff pastry) and bake cheese cake (thus, the cream cheese). There's work to be done. It's a real pity there will be no sisters to help make the work go by quickly with singing and giggling, but we'll make it a feast all our own.

Champagne in the Afternoon

2011-12-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm on the orchestra board, I have to attend its monthly meetings. Yesterday, a friend told me the secretary takes attendance, and there is such a thing as an unexcused absence. You're expected to participate. I've yet to see the full potential as a participant, but I'm eager to find out just what can be done with this thing.

The December meeting is held at the general manager's house, and people bring food in to make it special. That's one thing I do know I can participate in, so I made something I haven't made in several years, a Champagne Cream Torte. I used to make this for company Christmas parties when I worked for Husband in his office.

The torte is basically a giant cream puff filled with Champagne cream, which is a delight on its own, and topped with something pretty. The original recipe calls for a brushing of corn syrup and a sprinkling of almonds, but I went the ganache route with a sprinkling of pearlized sugar. It goes like this:

Start with the cream:
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 cup Champagne
2 eggs
2 tablespoons butter

Mix the sugar and cornstarch in a saucepan and stir in Champagne—you can drink the rest, and if you're making this in the afternoon, it's a nice little treat. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir 1 minute more. Beat eggs on medium speed until well blended. Gradually stir at least half the hot mixture into the eggs and stir back into the saucepan. Boil and stir 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in butter 1 tablespoon at a time. Cover and chill 1 1/2 hours or until chilled.

While that's chilling, make the ganache:

6 tablespoons heavy cream
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup sifted confectioner's sugar

Melt the cream and chocolate together in the microwave—30 seconds, and stir, then heat at 10-second intervals until well blended. Stir in the sifted sugar until smooth. Set aside until spreadable.

For the torte:

1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
4 eggs

Heat water and butter to a rolling boil in a saucepan. Stir in flour, reduce heat to low and stir vigorously about 1 minute or until mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat, and with an electric mixer, beat in eggs all at once, beating until smooth.

To assemble:

Preheat the oven to 400˚. Spread dough into a 10-ring about 2 inches wide on an ungreased cookie sheet (or trace the ring on parchment paper and line the pan with the paper). Bake 35 to 40 minutes until puffed and golden. Cool completely. The ring will deflate—with a bread knife, slice the ring horizontally and carefully remove the top, removing any doughy insides.

Beat 1 cup whipping cream until stiff. Fold in the Champagne cream until thoroughly combined. Spread cream mixture on bottom layer of torte. Top with remaining torte ring. Spread top with chocolate ganache. Serves 12.

Tracking Santa—NORAD Style

2011-12-19T15:13:00.000-05:00

War and defense and national security do not stop for a holiday, even Christmas. It's a year-long, around-the-clock prospect, protecting a nation is. I find that disheartening, but then I learned that in the midst of all of the ominous work it does, NORAD tracks Santa Claus every year, and millions of kids around the world check in to find the big elf's coordinates on Google Earth.

NORAD maintains a website for Santa trackers, with games, student videos from around the world, a countdown clock and information about Santa and NORAD. The site links to organizations that help veterans, too, so a kid can play a game and then learn something about wounded soldiers or military personnel who wouldn't mind receiving a card now and then.

In the big picture, tracking Santa may seem like just a band-aid, but band-aids are good things. We could use more of them, I think, and so I've written my weekly column about NORAD's Santa tracking and the man who started it all, Col. Shoup. You can read it here.

Enough, Already

2011-12-18T11:25:00.000-05:00

I had the weirdest dream last night. Yes, I know. Retelling one's dreams may be an inane exercise, a drudgery to have to sit through, but stick with me. I have a point.

I had just sat down for an orchestra rehearsal, putting my music on my stand and emptying spit from the valves when an authority figure–someone who does not translate into my orchestra reality—handed a mouthpiece to me and said for everyone to hear, "They want you to practice with this to help improve your tone." Apparently, "they" weren't impressed with my tone at our last performance and thought I needed help.

And there I sat flayed in front of the rest of the group, exposed as a fraud. But also there I sat wondering who "they" were. They weren't the conductor or the principle of the horn section. In reality, orchestra board members don't sit around the table discussing this or that musician's qualifications, so who was it who was so critical of my playing and had the authority to take action? I was perplexed and never learned the answer.

I was also perplexed because I couldn't figure out how to use this practice mouthpiece that was designed to correct flaws in playing. It was large, like it belonged on a trombone, and it was blue with a black plastic rim with uneven edges. You couldn't possibly play with it without ripping your face up, and so how was it meant to help?

A B.E.R.P.

Let me just say that such a mouthpiece does not exist in reality. There is a thing called a BERP, a Buzz Extension and Resistance Piece, that you attach to the lead pipe of just about any brass instrument. During practice sessions, you play, or buzz, into the thing instead of into the horn, and the added resistance helps improve your embouchure, range and endurance. The source of humiliation in my dream wasn't anything like this.

When I woke up from this dream, the residual feeling I had was one of complete failure and of not belonging, old feelings that used to plague me. I have spent ten years conquering these nasty demons, though, and once completely conscious, I thought to myself, "Enough, already." I really thought I had overcome this stuff, this interior hammering away at my self-esteem and ability to live fully. I really thought I had achieved a level of self-awareness and acceptance of my abilities to achieve.

I guess no matter how much you manage to squelch your inner demons, they really don't go away. They just hide out in the shadows of your subconscious, and when your defenses are down, they come out to haunt you just for kicks. The point I want to make—knowing that while in your fully conscious state you know what's real and what's a lie, and you can quickly shake off the lies, is a real sign of growth. So, get back in your hidey-hole, you ugly demon. You've got no hold on me, at least not while I'm awake.

Your Christmas Shopping Made Easy

2011-12-16T08:02:00.004-05:00

If you'll remember, Eustacia and I spent some time at an orphanage in Romania last summer, working as volunteers for United Planet. On the surface, it's a ramshackle place with a string of buildings lining a dirt road, cows wandering away from their herder, mules braying at all hours and cooking done in black iron kettles made by local Roma. There would be no meat for days, and wild dogs roamed the place like a plague. But we loved the place, Pro Vita. In fact, Eustacia went back for about two weeks last winter. She nearly froze to death with little heat, no hot water, and freezing temperatures; but when she came home, she said if anything, she bonded even more closely with the people there.

Well, there was a big fire at Pro Vita earlier this week. It broke out in the buildings just beyond the residences where no kids are living. The nearby houses were quickly evacuated, and people formed a line to remove as much stuff as possible—the building housed the kitchen, dining room and pantry, along with office space and activity rooms. Fire firefighters struggled through bad road conditions and heavy fog to get to the remote spot, and it took them an hour to finally arrive. They did what the could, but the buildings are a total loss.

Now, Pro Vita is planning to rebuild as soon as possible. They can't go without these common areas, and certainly can't go without providing food for the more than 100 people who live on the property. The people there have no other resources.

All this to say that if you're looking for a charity to give to this holiday season, or if you were thinking you'd give a charitable gift as a present for someone on your list, I've got a good one. United Planet has set up a fund that will help support Pro Vita as they rebuild. Go take a look, and fill someone's stocking with something really valuable.

Eating Out of Season

2011-12-14T12:49:00.002-05:00

I know it's the cool thing to eat within the seasons—asparagus in the spring, strawberries in early summer and corn a little later and tomatoes when they are fresh off the vine—and if you can buy all of these things grown by local farmers, all the better. It's a nice idea, and I try to stick with it because, after all, what's worse than eating a crunchy, bitter strawberry picked way too early and shipped thousands of miles in February? And tomatoes are best in the summer. It's just a fact.

But sometimes I ignore the rules and eat what I want when I want it. This recipe inspired me to make a tomato salad the other day, using grapes tomatoes grown in a greenhouse in Mexico. I don't know when they were picked or how they were shipped to the middle of Ohio. I only know that I bought a pint and put the things in my salad, and it was all worth the trouble.

This is called Bloody Mary Tomato Salad, but there's no vodka in it. Not a drop. I used Champagne vinegar in place of the sherry, but that doesn't give it a vodka bite. Enjoy, in or out of season.

1 cup finely chopped red onion
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar, divided
2 lb. cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 cup chopped celery hearts
1/2 cup chopped brined green olives
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Mix onion and 1 tablespoon vinegar in a large bowl. Let macerate 10 minutes, tossing often. Add tomatoes, celery and olives.

Whisk remaining vinegar, horseradish and next three ingredients in a medium bowl. Slowly whisk in the oil. Add to bowl with tomato mixture, toss to coat and season with salt and pepper.

(photo by Luc Viatour)

We're No Angels

2011-12-13T07:08:00.000-05:00

I wrote this film review several years ago, and I think it's worth repeating. I finally found "We're No Angels." on DVD and watched it while decorating the tree this past weekend. You should watch it, too.

We're No Angels is a Christmas favorite (a favorite of mine, anyway), starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray. It is not to be confused with the crap version starring Sean Penn and Robert Deniro.

This is the story of three convicts who escape from Devil's Island and find themselves in a bustling village at Christmas time. Their intent is to pillage from this unsuspecting community and then escape by ship--there is a ship anchored just off shore.

They stumble into a shop, a kind of general store run by a quiet man, his wife, and grown daughter, and they offer to "fix the leaky roof." While they are on this roof, they crawl from sky light to sky light observing this family and their troubles, and they work out their plot.

Bogart: we'll climb down off this roof and cut his throat for a Christmas present.

Ustinov: That's the kind of thing that could make you stop believing in Santa Claus

But once they get off of the roof and get to know this family and the threat that plagues them--a cold hearted skinflint cousin who owns the business and demands profit when there is none--they decide to be friend instead of foe.

Basil Rathbone plays the heartless cousin, and he has traveled to this unpleasant village by ship, the same ship that sits in the harbor waiting to be cleared by health officials. He has brought his protegee along who he is grooming to take over the family finances. They plan to review the books over Christmas, and if the store isn't prospering, they'll take it away from the family and send them packing

The stress of the situation, given the store is not prospering, makes the father wish he were an alcoholic. "I wish I was a drunkard. I wish I was dead. I wish I was a dead drunkard." But fortunately, the convicts have brought along a pet, a poisonous snake named Adolf, which will serve as a handy weapon to...um...eliminate the threat.

Here's the spoiler--so turn the other way if you don't want to know how the story ends--after the family has been got out of their dilemma and the convicts have had a most delightful Christmas away from Devil's Island, they agree to give up their escape plans and go back to prison. As they put it, "you certainly meet a better class of people."

Surprisingly, Bogart does comedy very well, as does Ustinov. It's this film that makes me wonder about how easy it is to laugh at murder. It seems there are some murders that make me cringe and weep for the collective soul of humanity, and there are some murders that make me chuckle and adore my fellow man.

I remember very clearly the first time I saw this film. It was Christmas Eve, and I think I was twelve or so. My sisters had come home for the holiday, and I had given up my room to sleep on the couch in front of the TV. While everyone else slept, I flipped through channels for something to watch late at night. I found We're No Angels, and I settled in on my madeup bed on the couch with quilts and pillows, and I thought it was the most perfect Christmas Eve, with a clear night sky full of stars and the flickering light from the TV changing the shadows on the ceiling.

In the Company of Singing Children

2011-12-12T13:16:00.002-05:00

I am in full Christmas mode these days, between wrapping presents and decorating the tree, performing in a holiday concert and planning for returning daughters—how does one prepare a Christmas meal for vegetarians and omnivores all seated at the same table?

In keeping with the spirit, here is my column as it appeared in yesterday's edition of Small Town Newspaper. Please, enjoy.

A Concert Happened

2011-12-11T18:45:00.001-05:00

I told you about Small Town's Christmas Parade and how the orchestra was involved in it to promote our children's chorus and upcoming concert, so let me tell you about the concert itself. It happened Saturday.

We perform at the Performing Arts Center at Small Town's branch of Kent State, and the place is a sight to behold. This is what it looked like all dressed for the holiday as I approached it from the parking lot. When I was little, my sisters taught me an odd thing—they would turn on a flashlight, place it up to one eye and say, "Oh look, a party!" Seeing the PAC from the outside is a little like that. There's a party going on inside, so you better hurry up and get in.

Orchestra members take our seats at will with no specified time as long as we are ready to play at 7:30. The concert master comes on stage, and we tune. The board president comes on stage and gives some announcements. (or maybe their entrances are the other way around). And then the conductor joins us to kick off the first piece. We played a rousing "Carol of the Bells," which moves along at a pretty good clip. And then we went straight into an arrangement of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," which felt like a brass chorale. Lovely. And we played a few more standards—"The Christmas Song," "Sleigh Ride"...

We finished the first half with "A Carol Cantata" composed by Conductor Eric as a sing-along. People like to sing, you know, especially Christmas carols because they are familiar and inspire all the warm, fuzzy feelings we miss in other parts of the year. I think singing with a group inspires all the warm, fuzzy feelings we miss in other parts of life—neurologists can tell you why that is. The orchestration was Bach-ish, so there was rarely a break, and at the end, you felt as though you'd had a work out. But the horns, at least, had a few spots with long rest measures to count, and I was able to look out at the audience and listen to their joined voices. The house was sold out, so there were about a thousand people singing beautifully toward the stage, and at one point I closed my eyes and just listened.

After the intermission, we took our seats again and prepared ourselves for the next half of the show. Alex Bevan is a well-known folk singer and songwriter from Cleveland. He's also an accomplished guitar player, a poet, a story teller. Several years ago he wrote a series of Christmas songs for his nieces and nephews and called it "As A Child Looks At Christmas Eve." The story begins this way—a young one and an old one from a family are sifting through decorations stored in the attic, looking for things to take down to trim the tree. They discover a box labeled "My Favorites," and find it filled with saved Christmas cards. Each song in the suite describes one of those cards. Our conductor orchestrated the songs and added a children's chorus, which, handily, we perform with each Christmas.

I won't spell out the entire suite here—you can buy a recording of it in a couple of weeks, if that interests you—but let me say that what began as a jumbled circus of fidgety children at Friday night's rehearsal became a magical performance as polished as anything on Saturday night. The orchestra was in tune with the conductor—you know, emotionally and musically—and the children were in tune with the him as well and with their rehearsal conductors who were seated out of sight of the audience displaying cue cards and quiet instruction.

We performed a raucous "Jingle Jingle" that put you in mind of a bouncy and purposeful sleigh ride, and a nativity story song with the kids singing like a unified chorus of well-trained vocalists. We played and sang about wrapping paper and ribbons, stuffed animals reindeer, sparrows under the watchful eye of their creator—with a 17-year-old soloist who sang with the voice of an angel—and ice skaters. There were moments in each song—the harmonized "ooos" from the chorus, the cracker-jack storytelling of Alex, the ice skater jumping—you can tell her skates have left the ice because the music stops for three quick counts, and you can tell she has made her landing because it begins again with a clean beat. Genius.

The whole thing was inspired—by a muse, by nostalgia, by life experience, by something greater—who's to say. And the audience awarded us with a standing ovation. Alex bowed at least twice, and we were washed over by waves of applause and cheers. I cannot overstate the pure satisfaction of that moment when we stood to receive thanks and to give it before calling it a day. A day well served.

Yep, a concert happened. And it was a good one.

A Weird Thing

2011-12-06T21:55:00.001-05:00

A weird thing happened today. I was driving the puppy to the park because we like to take walks there, and I passed a sign, one of those big yellow ones on black legs with moveable letters. It was directing people to a Christmas shop that will open Saturday December 10 for some special sale or something.

I was turning a corner and needed to watch traffic, but the words "Saturday, Dec. 10" caught my eye, and I said to myself, "But Saturday is the 11th." It is, isn't it, I thought to myself. The orchestra will be performing our Christmas concert on Saturday, and I have been focused on it for weeks. I started by putting together the newsletter plugging it, and then going to a show at Kent Stage to help promote it, and then I moved onto planning our involvement in the parade and then onto a cookie thing for after the concert—I'm going to taste test some Christmas cookies at a new bakery tomorrow!—and then onto practicing my part for the concert and then rehearsing, too.

So, you see, it's a big day, and nearly everything I've done or thought about doing for the last several weeks has led to it. I've had it in my head for what feels like forever, and I've known the date on the calendar. Suddenly, seeing it on the big yellow sign set me back because it's the 11th, right?

I kept driving to the park, wondering if I'd screwed up. What if I put the 11th on the newsletter, and maybe the error was missed in proofreading? What if I have been wrong all along, thinking it's the friggin' 11th when it's really the 10th? But I'm at the park, and I'm walking the dog and can't do a thing about it! I can't even check the newsletter to see if I'm panicking for nothing!

Finally, back at home in my warm house, I get the puppy settled in, and I sit down at my mactop and check my work. Yes, Saturday is the 10th, and apparently I've known that all along. My work is accurate, and I have nothing to worry about. Nothing, that is, except this business of suddenly changing the date in my head for no apparent reason. Nothing, that is, except doubting myself almost to a minor frenzy.

All is well, though. The big yellow sign is correct. My newsletter is correct. The big date I've been working toward is right where it should be. Weird, eh?

Here is the newsletter, by the way. We'll be sending out an issue about a week ahead of every concert on the schedule.

The Greatest Gift

2011-12-05T22:19:00.001-05:00

There have just been a few gift requests I can remember making in adulthood—I asked for a telescope for my birthday one year, and last year I asked for a bottle of Chanel and a camera for Christmas. I remember getting the telescope which is now in the trash, and although I didn't get the perfume or camera, I bought those things for myself in January.

I just don't think in terms of what I might want as a gift. That could mean that I buy what I want when I want it—like the perfume and the camera—or that could mean I'm not a big shopper. Or maybe it's a combination of two things. This year when No. 1 asked what I wanted for Christmas, I sent her a link to boots I think I might need this winter while walking the dog out there in the big winter wonder land, and I pointed her to Crabtree & Evelyn's La Source body wash. I don't know what's in the stuff, but I'm hooked. Other than that, I don't want or need or have expectations for anything.

Even my sisters are considering a scaled back gift exchange this year. For a long time, we've drawn names, but this time they're thinking about drawing the name of an entire family unit, cutting down on gifts. This whole shift in how we celebrate Christmas inspired today's column for Small Town Newspaper.

Today, I received two phone calls, one Facebook message, one Open Salon comment and one face-to-face exchange thanking me for this column. I think I've struck a nerve here. And I think there are a lot of people out there who are tired of things.

I'll admit I would love a bottle of La Source for Christmas, but finding it under the tree won't make or break the holiday.

Parades and Lifted Spirits

2011-12-04T09:52:00.001-05:00

The orchestra was in a parade! OK, not the entire orchestra. All right, not the orchestra at all but the children's chorus and a few board members. Next Saturday, the orchestra will perform our annual Christmas concert along with a stage full of kids singing songs written by Alex Bevan, a Cleveland-area folk legend. Nearly 25 of those kids piled into a giant sleigh on wheels last night and sang their hearts out.

Small Town puts on a humdinger of a Christmas parade every year, with lighted floats and Santa and a marching band and hot chocolate. All the participants line up near the football stadium, and after kick-off time, the parade heads toward the main drag, turns right and bee-lines for the square. The route is sparsely populated initially, but more people are sitting or standing street side as you go along; and when you reach the square, which is brightly lit and festive, you find yourself surrounded by townspeople, all waving and hoping for candy. And the announcer tells everyone who you are and what you do, and in that moment, you shine.

In our case, we shined by having the kids sing Tom Paxton's "Marvelous Toy." We blasted a recording of the chorus from a previous year, and they joined in with Conductor Eric handling the verses. Sometimes they sang Jingle Bells instead, but they mostly did the Toy song complete with motions.

I had my heart set on being in this parade, mostly because I feel strongly that the orchestra needs to establish itself as a part of the community, not just as the group that sells tickets to concerts a few times a year, but as a full-fledged contributing institution. Doing things like riding in parades now and then seems a simple enough way to help make that connection in the minds of the people. "Oh, that's right. We have our own orchestra," I want them to say. "Aren't we fortunate?" It was tough going at first to convince the powers in charge this parade was a good thing, and at one point, I started referring to it as "that damn parade." But by kick-off time, it was more like "that glorious parade."

I also wanted to be in this parade because it's one of the best things going in this dingy town. At night when the holiday lights are on, you don't notice the empty buildings or slipping standard of living. With people cheering, you can't hear anyone refusing to fund a crumbling high school or griping about politics. This one single parade unifies us and lets us put on our best face. We need that, every one of us. We need to see we still have a best and positive and hopeful face to show.

My friend Katy and I road on the big, giant sleigh with the kids, and as we turned the corner and headed toward the square, we looked at each other and wondered about how the whole experience just made us want to cry. And as we turned the final corner at the end of the route, we were disappointed it was all over. Too fun, too heart-warming, too short.

I hope our participation in Small Town's parade helped boost the orchestra's presence in the community and helped show kids along the route they should join the choir next Christmas. I know for certain it did me good, riding along with the "Marvelous Toy" and happy kids and a singing conductor.

Here is our orchestra performing "Marvelous Toy" a year or two ago. Enjoy:

Vegetarian for Everyone

2011-11-30T16:15:00.001-05:00

Well, the last kid has gone home after a week of Thanksgiving visits. I realize I only have two kids, so it's not as if a whole herd has abandoned the den, but it feels a little empty in this house. With Husband at work and the animals quietly roaming around waiting for dinner, something seems missing.

While the girls were here, we managed to feed everyone, even the vegetarians. Eustacia went back to school on Monday, so No. 1 and I set out to make dinner for the rest of us, something we would all eat. We settled on Lemon Risotto Croquettes from the only vegetarian cookbook in my vast collection of cookbooks.

It was actually so good, we saved the leftover rice mixture and made a second batch for lunch a day or two later. Yum. You'll like these.

Lemony Risotto Croquettes

1 tablespoon butter

3 bunches scallions, thinly sliced

2 cups risotto rice

salt and pepper

finely grated zest of one lemon

2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

¼ pound fresh mozzarella, diced

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

3 eggs

3 cups bread crumbs

olive oil

3 tablespoons butter

2 leeks, halved, cut into 2-inch pieces and slivered(white parts only)

1 pound asparagus, slivered

2 big handfuls snow peas, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons minced parsley or chervil

Bring 1 quart water to a simmer in a 3-quart pan. In a10-inch skillet, melt butter over medium-high heat. Add the scallions to thebutter and cook for one minute. Add the rice, stir to coat, and cook one to twominutes more. Stir in ½ teaspoon salt and add the rice mixture to the simmeringwater. Cover and cook for 16 minutes. Stir in one egg and let mixture cool tothe touch.

Using 1/3-cup measure, scoop out the rice and shape it toform an oval croquette.

Whisk the remaining eggs in a pie pan. Put the breadcrumbs on another pie pan. Dip each croquette into the egg, then gently rollinto the crumbs to coat. Set aside until all croquettes are formed. Generouslycoat a large skillet with olive oil. When hot, add the croquettes a few at atime and cook over medium heat, gently turning them to brown on all sides, 5 to7 minutes. Keep browned croquettes warmed in a 300˚ oven while you work on thenext batch.

Wipe out the pan and melt the 1 ½ tablespoons butter. Addall the prepared vegetables, season with salt, and sauté over high heat forabout 2 minutes. Add the lemon juice and remaining butter, stirring gently tocoat. Add the herbs.

Divide vegetables and sauce among plates and top withwarmed croquettes. Allow three per person (we allowed two, actually, and thatwas plenty)

Regis Philbin—Help In A Time of Need

2011-11-28T12:36:00.001-05:00

Have I said how much I dislike daytime television? I really do. I'm even to the point of shrugging to CNN in the morning because the programming and the chatter doesn't inform or excite or entertain. Usually.

There was a time when I was in college, and the ABC soap lineup had me hooked, I confess. I would go home to visit my parents and would hope to sit down to some stupid story line on One Life to Live or General Hospital only discover my father had become attached to As the World Turns on another network. The burly man retired from his heavy construction carpenter work and soon began spending his time watching soap operas. I was stunned and a little saddened. Odd, I think, that my watching them didn't make me sad, but I hated that my father watched them, as if he was too good and purposeful for soaps, but I had nothing better to do and was more suited to them. I wasn't, but I didn't know that just yet.

Now, if I turn on the TV during the day, it's for background noise, and I go straight to Turner Classic Movies. If the movie is a dud, I'll switch to some other movie channel or National Geographic or a History Channel show about ancient Egyptian mysteries or Mayan prophecies. But then there is Regis Philbin.

I know. His morning show can be a drag, but his personality can make up for it. I have no opinion on Kelly Ripa; and Kathy Lee Gifford, for whatever reason, makes my skin crawl, but Regis and I go way back. Here's what I have to say about his recent retirement from his morning show, as it appears in today's issue of Small Town Newspaper.

Two Little Indians

2011-11-27T10:56:00.001-05:00

We had a very nice Thanksgiving this year. As is tradition, we traveled to Illinois to spend the holiday with Husband's clan. It's a large one, with a matriarch, seven of her children, 19 of her grandchildren, and honestly, I've lost track of the number of her great-grandchildren. There were a total of 40 from the generations all in one house, and we ranged from 85 years to 4 months.

Some of the cousins created hats for the occasion—girl pilgrim hats, boy pilgrim hats and Indian headgear—wearer's choice. Here are my two girls spending the day as Indians:

We had the traditional meal—roasted turkey, bread stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, cranberry chutney and Champagne. We also had green salad, rice stuffing and my favorite green beans. You start by blanching them and then saute them with lemon zest and hazelnuts. Yum. Then we had pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, Grand Marnier truffles and tiramisu.

We scattered around the house, keeping the dogs from the babies and the babies from the dogs. We poured the wine, and we talked about every subject under the sun, from the development and bastardization of language to aging to iPhones. And the Episcopal bishop among us pointed out that the Pilgrims weren't persecuted as much as they were persecutors, driving English Anglicans batty with their pestering. And when they weren't successful in getting what they wanted, they took their hard-line ways to Holland; and when they weren't welcome there, they headed west, persecuting all the way to the New World. "Whatever they got, they deserved," he said.

No. 1 flew in from San Francisco for the holiday, and she met Baxter for the first time:

Then she road home to Ohio with us where she'll spend a couple of days post-feast. So, yes, we had a very nice Thanksgiving.

Assisted Living—for All Ages

2011-11-21T06:36:00.001-05:00

My mother lives at an assisted living facility these days. When she goes out, people she knows will greet her and tell her how lovely she looks and will then say, "How do you like your new home?" She puts on her best public smile and says, "Well, it's hard to call it home, but it's where I live." She refuses to accept the place as home even though she was desperately lonely in her own house and felt awkward and lonely when she lived with my sister. It's just the way she is.But when I spent some time with her a week ago, I saw how all the residents looked after each other, and they were all so friendly. And I thought how assisted living isn't such a bad idea. Granted, I fantasize about living in a commune or owning a big inn I can fill with people who could use a little help, a little assistance. In response to my visit with my mother, here is today's column for Small Town Newspaper.

And if you've got five minutes, watch this video of a "flash mob" event at my mother's "home." The man who slept through the whole thing and wakes up with painted nails is Carl. My mother is in this as well—the woman in pink who walks away at the end.

Back Home—I Might Be Easy to Please

2011-11-17T14:23:00.001-05:00

Wow, I’ve taken more than a week off from blog writing. Did you miss me?

I was in Georgia until Monday afternoon, and from there, I hit the ground running (or walking with a bum knee, more like it) to finish the next issue of the orchestra newsletter, write a short press release and write a column for next week. I’ve also bought groceries, done laundry, cleaned a toilet or two, attended an orchestra board meeting, had drinks with a friend and tended to a newly neutered puppy. I have also cooked every night since I’ve been home—mussel and clams with pasta, roasted lamb chops, chicken pot pie. So, I haven’t had time to blog write.But, most of my tasks for this week are complete, and the puppy is quiet, so here I am. Clickety clackety. I mean that literally—Husband thinks I need a Mactop that has a quieter keyboard, but I find the sound of computer keys mechanically pleasing.

My visit to Georgia was a pleasant one. I stayed with my sister, sleeping in my mother’s old room there. Our mother lived there for about six months before moving to an assisted living facility, and most of her stuff is still there. Her photo albums, a life’s collection of neck scarves, her jewelry has been left in place so she can come back and get whatever she wants. So, I sometimes sat up at night and flipped through her old pictures.

I drove my sister and brother-in-law’s little red T-bird. It’s a two-seater convertible, but I kept the top up because it was chilly. And I drove on winding roads lined with tall trees covered in fall colors, with the blue sky as a backdrop. On one morning, I listened to a CD of songs my sister had gathered randomly from her iTunes, and Ray Charles sang “Georgia On My Mind” as if he were singing solely in honor of my visit.

I spent time at my mother’s assisted living place, playing Scrabble and meeting the other residents. My sisters and I helped her celebrate her 86th birthday by presenting her with a bulletin board, the kind upholstered in fabric and wrapped in ribbon to hold photos and cards and things. And I got to spend time with my nephew’s daughters, two great girls about 5 and 8 or 9. I washed the younger one’s hair and played with drawastickman.com with the older one. They sat with me while I read Brer Rabbit stories and Winnie the Pooh, and we got silly with jokes—What do you call a witch who goes to the beach? A sand-wich.

It was all very nice, and I enjoyed every minute. But you know, I’ve basically enjoyed every minute since being home, too. I might be easy to please.Here, enjoy this:

A Trip to Georgia

2011-11-09T08:32:00.002-05:00

I'll be flying to Georgia tomorrow to spend a few days with my family. My mother will be 86 on Friday, and this weekend seemed like a nice time for a visit.

We've treated our mother to a party before—last year, we threw a shindig at my sister's house for her 85th, and we made the day special for her a few years before that, I believe. Each time, we invited her lady friends from church who come decked in their sweater sets and pearls, and they gather around the tables topped with lace, and they laugh and tell stories and eat coconut cake.

What's a birthday without coconut cake, I always say. OK, I may never have actually said that out loud, but it has become a tradition when celebrating my mother's birthday, and I would miss it if we opted for something else. Coconut cake is a southern staple, and my mother used to make the best cake with seven-minute icing. I called it "crunchy icing" before I knew the real name for it because it hardens on the surface and becomes a little crisp. If it doesn't, you haven't made it properly.

We'll have coconut cake this year for our family party, but we're doing something a little different as well because now Mama lives in an assisted living facility. She's not wild about it and complains every day about being lonely and shut off from the world. So, we're going to have a little party in her new digs. We'll be serving cupcakes at that one and will include all of the residents. And we'll give her a bulletin board decorated to match her room so she'll have a space to keep her cards and calendars and all the other stuff she has typically collected on her side table.

Hopefully, the toothpicks will be put in the trash, though. I don't know what it is with my mother and toothpicks, but she has always cleaned her teeth after dinner while sitting in the chair and reading, and then she leaves the nasty things on the table, for weeks, and they collect, and they gather dust, and she saves them. You could chalk it up to being old, but I remember having to dust the side table as a kid and sweeping toothpicks into the trash. So, no toothpicks on the bulletin board. Or maybe we should create a special pocket for them so she'll have a place to hoard the stash.

Well, I digress as I tend to do. I'll overlook the toothpicks on this visit and focus on the birthday. A few years ago, my mother said never thought she would live that long—she might have been 80 or 81—and now she's 86, her sister will be 81 tomorrow and her brother just turned 90. That's worth celebrating, I think, and coconut cake seems like the perfect way to do that, along with a flight to Georgia.

Here is No. 1 with my mother last Christmas—two generations of fierce women.

Marie Curie—Obstacles No Excuse for Failure

2011-11-07T08:31:00.004-05:00

Marie Curie at 16

When Husband and I were first married, I would be confronted with certain challenges, tasks to complete or problems to solve, and my first response would be something like, "I can't do that. I didn't go to school for that." And Husband would repeatedly reject my fear of the unfamiliar. But it wasn't so much the unfamiliar that made me balk. It was my feelings of inferiority for not having finished college. I didn't have (and still don't have) a degree or even a certificate of completion, and that lack of experience and paper suitable for framing had me feeling I had no choice but to sit on my hands and watch someone else achieve the things I dreamed of. Despite my achievements to date, I still have that sense. It just lays low most of the time.

But then I come across a story like that of Marie Curie's. I don't mean the one about her isolating radium and dying from the process. I mean the one about how she refused to sit on her hands and insisted on an education. I wrote about her in this week's column for Small Town Newspaper. When I began working on my column, I thought I would be writing about chemistry and the Nobel Prize and Yay! Strong Women, but I was more inspired by her part in the Floating University than in her success as a chemist.

In the 1800s, Russia was in control of Warsaw, Poland and subjugated the natives by censoring their education and replacing Polish culture with Russian culture. Women weren't admitted to universities no matter where they were born, and this big group of disenfranchised people reacted by forming a secret, underground university. They taught each other, and they found ways to learn despite laws and threats to their very lives. They learned because it was essential whether there was a college for them or not.

I mean, just look at the expression of determination on the girl's face in this photo. She was just 16 here, and you can see the wheels turning in that amazing brain. "You think you're going to hold me back, do you? You're not going to hold me back. I will take what I need, and I will stomp on your nasty head with my angry heal."

My obstacles don't compare even remotely to Curie's, and I don't pretend to relate to her struggles. But I do find her example of getting what she needed, by force if necessary, inspiring. That's not to say I need to run out and get a degree, but there are clearly other ways to educate one's self. And the only thing that's stopping me is my own hand sitting. What's stopping you from getting what you need?

Warning: Strange Dog

2011-11-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

Dive at Small Glass Planet spotted this sign at engrish.com and sent it. I wonder if he's trying to say something, something insulting about big Baxter. This sign is fitting, I think, although it's fitting for any home with a dog as all dogs are a little strange.

Are you aware that dogs eat cat vomit, and did you know they'll chew on random pieces of wood? I don't mean sticks or big chunks of pine mulch. I'm talking about the corner of a table or the leg of a chair, whatever is handy. My dog rings a bell when he needs to go out, and he gets a treat if he actually does his personal business after ringing it. But he also rings the bell if he just wants to go outside and smell the air or check out an unusual sound he detects. Sometimes he rings the bells just to go lay on the patio and chew on the old leather glove I gave him. I brought the nasty glove inside thinking that might reduce the bell ringing, but so far that hasn't helped.

Years ago when we lived in New Jersey, I drove past a house every day that posted a sign on the garage—Warning: Bad Dog. It was so unusual that I said the words "Bad Dog" when I read it, out loud, every day. The first time I tried to drive our stick-shift car by myself (it's a skill I've never fully learned), I found myself trapped at a stop light on a hill, and when the light turned green, I couldn't do anything but roll backwards. The house with the bad dog was on that corner, so I backed into its driveway and sat there to wait out the next red light on a level surface. My idea was to gun it as soon as the light turned green and avoid the hill, but I sat there for three light cycles at least before I could get anywhere. I worried about the bad dog that lived in that house and came up with fantastical images—a hound of the Baskervilles, a Steven King nightmare, a three-headed beast of mythological proportions.

I finally made it out of that driveway and never did see that dog. I also never drove that car again because someone took pity on me and gave me an old automatic to drive. But I have never forgotten the idea that someone might think they have a bad dog, but they keep the dog and warn the neighbors.

If I had a bad dog, I might find another home for it. The strange one I've got, though, stays here with me. And that's final.

Baxter Gets A Sock

2011-11-03T17:07:00.003-04:00

I have given Baxter a sock. Two socks, actually, and you'd think he has struck gold. When Baxter gets anything, or takes anything, he runs straight to his bed where he hoards his toys and sticks and odd finds. He's like the magpie of dogs.

While I was folding laundry this afternoon, I had set aside a pair of worn socks to throw away, but then I balled them up and tossed them into the kitchen instead. And I watched as the puppy darted for the flying socks, snatched them up and ran straight for his bed. He's been gnawing on them since, because fabric seems to be a comfort to his teething gums, and I think he thinks he has something he's not supposed to have.

It just goes to show that one man's useless socks—with frayed elastic, a hole in the toe and thin at the heals—is one dog's treasure of the day. You look at your stuff and sort it as "keep" or "throw away," but sometimes "give to someone else" is the better option. What appears to be garbage to some is a great find for others. I suppose that's the beauty of flea markets, like the one my neighbor runs in her front yard from time to time, with colorful flags marking her driveway and signs pointing the way at each intersection. It only looks as if she's thrown a heap of trash in her yard, but in reality she's selling treats. This is the same woman who has hung a chandelier from the hay loft in her barn, and at night, it lights up the window with unexpected charm; so she knows a good treat when she finds one.

It only looks like I've thrown crap at my dog, but in reality I've given him a toy. Seeing Baxter with his socks reminds me of this:

Baxter's Day Out

2011-11-01T12:44:00.000-04:00

Don't think less of me, but one of my favorite films in the "Family" category is "Baby's Day Out." I'm not sure if it's the cuteness of the wandering baby or Fred Thompson as the FBI agent, but there is something about the movie I adore.

Well, today, we experienced Baxter's day out. He loves car rides, and we go to the park almost every day, so leaving the house isn't new to the puppy. But today we ran errands.

First, we went to the bank drive-through to make a deposit. Baxter could hardly contain himself when I put the checks in the shoot, and he watched the canister take off. I actually had to hold him by the collar, he was so excited. And when the canister came back, there was a little dog biscuit in with the receipt. He liked it.

Then we went to Good Will. My girls collected quite a few books when they were children, and the things have been shoved in the guestroom closet for years. I finally sorted them not long ago—a bag to keep, a bag to throw out and a couple of bags to give away. This morning, I finally hauled the heavy give-away bags down the stairs and heaved them into the trunk, and Baxter and I dropped them off as a donation. I kept the most enjoyable books, but I hope some other family enjoys the good-but-not-great books we dropped off.

Then we went to the pet store. I needed to buy dog food but can't take the dog into the grocery store, so this seemed ideal. We picked up the big bag of Iams for puppies and then went to explore the collar section. My big, bad puppy pulls on the leash, and he's going to snap his neck in two, or at least strain at his innards, so I wanted another option. I found a harness that I hoped would work better than the strap around the neck. While we checked out, the employees fawned all over Baxter and gave him another dog biscuit. He liked it.

Our final stop was to the park so we could test out the new harness. I knew it wouldn't stop him from pulling, but I hoped it would at least be less of a strain. It turns out he seems to pull a little less with it. He's still a little ADD and darts off at moving things like leaves and people, and he stretches the limits of the leash to smell something in the grass, but our walk around the pond was actually enjoyable.

Baxter met a new dog friend, owned by someone we know, and pooped and peed and walked through leaves and got wet in the dewy grass. Then we came upon a couple out for a power walk of some kind, and they stopped to meet the cute puppy. The man asked if Baxter could have a treat—he keeps a baggy of dog biscuits in his pocket because they said they have a lot of dog friends—so Baxter got another biscuit. And of course, he liked it.

On the way home, he was probably thinking he'd hit the jackpot today with all of the treats. I was thinking that I hope he's worn out by all the activity and is ready for a nap!

What This Town Needs Is A New School

2011-10-31T08:55:00.001-04:00

Small Town is at war, sort of. The state has declared our high school to be unfit, one of the worst in Ohio as far as the structure goes. The foundation is solid, but the rest is falling apart, and we'll get $9 million toward the construction of a new building if we can get the community to pass a levy to raise the rest. So, now there is a big fight over everything related to the subject—where to build, why to build, when to build. People are accusing the administration of not spending operating funds properly, suggesting that if they had been more frugal, the building wouldn't be in bad shape.

I think they would rather make that accusation than accept the blame themselves. If they had passed previous requests for increased operating funds, we could have updated the building over time. But they repeatedly rejected pleas for more funding, so there was never enough money to keep the boilers operating, to repair the roof, to update the plumbing and wiring, or to provide updated labs. These same funds buy buses and books and anything tangible, basically. Now it would be cheaper to start from scratch than it would be to make all the necessary repairs and updates, and the state will only pitch in for new construction.

So, here is my response in today's edition of Small Town newspaper. It won't appear in the paper's online edition until this afternoon, and I suspect the subject will garner some unsavory comments, so I'm linking to the Salon post for now.

The committee has already addressed the subjects of funding, structural concerns, and educational needs, so I felt free to talk about the sentimental aspect of fighting to keep the old building. I understand sentimental attachment. I have kept shoes for years just because they reminded me of fun times. I keep my high school marching band jacket hanging in a closet more than 30 years after last wearing it. I was upset when Macy's bought Marshall Field's and changed the name. Imagine not having a Marshall Field on State Street—how could they rob me of my years of memories and experiences. Don't they understand how important it is to maintain continuity?

So, you see, I get it, but there is more at stake here than memories and continuity. What's at stake is our ability to sufficiently educate our students, which reverberates into every other aspect of community life and development. I repeatedly voted to increase operating funds for the school and would have loved to see the building refitted for a new era, but my vote wasn't enough to do any good. So, here we are.

It Is What It Is

2011-10-30T09:15:00.003-04:00

I'm looking back at the events of yesterday and breathing a sigh of satisfaction. Not a sigh of relief or resign, just simple and gratifying pride. The orchestra performed two concerts yesterday, and while I committed more than my share of mistakes—I will not kick myself for them I will not kick myself for them I will not...—it was all a job well done, I think.

At some point last spring, I emailed our conductor and asked if he had ever thought of programming a concert aimed at kids. We've been thinking of ways to attract a younger audience, and I thought that if you bring in kids, you bring in their parents, and eventually you develop a more sustainable audience that won't die out in the next ten or twenty years. Not to sound harsh, but this is the situation orchestras are facing.

He said he had thought about turning the dress rehearsal of our October concert into a mini-concert for kids because we would be performing fun and creepy Halloween stuff, and it would be easy to adjust the program to their level. He had done the same thing with another group, and after the mini-concert, the kids were given a party. And boom—we had the beginnings of a plan. I came up with a list of ideas for the party and passed them onto a small committee assigned to the event. The committee was so small, in fact, that when one member decided the project didn't require much effort, the other member felt abandoned and brought me in to help.

She and I sat by the pool one day and visualized the space where the party would be held, the concert hall lobby, and we came up with a list of stations for the kids. There would be a game or two, a craft table, a musical instrument petting zoo where the kids could try out different instruments, a photo stop, a treat table, a balloon guy making animals for a happy audience. We refined the plan and ordered the goods and hired the balloon guy. The big IF in all of this was not knowing how many kids to expect. The event would be free, so we would have no ticket sales to help us out. All we could do was guess. We guessed at 200, even though one of the board members told us we'd be lucky to get 100. We stuck to our guns and dreamed optimistically.

After a big publicity thing with 5,000 flyers going out to schools, and information going out to newspapers and radio, and the parade, all we could do was say "It Is What It Is." Here are a couple of unexpected tasks I performed:

I blew up this four-foot pumpkin with the
strength of my own lungs.

I decorated these plastic masks as samples for the craft table. Arty

Then we stood in the lobby on concert day and waited. It was at that point that I had to walk away from the whole thing to focus on performing, but I did my waiting on stage. I watched kids and their parents filter into the auditorium, and I was nervous until they all seemed to stream in at the last minute. Turns out we had almost exactly 200 kids, plus their parents and grandparents.

They all laughed and applauded and seemed to really enjoy the program that began with a costume parade accompanied by Funeral March for A Marionette, and then they funneled out into the lobby while the orchestra finished up with our rehearsal. All reports say they loved every minute of the concert/party, as did the adults that came with them.

There comes a point in planning or preparing for something when you have to stop working and say "It Is What It Is." We said that many times yesterday, both about the party and about the music that was occasionally challenging. The phrase isn't meant to suggest apathy, it's just an acknowledgement that you've done all you can do. The big day we'd been planning since May Was What It Was. It was a very good thing.

Small Town Goes Spooky

2011-10-28T08:39:00.004-04:00

Hey there Little Red Riding Hood...

I walked in a parade the other day, my first since being in the marching band in high school. I never cared for parades in those days because they were long and dull, and by the end, we would all be exhausted. The Labor Day parade always did us in, and several kids never failed to pass out from heat and dehydration. I wasn't one of them, but still.

This time around, I walked the route to help promote an orchestra event, and our little entourage had a ball.

The Lion's Club of Small Town hosts an annual Halloween Parade, and it's interesting to note that more people show up for this one than show up for other parades, like the Memorial Day or Labor Day or Christmas Parade. What does that say about us? Kids and their parents line the route, that isn't as long as a mile, and they hold out their plastic bags for candy as if they won't be trick-or-treating in a few days, and all kinds of people participate.

There was a pontoon boat on a trailer to advertise a boat shop, a dance troupe, the Girl Scouts, a couple of marching bands, various cars painted with store logos, and kids who entered a costume judging contest. There was a family that joined in just for fun, and they were probably my favorite group—the father had made all of their costumes to make each family member look like a lawn ornament. One kid was a pink flamingo, another was a gnome with a mushroom, another a lamppost, and another was the most amazing bird bath you've ever seen. The father was a lawn jockey, and all the costumes were made from found objects or cheap things from Good Will. Very fun. Sorry I don't have a picture.

For our presentation, we borrowed a black BMW convertible, which the principle horn player (dressed in a tuxedo) drove, and a board member's husband sat on the back dressed as the Phantom of the Opera. We'll be performing a few songs from the show at tomorrow's concert. Katy from the board was Marie Antoinette, and Mary from the board was a character from Star Wars. We also had some middle school kids who helped us pass out candy for their school service project. I was Little Red Riding Hood. I searched online for a costume, but the options were so slutty I decided to make my own cape. I used a very simple pattern and only lined the hood to make it even easier. The rest I put together from what I had, following examples I had seen from the not-so-slutty images I had seen.

This parade business was not a big deal as deals go, but I was so glad we put this together. And as I walked down the center of the street, avoiding the BMW exhaust, I was just happy to be a part of the community, being an active member of my town. Come to think of it, maybe that is a big deal.

Not Such A Bad Place

2011-10-25T08:10:00.001-04:00

I met the owner of one of Small Town's largest companies the other day, and he was complaining that he has trouble attracting new employees who are willing to live in this town. They'll take the job he offers, but then they buy a house in Jackson or Perry, parts of Canton north of here where there are better restaurants and better shopping. The schools are better, and the atmosphere isn't so inbred. He was actually making his complaint in the context of a conversation about upgrading our high school. If we had a better high school, he said, people would live here, which would do wonders for our real estate market, our general cash flow and the overall growth of the community. In turn, more businesses would be attracted to the area, which would bring more people and so on.

We all know that it isn't just the schools that send people north on the highway, and we have a long way to go to be appealing to the outside world, but I saw his point. Start with the schools, and the rest will follow.

At first glance, Small Town and its surroundings seems a little claustrophobic to passersby. Not much happens here if you don't look below the surface of fast food chains and moronic comments in the newspaper's 30 Seconds column (godforbid anybody should think those people represent us all!).

Why, just the other day I learned that one of the main characters from the new film "The Big Year," Jack Black's character, is based on a local guy, Greg Miller. I won't go into the details of how that came to be, but it's an interesting story.

And all over the place there is the filming of "Old Fashioned," a romantic comedy written and directed by Rik Swartzwelder. Ever heard of him? Me either, but he has chosen our humble county to shoot his film. There have been several casting calls for extras, and they have already begun shooting at places like the county library, a local florist and a long-standing beer and burger place. Here is the Facebook page that documents the experience.

We also have a surprisingly great performing arts center where I saw Blast! this past weekend, will perform in an orchestra concert this coming Saturday and will see Spamalot next week. It's a hopping place.

We're also just 45 minutes from the guy who released all the exotic animals and then killed himself. We're a short drive to Youngstown, which has been described as the Sphincter of Ohio. And we're trying like heck to get these locals to fork up enough cash to pay for a new high school, with the state kicking in more than $9 million—a one-time offer. Now, who wouldn't want to live here knowing all this about us? Tell me.

Revealing Our Strengths

2011-10-24T07:44:00.002-04:00

As afraid as I am of spiders, my fear of real poverty tops it. I'm not talking about living on a budget, eating out less or skipping vacations several years in a row. I know how to do that. The kitchen in our first apartment was a renovated walk-in closet with a one-piece oven/sink/mini-fridge unit that looked like Lucile Ball could have used it in black and white. I drove a 1978 Datsun that was given to us as a gift—in 1985. The finish had worn off, and I had to have it tuned up once a month or so (remember when you had to do that to cars?) because it would stall every time I came to a stop. Try driving in New Jersey under those conditions. And we ate Meatless Mondays (and a few other days of the week) before Meatless Mondays were cool.

I have a particular memory—in the heat of the summer, we had one window air conditioner that we installed in the bedroom, and we would sit at the foot of the bed eating our spaghetti and watching our tiny black and white TV with the cat, Franklin Roosevelt, sitting beside us waiting to lick the sauce from the plates.

No, I'm afraid of being so poor I can't afford food at all, or shelter or transportation or shoes or health care. I was raised on stories of life during the Great Depression, and we had some pretty lean years of our own in the Wells house. My mother tried to keep the details of our strained finances between she and our father, but I remember one hard winter when she hung her head and said, "I just don't know if we're going to make it." That moment has stayed with me.

So, in an effort to assuage my own fear and to inspire the rest of you, here is today's column for Small Town Newspaper.

Astro Puppy

2011-10-18T09:57:00.002-04:00

Bringing a puppy into the house has created a dilemma. Well, it's not so much a dilemma as it is a question that needs answering—Where to take the dog to pee and poo. We have a fenced-in yard, but the space within the fence is filled with swimming pool, which is surrounded by brick patio. That isn't conducive to potty training, and we don't want to take the dog for a walk every time he has to do his business, so we designated a section of planter for that sort of thing.

At one end of the patio, there were small evergreens, but Husband thought they were ugly and had them removed, so I turned the space into a small and untended herb garden, filling the space with sage, oregano, parsley and thyme. And there was a lavender bush and some petunias there as well.

Then came the puppy. He ran and played and plowed through and soiled so that you wouldn't want to use the herbs even to look at, even if you could find a seemingly untainted leaf. If I were to snip some sage for the stew, we would never know if that was the leaf he had peed on or pooped on or tramped on with his big, dirty paws after peeing and pooping.

So, I decided to completely sacrifice the space to Baxter, and I suggested covering the whole area with Astro-turf. I had seen the fake grass used for a dog run on an HGTV show and thought it might work. The space is 4 x 20, but 4 x 15 is a standard size grass rug, so that's what we ordered.

Following manufacturer's instructions, we installed it this way—we started by digging out a few inches of soil and hauling it away. We tamped down the remaining soil with a heavy tamper thing, rolled out a sheet of weed blocking material, spread a layer of gravel dust, tamped the gravel dust, rolled out the turf, trimmed it to fit, pinned it with landscaper pins, spread out a layer of sand and swept the sand into the grass. Voila. A dog toilet.

It took several hours, and we were both a little ailing. Husband had a pain in his side as if he had broken a rib, and I have unhappy knees when climbing hills, but we did the job ourselves. When I say "we," I mean WE. I helped with the shoveling and the hauling and the spreading and the tamping. I did most of the tamping, in fact, because of Husband's rib or whatever, and I did the sweeping for the same reason.

I'm not one for hard labor, but I don't mind getting dirty, so it was sort of enjoyable. My father would have been proud. At the end of the project, we thought about how sore we'd be the next day, but it was a job well done. And the best part is that Baxter actually uses the place to do his business. Granted, he was a little hesitant for the No. 2 task, but he's adjusting.

Hero Wanted

2011-10-17T08:23:00.000-04:00

For a full week after Steve Jobs died, my Facebook newsfeed was filled with tributes from people who either loved Mac products or admired the man's work ethic or were moved by his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. I was about to link to that speech, but seriously, it was quoted so many times I'm surprised you don't have it memorized by now.

One of Husband's brothers works at a Mac store in Chicago, and he posted some moving photos of the store front that week—people had plastered the window/walls with Post-It notes like tiny sympathy cards. You couldn't turn on the television without some kind of news coverage about Jobs or the speech or the history of Apple. But then one day one of my more cynical Facebook friends called Uncle. And her comment inspired today's column in Small Town Newspaper.

We need a hero, and more than one who innovates and creates, we need one who cures cancer.

Creepy Crawly—In Its Place

2011-10-13T22:36:00.002-04:00

Lately, I feel as though I ran the zoo, even though I have just two animals. I need the dog to go out, but the cat tries to squeeze through and dart out the door while the dog stands by and watches. I grab the cat with one hand and snag the dog's collar with the other and shift them to their rightful places—the cat inside and the dog going potty. Today, they both got out, and the dog chased the cat, and the cat ran up the hill where I couldn't get to him. And then he slid under the fence and took off through the neighborhood where he roamed for at least 30 minutes. I just wanted to sit down.

Along with the mammals I seem to have some creepy crawlies to watch as well, spiders that have camped out in my yard. Actually, last night I walked out onto the enclosed back porch and was startled by a big, meaty, black spider that was meandering across the floor. He didn't seem startled by my gasp and "holy crap" outburst, but he was startled when I turned my empty glass over his fat body and trapped him in his spot. He spent the night there, and Husband killed him this morning. I felt he was too big to squish. The job would have required a mop up.

But back to my yard, there is a whole host of funnel spiders that scurry when I approach their weird funnel webs, and one that hangs from the bottom of the garage door when I open it, and there are your typical non-threatening small spiders you'd expect to find in the window sill. And then there is this—look closely between the green trees:

This big mother (I'm not being vulgar here. Really, I think she's laying eggs) has spun one heck of a sturdy web between two of our evergreens. The thing withstands wind and rain and cold and heat, and this spider is here on duty day after day. From what I can tell, this is an orb weaver spider, a biter under threat but not dangerous. To give you an idea of the size of this spider, the body is about the size of a shelled peanut, and the leg span is the size of a half-dollar. Big.

Not dangerous, the Internet says, but it makes my skin scrawl. As an exercise in tolerance, I check on it every day, sometimes several times a day. I stand as close as I can to this web and watch the spider form its work and tend to its food. I swear she writes words in this knitted wonder, something like "Some Pig" I believe I saw the other day. You can see some of her scrawling just below her left leg.

Spiders are unsettling to me, but the thing I can stand about this one is that it has its place. It rests in this spot and never leaves. Should I go to the web some day and find it empty, that's when I'll be freaked, because if the thing isn't in its place, then where might it be? On my back porch? In my shoes? Crawling on my neck while I sleep?

A place for everything and everything in its place. This spider has its place, and I have mine. As long as those two things don't intersect, we'll all be fine.

A Small Tribute

2011-10-10T10:01:00.001-04:00

...to the man who led the way for font geeks everywhere.

I am one of those font geeks, or at least I used to be. There was a time when I could spot a font on a bill board or on a package and name it within seconds, and WYSIWYG was my favorite tool of all the tools on my Big Mac. (If you don't know what WYSIWYG means, you aren't a font geek).

I am a little rusty with my font identification skills because I have been out of practice, but I love the shapes of letters and how they relate to each other, and I am fascinated with the history of font development and how personally some people take their fonts. There is a story floating around about a man who developed a font years and years ago, and it was so dear to him that when he quit using it, he threw the plates off of a bridge so that his creation would die with him. It's that serious.

So, here is my private tribute to Steve Jobs and how he effected fonts and font development and font geekdom forever.

Macintosh Forever

2011-10-08T19:47:00.001-04:00

I am a Mac fan, as are most graphics types. The big computers are easy to use and powerful, and Adobe products absolutely sing on them—Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator.... Not that those amazing applications don't also work well on PCs, but they were designed with the Mac platform in mind.

In 1990, I got my first computer for graphics, and all I remember is that it was a PC with a black-and-white monitor. I learned on the thing and created four-color projects on it, but then I was given what was considered an upgrade, a Mac with a color monitor so that I could actually tell if my catalog text was the green I had hoped it would be or if the photograph next to it was sepia or color or grayscale or what.

At some point, we bought a small family Mac that the kids used for games, and we loaded it with some great things, like Thinking Things, an Atlas game and Power Pete, the best computer game of all time. Unfortunately, Power Pete hasn't been updated since the mid-90s and isn't around anymore. What a pity.

After 21 years of graphics work, I still love my Mac, although now I work on a monumental iMac with a 27-inch screen, and I've got all the other Mac stuff to go with it. And Husband has been converted to Machood as well, so the entire house is Macloaded.

I don't really have a point here, except to say that Steve Jobs and the teams he has assembled over the years have made some great computers and computer-like products, and I will forever be a fan of them and an admirer of Jobs' ability to think big and follow through. It's a rare soul that can do both of those things so well.

What Have We Done?

2011-10-03T11:34:00.000-04:00

For some people, life is a mixed bag, and they think about various things in any one 24-hour period. They have ideas and form opinions and keep up with current events. They keep in touch with friends and call their mother. But me...I'm all about this dog.

It won't always be this way, I'm sure of it. He'll get beyond this very-needy puppy stage, and I can get back to normal life. Although it may be a new normal. Until then, here all I think about—what I have written in today's edition of Small Town Newspaper.

This Is What My Life Has Become

2011-09-30T14:12:00.001-04:00

Who knew that adding a puppy to the mix would make life so complicated? People with puppies, I guess, but we had no idea. Specifically, I had no idea that my entire day would have to revolve around the digestive cycle of the puppy. I keep thinking that once he’s house trained, life will become easier, but in the mean time, I’m tired.

I took a break with the Wyrd Sisters Tuesday evening, and when I got home, Husband announced that Baxter seemed to have diarrhea. Good night. So, I took Baxter out one more time before bedtime and then tucked him into his crate for the night. The next morning, I got up around 6:15 (the time he goes out for his first pee) and found the little guy caked in poop. I mean snout to tail tip. He had blown up in the crate a few times in the night but didn’t make a peep, so we didn’t know there was a problem. I carefully took him out to take care of business and then wrapped him a towel; and then I carried him straight up the stairs, dropped in the tub and scrubbed him down.

As I washed him, I kept thinking of the instructions to knowing when a roasted chicken is done. When you prick the bird, you know it's cooked when the juices run clear. I washed the dog until the water going down the drain was poop-free. Holy Mary Mother of Sorrows (the actual name of a church No. 1 and I found while hiking once).

I followed the advice of a Facebook friend—which I verified on the Internet and with my vet—and began feeding Baxter one tablespoon of canned pumpkin now and then. It’s the miracle food for dogs and keeps them regular, they say. He did much better during the day.

The next morning, however, was only slightly better than the morning before, so another early bath. You’d think we would have learned our lesson, but no. Finally, the vet gave me a bottle of pills that will clear the little guy right up, but last night, I learned. Every three hours, one of us took him out for a poop/pee visit, and now today, I’m just tired. Tired, I tell ya.

I took the dog on two walks today so far, and now he's asleep in his clean and sanitized crate. I should be sleeping, too, but I think I'll play my horn instead. Or read. Or call my mother. Or one of the other things I haven't been doing because my entire day revolves around the digestive cycle of the puppy.

More Cooking On the Fly

2011-09-27T09:14:00.001-04:00

This slop doesn't look so appetizing I'm afraid, but believe me when I say it's tasty, tasty enough to save the left overs for lunch the next day, which is saying something. We throw out our share of mediocre food. I came up with this concoction in another round of cooking with what was on hand and without a recipe.

I had bought packaged tortellini and Niman Ranch sweet Italian sausage with the idea of making tortellini soup, but I decided to go another direction with the ingredients. I started with a medium sauce pan where I poured some olive oil and then added about a cup of diced onion. After the onions were soft, I added two cloves of minced garlic, and 30 second later, I added a healthy splash of Chardonnay. I let that simmer a minute until the wine began to evaporate, and then I added two medium cans of diced tomatoes, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, sugar. While that simmered, I boiled the tortellini and grated a bowl full of Parmesan.

When the pasta was ready, I drained it and stirred in enough mascarpone to make it creamy, then the sausage and most of the sauce and the Parmesan. I baked it at 375˚ for 20 minutes and dished it up, perfect for a rainy evening in September. I enjoyed it so much, I really am eagerly anticipating lunch time today.

I don't know what it is about the coming-on of fall and chilly temperatures and gray skies, but the change of seasons makes me inclined to curl up in the cozy den with a bowl of hot food, sit wrapped in a blanket and pull on some cozy socks. I get the blanket and the socks, actually, but it's the drive for comfort food that puzzles me. Maybe there is a speck of the brain left over from our prehistoric ancestors that says "get ready to hunker down for the winter," and like a bear, I prepare for hibernation.

Whatever the cause, this tomato-y, sausage-spiked pasta dish did the trick.

Cooking on the Fly

2011-09-26T15:54:00.001-04:00

I have a column in today's edition of Small Town Newspaper, but I don't care about that at the moment. At the moment, I care about cooking instead, specifically cooking without a book, or cooking on the fly. I don't do that very often because I have favorite recipes and favorite recipe writers I like to follow, but this weekend, I cooked by my wits.

The one non-negotiable ingredient was tilapia because that's what I had in the fridge. I put that on the counter and then started pulling out things to go with it—Roma tomatoes, shallots, celery, lemons, butter. Upon looking at the stash, I remembered a little ditty I learned years ago before I knew much about cooking. There was a commercial about foil, probably Reynolds Wrap, that gave instructions in rhyme for simple cooking. I don't recall the exact wording, but it went something like this:

Turn the oven to 4-5-0h
not long. 15 minutes or so.

And that was it. The idea is you place fish or boneless chicken breast on a sheet of foil big enough to turn into a pouch, and you top it with stuff, seal the foil and bake at 450˚ for about 15 minutes. Dinner done. So, I turned the oven to 4-5-oh and got to work. I put the fish on the center of a piece of foil and dusted it with a combination of paprika, onion powder, oregano, basil, thyme, salt, pepper. Then I topped it with about a tablespoon of butter cut into four pieces. Then I added diced tomato, celery and shallot and sliced lemon. I added a little Chardonnay to help with the steaming process and added another layer of salt and pepper. While the fish was in the oven, I cooked a pot of risotto throwing in some diced leek and some of the paprika mixture and using simmered wine and broth.

The fish in foil looked like this before it baked:

And it looked like this served on the plate with the rice. Yum.

And because I can't help myself, here is Baxter. He likes sticks:

I'm Searching for An Honest Coffee

2011-09-22T09:01:00.002-04:00

In our house, coffee reigns. It must be dark, rich and flavorful—and black. Not brown. Not the color of tea. Not the color of stump water. Black. So, when our coffee maker started disappointing us every morning, and we started drinking the coffee it made purely out of obligation, I decided to take steps to fix the problem.

I bought a Keurig Special Edition and a couple of boxes of the strongest K-cups my grocery store offered–that would be an Italian roast marked "bold." The machine comes with a sample box of cups, so I used one for the test run, and I got what I was afraid I'd get, which is a cup of what looked like coffee but what tasted like hot water. I know someone who drinks a cup of hot water in the evenings, and I'm telling you she would have enjoyed this.

So, for the next cup I used the Italian roast, and it was somewhat better, although when I asked Husband if he liked the coffee, he said, "Is that what that was?" We'll just have to keep trying here, because I know there are lots of K-cup brands out there, and maybe, just maybe there is one that tasted like coffee and not like some weak imitation. If there isn't, then I have spent $149 on something that might prove completely useless in this house, the House of Coffee. It may only be used to make tea or hot chocolate, although why would I add a piece of plastic to the floating island of flotsam in the Pacific for a cup of tea or hot chocolate? I know you're probably thinking, but she's willing to add a piece of plastic to the floating island for a cup of coffee? You bet.* (honestly, I do have a problem with that, and I question a new product that doesn't take waste into consideration, but I got sucked in)

I'm not giving up yet. I'll keep carrying my lantern in daylight in search of an honest coffee.

Well, now, since our house is also the House of Baxter, here is today's shot. He isn't house trained just yet, even though he's on a schedule, and I keep taking him out to his potty spot, we spend a lot of time outside. If I stayed in with him and watched his every move, I wouldn't get a single thing done. While I sit at the patio table working on columns and newsletter articles and whatnot, he sits beside me and wipes his wet snout on my pants and chews—on everything. Good puppy.

*UPDATE: I just found these at Amazon—refillable cups for Keurig. Genius.

International Women's Friendship Month

2011-09-20T08:12:00.000-04:00

My weekly column was in yesterday's edition of Small Town Newspaper as always, but I was focused on introducing Baxter, so I didn't point to it. I'll do that now—

Here is my column about International Women's Friendship Month. It's more about my friendships, and not really anything about the fact a sorority started this focus a few years ago and how it has gone international. Who cares about them, really, and how the thing got started?

I have men friends who are as important to me as the women I love, and I can say just about the same thing about them as I can say about the women, but they don't fit into the category this month. Just so they know and don't feel slighted. Actually, that's not likely, is it? Women are always so concerned about how each other feels, but it seems to me most men wouldn't feel slighted at all.

And on a different note, here is the Baxter Photo of the Day. Yesterday was exhausting, trying to figure out the puppy thing, and by bedtime, he was as tired as we were.

Meet Baxter

2011-09-19T07:50:00.003-04:00

The House of Cats has a puppy. That’s the short of it, and now here’s the longer version.

Husband and I have been talking about getting a dog forquite a while, but if you recall my stories of Big Mike the Cat, you’llrecognize why bringing a dog into the house of a neurotic feline might not havebeen a good idea. After Mike went to sleep this past January, I startedthinking a dog might be OK. Husband wasn’t so sure, but in recent weeks, herethought the idea.

He has allergies, so I started looking for the kind of dogthat is good for someone with allergies. Poodles fit that description, but wearen’t fond of poodles. They seem too prissy for us. And that’s when I thoughtof a goldendoodle, a cross between a golden retriever and a poodle. They havethe temperament of a retriever and something like the coat of a poodle. Theyhave the bulky body type of a retriever and the graceful stride of a poodle aswell. All in all, they’re good mutts.

I found a breeder about an hour from home, a family whoseretriever was ready to give up her first litter of puppies, and we snagged thelast one. We call him Baxter. I’m pretty sure Tiger calls him Dumb Ass, buthe’s tolerant and only hisses when the floppy puppy goes for the cat’s tail. Atthe moment, Baxter is a cute little guy who fits nicely in our arms, but he’sexpected to grow into a whopping 75-pound dog. Given his disposition, I’mafraid he’s still going to want to fit nicely in our arms when he’s full grown.It’s going to take the two of us to hold him.

At the moment, adding a puppy to the house has turned mypreviously leisurely existence into one of full-time zookeeper. Husband isdoing plenty to take care of Baxter and his early training, but already I amgoing from mess to mess and using wads of paper towels at a time to clean upcat puke and then puppy pee and then cat puke and puppy poo. You take the puppyout, and the cat tries to squeeze through the door. You put the cat back in,and the puppy follows him, and then you have to start over.

Baxter has a crate he seems to feel comfortable in, and itserves as a playpen when the baby animal needs a break—or when the parents ofthe baby animal need a break—but he is not yet house trained. We’re working onit, although we’re having trouble reading the signs. I’ve read that if a puppysniffs the floor and wanders the room, you can assume he’s looking for just theright spot, but this little guy doesn’t give us more than a 30-second leadtime. He sniffs and pees before we can get him to the door. Apparently, thereis a large learning curve, and it’s not just the puppy that has lots of lessonsto learn.

We’re learning about which chew toys are good and which arebad—rawhide is not so good—and how often a goldendoodle needs to bebrushed—every day—and what to do when he whines in his crate—let him whine.

I’ll keep you posted about who learns what fastest. Rightnow, it feels like nap time.

More Bittman on Beer

2011-09-15T09:47:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned the other day, I'm on a beer kick, specifically cooking with beer. I have made a pot of cheese fondue with Guiness, Mark Bittman's wheat bread, Bittman's cheese and cauliflower soup, and now Bittman's carnitas braised in wheat beer.

Husband says nobody likes pork, but I know that's not true, and I know that pork braised in beer can only be good, don't you think? Or I should say, don't you know that, too? Pork shoulder is the cut of meat you use to make a good southern barbecue, and you cook it all day long so it's tender and flavorful and shreddable. So, when Bittman said to use pork shoulder for carnitas, I said OK.

You don't cook the meat whole—you cut it into bite-sized pieces, which lets you cook it for just one hour instead of eight or nine, but here's what I learned about cutting pork shoulder into little pieces—1) cutting a hunk of meat up like that is enough to make a person a vegetarian. 2) I need sharper knives.

I finally finished the unpleasant task of pork cutting and went from there with the recipe. While the meat simmered in wheat beer, I made a batch of pico de gallo—a mix of diced Roma tomatoes, diced red onion, cilantro, a splash of lime, some olive oil and salt and pepper. And I sauteed some sweet corn in a skillet until it was almost charred. The house smelled terrific, and I couldn't wait for dinner. Heat some flour tortillas in the oven, assemble the ingredients in them like little pockets, and yum! Husband thought the cheese soup from the day before made for a "pleasant" meal but didn't care for this dish. I loved it.

I didn't take a picture of the stuff, which didn't quite look like Bittman's version you can see here, but here is the recipe. Enjoy.

2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large onion, quartered
5 garlic cloves, lightly crushed
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 cinnamon stick
1 ancho or other mild dried chili
Salt and black pepper
2 12-ounce bottles Allagash white, or another beer in the Belgian witbier (wheat beer) style, like Hoegaarden

1. Put the pork, onion, garlic, bay leaves, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, chili and some salt and pepper in a large pot with a lid or a Dutch oven. Add the beer and water if needed to cover. Turn the heat to high, bring to a boil and skim any foam that comes to the surface. Partly cover and adjust the heat so the mixture bubbles steadily. Cook until the meat is quite tender, about 1 hour, then cool.
2. Remove the bay leaves, spices and chili with a slotted spoon and discard. Break or roughly chop the meat into bite-size pieces, return to the pan and cook uncovered until all the liquid has evaporated. Continue to cook the meat in the remaining fat until it’s crisped and browned; add a little oil if it sticks or becomes dry. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature with the lime wedges, or cover and refrigerate for up to 2 days.

Ale and Cheese Soup

2011-09-13T08:33:00.000-04:00

I've been in a beer mood lately. I'm not a big beer drinker and would normally prefer a buttery Chardonnay or a crisp pinot to the stuff, but just lately I have opted for a cold bottle of something or other. With my limited exposure to different kinds of beer and different brands, I can say my favorite is Great Lakes beer—Eliot Ness, Edmund Fitzgerald, Oktoberfest. The other day, though, my grocery store was offering samples of Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale. The 25-cent swig wasn't bad, so I bought a six-pack to share with my neighbor who has a basement refrigerator filled with different kinds of beer. I get the impression she's a bit of a connoisseur.

With this brew-focus guiding me, I was drawn to a recent New York Times article by Mark Bittman about cooking with beer, and one of the recipes he suggested is Ale, Cheddar and Cauliflower Soup, so I made that for Sunday's lunch and served it with shrimp and lobster salad sandwiches. The combination was nice, but on its own, I think the soup could have more punch. The next time I make this, I may choose different kinds of cheese like Gruyere mixed with the cheddar, or maybe some creamy Havarti. Here, I used half sharp yellow and half sharp white cheddar. I also used a Belgian white ale because I couldn't find dark ale where I was shopping—that might have affected the flavor, but in my ignorance, I can't say for sure. See what you think.

2 tablespoons butter
4 ounces bacon, chopped, optional
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 medium celery rib, chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic
Salt and black pepper
1 small cauliflower, cored and chopped
2 12-ounce bottles Brooklyn Local 2, Westmalle Dubbel or another beer in the Belgian dark-abbey-ale style
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1 bay leafPinch of cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon mustard
8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, grated
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Chopped fresh cilantro or chives for garnish.

1. Put the butter in a large pot over medium heat. When it melts, add the bacon (if you’re using it) and cook until it begins to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic and some salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes.

2. Add the cauliflower, beer, stock, bay leaf and cayenne. Bring to a boil, then adjust the heat so the mixture bubbles steadily; cover and cook until the cauliflower is very tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove and discard the bay leaf. Stir in the mustard, and purée the soup with an immersion blender or semi-purée it with a potato masher.

3. Toss together the cheddar and cornstarch. Add the cheese mixture to the soup a handful at a time, stirring all the while, until it’s well incorporated and the soup is smooth. Serve hot, garnished with the herb.

Lascaux Cave Paintings

2011-09-12T09:15:00.000-04:00

Today is the anniversary of the discovery of the Lascaux cave in France, and I think that's worth calling attention to, so I've written my column for Small Town Newspaper on the subject. You can read it here.

There are plenty of papers and discussions arguing whether or not these paintings are art or simply drawings, so let me chime in with what I think. This is art. There are such subtle techniques in these paintings of animals and geometric shapes, with thought put into color and style. There is air brushing and stamping and painting done with animal-hair brushes. And among the 2,000 images, there are different styles to suggest different artists.

The animals display the variations of their natural character, which took time to observe and intentional planning and execution. Antlers on the deer-like animals are varied and even whimsical, and I can't help but think of Dr. Seuss characters when I look at them.

I really doubt the people who painted these cave walls and ceilings 17,000-plus years ago thought about what people today would think about them and their work, and I doubt they thought about ways to preserve the cave for millennia—I might be wrong here—but we have the advantage of hind sight. And we have the ability to preserve our work for future ages. That's the lesson I hope we can learn by studying the Lascaux paintings. Creating and preserving art is worth our time, money and trouble.

9/11

2011-09-11T08:57:00.001-04:00

Where was I ten years ago on September 11? I was at work, designing a cover for a romance book. I don't remember the title of the book or the subject matter, I only remember setting it aside because I couldn't possibly focus on a romance book knowing what was happening in my country. I'm sure I would have had the same reaction no matter the project—it just happened to be a romance book on my schedule that day. I'm guessing all of my coworkers set their work aside as well.

Unaware of what was happening, I took a break from my work and walked down the long hall to the rest room, and as I opened the door, Mary from marketing said she'd heard an airplane had hit the World Trade Center. I envisioned a Cessna losing its way and smacking into the side of one of the towers, and I shrugged. As soon as I got back to my desk, though, I learned this was no two-seater plane.

2001 was a tough year financially, and we had made some cost cuts at work, and cable for the large conference-room TVs was one of the sacrifices. So, we all tuned our radios to news coverage and stood in our office with our hearts in our throats. Husband joined me in my office, with a couple of other people, and we listened to Peter Jennings and Aaron Brown describe unbelievable events.

When we lived in New Jersey, going into the city and going to the top of the World Trade towers was an inexpensive activity, and we did that from time to time. I had a general understanding of the surroundings, and I had those city blocks in my head as reports came in, but I still could not fathom the vastness of destruction. When Brown reported the towers were falling, I pictured them toppling like a downed tree and was horrified.

Aaron, a young guy who worked a few doors down from me, stood just outside my office door and said, "God forgive us for what we're about to do to whoever is responsible for this." At that moment, I wasn't thinking about what we might do in retaliation, not even knowing who was responsible, and I was a little irritated he would choose that one thing to focus on. But in retrospect, his focus was telling.

During our usual lunch hour, Husband and I drove home to watch televised coverage, and we saw what Brown meant when he described the towers falling—a sight that is still unbelievable—and when we went back to work, Husband called a company-wide prayer meeting that was a very solemn event. If you aren't aware—he owns a Christian publishing company, so a prayer meeting was appropriate.

I don't remember if schools were let out early or not, but I do remember driving to the middle school and then the high school to get the girls, and all the teachers were lined up on the sidewalks, which was unusual, and the girls climbed into the car—their teachers had told them what happened, and I think they had wheeled in TVs to each classroom. I had control over so little that day, and I thought all I wanted was to have my children at home. That was the one thing I could control. So, we went home and shut the garage door and sat in the safety of our living room and tried to understand what had happened and why. To this day, I don't understand the mind that plans such an attack and then follows through, emboldened by a sense of righteousness.

New York City and the Pentagon are far away from Small Town, but Flight 93 would have flown directly overhead. As it arced from Cleveland and headed back toward Washington, its path took it over our county before passengers took it down in Pennsylvania. Regardless of geography, though, that day in September made the United States seem very small with every target seeming close to home.

Corn!

2011-09-08T10:06:00.000-04:00

It’s that time of year, time for sweet corn. You know, kneehigh by the Fourth of July and all that. If you aren’t from a corn-growingstate, you might not be familiar with that general rule of thumb that suggestsplanted corn should be knee high by early July.

Ohio had an excessively wet spring this year, so corngrowers were late in planting their fields; and in May, they were nervouslycalculating the millions of dollars they might be losing this season with eachpassing week. In early June, they were finally granted weather grace, and theyscrambled to plant corn.

I can see a corn field from my living room window, and Iremember watching the farmer of that field planting at night by the light ofhis plow’s headlamps. This is the same field where goose hunters gather in thewinter to shoot geese. Early on Sunday mornings, I can hear gunshots, and Iknow to look out and watch for their honking targets to fall fromthe sky. This field offers me a seasonal view of nature in action.

Anyway, corn is plentiful now, although I have no idea howmuch the farmers lost this season, if anything. And sweet corn, in particular,is pretty tasty. I have been buying it a few ears at a time because Husband andI don’t eat more than three ears or so per meal, and I don't can or freeze anything for winter. When I shuck the corn, I remember how my mother taught me to rip thehusks and twist off the silks with minimal motion. And I remember how my fatherscolded me for making a mess. “Why don’t you work over the newspaper?!” he’d whinebecause I scattered debris all over the kitchen counter. He said this when I pealed potatoes, too.

I also remember my mother’s fried corn, which is really morelike sautéed corn, but in old-school Southern cooking, everything is fried, and if it isn’t, youcalled it fried. There is no written recipe for this technique of cookingcorn—it goes like this: stand a clean ear of corn in a deep bowl and slice offa layer of kernels, rotating the ear as you work around it and avoiding getting too close to the cob. You don't want whole kernels here. Go back for anothercut and work closer to the cob. Then from bottom to top, scrape the cob with the edge of the knife to releasethe “milk.” In a skillet, melt a ton of butter. Really, I don’t think you canhave too much—I made this for a dinner party the other night, and I used astick and a half for ten ears of corn. Add all the corn from the bowl and stir insalt and plenty of freshly ground pepper. Simmer it all over medium to lowheat, stirring frequently, for at least 20 minutes until the corn is tender.

After the dinner party, I had a lot of corn left over, solast night, I used it to make sweet corn pudding, modifying a recipe fromepicurious.com. It was great—as Husband said, it tasted just like candy. Here’show it goes:

4 cups leftover sauteed corn (or frozen corn, but yuck)
4 large eggs
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup whole milk
6 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, room temperature
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 8x8x2-inch glass baking dish. Ina large bowl, whisk together all ingredients but the corn, then stir in thecorn. Pour mixture into prepared dish. Bake pudding until brown and center isjust set, about 45 minutes.

Wait, Summer! Don't Go Yet!

2011-09-07T09:06:00.000-04:00

I have always said this—
I love the change of seasons.
And I mean it.
But just now I am clinging to Summer
by its ankles as it pivots toward the door
and leaves the room.
Wait! Don't go yet!
I call as I tighten my grip around its shin bone,
and it pulls me across the floor,
bunching up the summer rug beneath me,
the green grass, snapdragons and sprawled out oregano now in folds.
It's about to drag me through
crunchy leaves and spiked acorns and withering herbs.
So I plant my feet flatly against the door frame,
knees locked and jaw set,
as Summer shrugs and shakes me off
with a fling of its foot.
And empty handed, I reach out with splayed fingers,
and I shout one last time,
Wait! Not yet!
Just one more day.

Last week, Ohio experienced one of the hottest days of the summer, and then the next day we woke up to autumn with fall temperatures and rain and cloudy skies, and the forecast for the forseable future seems destined to plow straight ahead with no looking back.

My orchestra's outdoor Labor Day concert has been canceled, my swimming pool ripples without a soul to plunge into it and I've begun to wear scarves and socks again. And shoes. It was just a couple of weeks ago that I lamented I would soon have to start wearing shoes again. Well, the time has come to lace them up or slip them on, and there's not a thing I can do to stop it.

Last night, Husband and I and a couple of friends did one last summer thing—we went to an Indians game in Cleveland—and we wore jackets and scarves and long pants as we sat in the chilly lake-effected night breeze. It looked like this—a farewell to Summer.

Welcome Home, Jim Thome

2011-09-05T15:42:00.002-04:00

I grew up watching the Chicago Cubs on WGN, but I never paid attention to the games. My mother was the avid fan in the house, the avid fan of just about any professional or college sport, in fact—football, boxing, basketball, baseball. We even watched roller derby, although I may have been the only one camped out in front of the set for that one.

As an adult, the only sport I watch on TV with any real interest is baseball, particularly the Cleveland Indians, although once a Cubs fan, always a Cubs fan. That's one connection that cannot be strained by geography. A few years ago, we spent the summer seated right behind home plate, and while Husband and No. 1 followed every pitch and base hit, and while Eustacia and I ate candy and watched people, I became familiar with the players. I also became enamored with the ball park with all of its sights and smells and sounds, the rhythm of the cheering as related to the action on the field like a giant wave or excited outburst or corporate sigh of disappointment.

I like that people know to turn their ball caps inside out when cheering for a rally, or that they applaud a pitcher who is relieved of his duties after a few unfortunate runs, or that, if you attend enough games, you become familiar with the vendors who have established their own particular patter to sell their goods. Even if you're watching at home, you can listen carefully and hear the ones stationed closest to the field—The Beer Guy who will sometimes announce he is indeed not the Pizza Guy, the loud-mouth funny man with the peanuts and Cracker Jacks, the hot dog guy who shames young men for not feeding their dates properly. "Who wants a big ol' hot dog?" he shouts at the top of his lungs.

We don't go to as many games as we used to, but in the interest of my appreciation for baseball in these waning weeks of the season, here is today's column for Small Town Newspaper. I have begun linking to them at Open Salon because they are no longer available online at STN.

The Trout

2011-09-02T12:54:00.004-04:00

Last year, Husband and I bought a new washer and dryer set. After doing some research, we chose Samsung because they ranked highest in customer satisfaction and service, and they look great in the laundry room.

They operate as I expected, but what I didn't expect was the chime that comes at the end of the cycle to tell you the machine has finished. The washer and dryer don't just ding or buzz. They play an entire song that I have come to enjoy so that I don't open the door until the final note. Silly, isn't it?

Maybe it's not so silly. Maybe it's nice to have a machine that does something as daily-chore-like as washing and drying clothes do more than ding. It's nice to have a machine that sings to you, that offers a melody to let you know it's time to fold the clothes. I wouldn't mind if more machines in my house communicated with me through melody.

The washer and dryer play a tune based on Schubert's "The Trout." I'd like it if my oven sang "If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd Have Baked A Cake." My coffee maker could chime "Java Jive." I absolutely hate the Toast Song, but it might be nice if my toaster chimed "Minuet In G" or some sweet tune that would be great to hear first thing in the morning.

This isn't a video of my own machine, but this is the song I hear when I do laundry. It lightens the load.

The Big, Scary Deep End

2011-08-29T08:00:00.003-04:00

My column in today's edition of Small Town Newspaper is about conquering the deep end. You can take that literally or as a metaphor—either way, it works. The piece is here.

When I was a kid, the Knaver family down the street had a swimming pool, an oblong above-ground pool that was probably not more than four or four-and-a-half feet deep. When you're 12, that's pretty deep, but I don't recall being afraid in it. The Knaver girls were relatively generous with their pool and would invite the rest of the neighbor girls to swim, although they learned quickly how to use their pool to their advantage.

One day, after inviting Linda and Kitty who lived next door to swim, the meanest Knaver girl told me I wasn't allowed because her mother didn't like my mother and didn't want me in her yard. That made no sense to me because our mothers had never interacted. There was that one time the same girl, who was sort of chubby, called me "fat" at the bus stop and made fun of the baggy pants my mother had made for me. I wasn't close to being chubby, but I had gained a few pounds the winter before after breaking my arm. I spent a good bit of the winter in a cast and eating Chips Ahoy in front of Gilligan's Island. Well, my mother said next time the girl made fun of my pants, I should reply, "Well, they wouldn't be baggy if YOU were wearing them." I never had the nerve to say that, though, so I don't think that was the problem.

In retaliation for the Knaver girls' manipulation, or maybe just out of sheer mischievousness, the rest of us would wait until they were out of town, then stand in their front yard where their crab apple trees dropped the duds and hurl crab apples over the roof into the backyard. You would throw the rotting apples and wait for the splash, and then you knew you had done it right. Then you would run off and giggle as you imagined the Knavers returning home to a pool full of bobbing apples.

Anyway, back to swimming. We all spent many summer afternoons in that shady pool, with the rest of the girls swimming and me just paddling around with floaties or just floating on my own. They would try to teach me to swim, but I was too afraid to put my face in the water. A sister of mine once suggested the fear might be a form of claustrophobia, which makes sense at this age, but isn't childhood a little early to develop that kind of neurosis?

By the time I learned to swim, as described in the column, we had all outgrown the Knavers' pool, and maybe they had taken it down by then anyway. Who knows. Either way, I now know how to swim, and I am now no longer afraid of the deep end, even when standing on the diving board to take a picture of the drain at the bottom.

OK, maybe I'm still a little afraid. I'm not quite ready to dive in.

The End of That

2011-08-25T08:46:00.005-04:00

For the past three years, I have volunteered as a tutor for Even Start, a family literacy program that operated with federal funds, but the program is folding this week because Congress eliminated it back in the spring as part of the Continuing Resolution. Based on a study done several years ago that revealed some of Even Start's flaws, they determined it was a failure and not worth the $66.5 million we put into it annually (our local program operated on just $13o,000 annually). No one with a Yay vote stopped to consider that vast improvements were made to the program because of that early study, and there was no current study to show how effective the new and improved Even Start program had become, but it was a target, and that was that.

There are other literacy programs around, but none of them, at least none of them locally, provides transportation and childcare for needy people who wouldn't otherwise be able to get an education. These are people who made bad decisions as teenagers and are now trying to repair the damage and people who risked their lives to travel to America because we are the land of dreams. So, now the students of Even Start, and their children who were taught in their own classes while their parents studied, have no way to even get a GED.

I volunteered as a reader in the morning class, which was an ESL class for Hispanic immigrants. On a typical day, we had about 15 students—mostly women and mostly from Guatemala, although we had two or three men as well and people from Mexico and Puerto Rico. I was continually impressed with how hard they worked against the odds—working nights and taking care of little kids and still determined to learn English. Some of them were grossly undereducated even in their own language, so we worked on math and history and art and music and pinpointed spots on a world map. We even talked about the nature of the moon—no, it doesn't emit light of its own.

Yesterday, these ESL students wanted to thank the teachers and volunteers for all of our help, so they hosted a big lunch with their best dishes we had come to love—flautas, empenadas, tinga, rice, roasted tomato salsa...and we sat around eating and talking and laughing and crying.

One of the students I had grown closest to talked about how shy she was when she entered the program, and how she hardly knew any English. She had only had four years of school as a girl in her village, so she was starting from scratch, not just learning a new language. Now she is so advanced, she serves as an interpreter for the newer students, and she reads almost fluently. Her children are all in public school, and they are at the top of their classes and excelling in every subject because she said Even Start has helped her teach them the value of education. She started to cry as she talked to us and then the rest of us couldn't help but join her. The poor director who had worked so hard to replace funding had to leave the room because she felt she had failed. She certainly had not, but we were all feeling a combination of sorrow, anger, guilt and frustration.

As I looked around the room at these people who, on the surface may seem a drain on public funds, but in reality contribute to a strong social fabric America really, really needs, I felt so ashamed of my country. We talk a big game about being the best nation on earth, but look at who we discard? We take our neediest people and toss them aside, and all because we refuse to tighten loopholes in the tax code or to reverse the temporary tax cuts given to them during the Bush years. These people we're abandoning want to contribute to society. They want to be self-sufficient, and they work harder than anyone else I know and raise their children with a strong work ethic. It seems to me these are the people who need help now, not the top earners. That's not redistribution of wealth. It's an investment in our future as a nation, and it's being our brother's keeper.

The students gave us each a card, and I was expecting to read their signatures, but they wrote in complete sentences, which made me so proud of them. They said things like, "Thank you for all your help and your patience," "Thank you for helping us. I really enjoyed your history class," and "Thank you so much for your help. I hope I will see you soon again. God bless you." And from the woman I mentioned—"Dear Mrs. Robyn, thank you so much for everything you did with us. I really appreciate your help and patience with us. I'm so happy to meet a person like you. Love, Juana."

My dear Juana, I'm the one who is so happy to have met a person like you.

Well, I don't have $130,000, so today I can only look back at these last three years as a gift. Here is the group on our last day—I'll miss you all, and I'm sorry our priorities are out of line:

State of the Art

2011-08-23T10:42:00.002-04:00

I was twiddling my thumbs one day when Conductor Eric suggested I might be useful in promoting the Tuscarawas Philharmonic, the local orchestra (its link is in the sidebar). So, I thought about some options and decided what this group needs is a newsletter. I did some digging and discovered it didn't have one, and possibly never had one in its 75 years, although I can't confirm that.

Every organization has a news letter these days because email and websites have made them cheap to produce. You can print them and mail them, but you aren't locked into that format, so why not go all out and keep people posted. I have this idea that connecting with fans and supporters and musicians and board members outside of concert performances might strengthen the sense of community of the group. And talking in detail about what goes on behind the scenes and offering insight into programming and personnel might strengthen the interest of people on the fringes.

I talked to people about the idea and polished up the design and gave it all a name—State of the Art. After a few weeks with no thumb twiddling whatsoever, the first issue was sent out just this past weekend. For now, the plan is to release an issue a week or so before each concert, and we've got six concerts scheduled between now and next June, but we'll have to be flexible there. This sort of thing will evolve as its purpose is refined and as its audience responds.

In the meantime, here you go—

State of the Art Issue One—August 2011

Happy Birthday, Claude!

2011-08-22T15:36:00.002-04:00

For today's column in Small Town Newspaper, I wrote about the birthday of Claude Debussy and what his music has meant to me over the years. You can read it here—I'd be honored.

In it, I talked about La Cathedrale Engloutie, a piano piece I first learned in high school when I took lessons from the eccentric Mr. Stevesand, a bachelor with frazzled hair and dirty glasses who lived up on a hill with two cats who ate out of pans left sitting on the stove. Those are the things I remember most about the man, those and that he claimed to have difficult playing complex music because his fingers had grown so large. He was a big man, that Mr. Stevesand.

The Cathedrale piece has crazy chords that require you to play two notes with one finger because there are so many notes to cover—six or seven with one hand, even. I would sit at our piano in the living room, and on days when my mother had reached her nutty limit, I would pound as hard as I could on those chords. Very satisfying, if not hostile.

I remember one night coming home from a marching band trip and being completely exhausted. I had spent all day on a stinky bus and just wanted to take a shower and go to sleep. But when I walked in the front door, I discovered my Aunt Bunny and Uncle Kenneth visiting from California. I had not seen them in years, and they happened to be passing through. My aunt was an accomplished pianist, and my mother insisted I play for her. I told them all I was just so tired, I couldn't begin to play anything with any reasonable skill, but she insisted and insisted some more and then picked up Cathedrale. It was all I could do to see the page, but I tried, and I made such a mess of the thing that I gave up after a couple of pages and apologized to my relatives. That's when my aunt smiled and said she had played that piece for her senior recital, and it had always meant a great deal to her. Well, then double apologies to poor Aunt Bunny.

Anyway, it's a new era, and now I play Cathedrale and other things for my own private enjoyment. Maybe somebody I'll clean the thing up a bit and play it here.

Something New

2011-08-18T08:03:00.005-04:00

I did something new yesterday.

Alliance, Ohio has a symphony orchestra, and I filled in for an unwell horn player in its most recent concert. We performed at a park in Alliance as part of its annual Carnation Festival—the town is known as Carnation City.

There is actually an interesting story behind that designation—in the 1860s, a doctor in Alliance who grew red carnations in his greenhouse ran for a congressional seat against his friend William McKinley. Before each debate, he gave McKinley one of his carnations, and McKinley wore them all the way to the White House. Now, every year on his birthday, red carnations are placed in the hands of a McKinley statue in Columbus.

Well, back to the concert. This town is about an hour from Small Town, I know because it's where I used to go for horn lessons, and I had the route emblazoned in my brain. Still, for this fill-in concert, I often found myself showing up ridiculously early for rehearsals and even the concert—more on that later. To keep myself amused, I took pictures with my iPhone and then played with them on my Instagram app.

Here is one I took of the empty rehearsal stage:

And here is one of a collection of ladders out of sight from the potential audience:

And here is me playing with pictures at the park before the concert:

So, about this showing up early business. When I first began playing horn in groups of experienced musicians, I would work myself into a froth before each event, no matter how friendly and unthreatening it all was. To me, it was all one big threat to my well-being, my self-esteem, my delicate psyche.

I have outgrown most of that, recognizing that the experience of playing with other people actually did amazing things for my well-being, my self-esteem, my delicate psyche. But here is what I still do—I over-compensate when making sure I don't arrive late. I leave my house way too early and end up sitting in the empty auditorium waiting for everyone else to arrive, taking pictures and playing Boggle. I don't do that with the local group, but I apparently do it outside of that comfortable homeland orchestra.

I also obsess over the preparation. When you get your music ahead of a rehearsal, the envelope also contains an information sheet with the personnel list, the program list, times and dates for rehearsals, time and date of the concert and instructions for what and what not to wear at show time. Locally, we aren't allowed to wear perfume or cologne, which is reasonable; and women are instructed not to wear flashy jewelry, and the manager suggests that we wear pearls instead, because everyone has pearls, she says. To that, I say make me. But regardless, I read through this list of instructions, and then I read through it again, and again. And after I am dressed and on the road headed to the concert, I will sometimes have to peek at the information sheet just to make sure I've got it right. Nuts, huh?

Well, nuts or not, I did something new. I didn't work myself into a froth over it. And I dressed appropriately.

Combat Paper Project

2011-08-16T10:50:00.002-04:00

As usual my column appeared in yesterday's edition of Small Town Newspaper—you can read it here, if you want.

I found the site, Combat Paper Project while nosing around the Internet a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it was worthy of some local attention. Plus, it put me in mind of the homemade paper projects my girls and I used to do when they were younger and how we took useless trash and turned it into one-of-kind things I think were beautiful. I still have a collection of the paper they made.

We had a couple of small kits with framed screens and blotting paper, and on slow days, the girls would take off and let their imaginations go wild with paper. They would rip up scrap paper and throw it in a blender and then add other things—herbs, flowers, lavender from the back yard, ribbon, bits of rope, you name it. Then they would blend it all into a slurry, pour it into a tray, dip in the screen, and pull out something entirely new.

You can let the new paper air dry, or you can microwave it—I think the Combat Paper people actually bake it. And then you have fascinating little pieces of paper. Before the stuff dries completely, you can press molds into it for embossing, or you can stick in other things to give it added texture. Then when you're finished, you hold up your creation and say, "look what I made?"

There is a sense of pride in making things, and I can only imagine that sense is intensified when you know you've taken the thing that haunts you and turned it into something that graces the room instead. There are insurance commercials floating around these days with the line, "take the scary out of life." Even though I have never been in combat and don't begin to equate my troubles with those of a soldier with PTSD, I have taken on this line as a personal challenge, and I can see how making paper from a combat uniform would go a little way in doing the same—turning army-issue clothes into art takes the scary out of life, doesn't it?

500 Words—Jean and the Cafe

2011-08-15T09:29:00.003-04:00

The 500 Words game has been revived, monitored by Dive at Small Glass Planet. This month's story is based on the photo here:

Jean turned the corner and stepped down gingerly from the curb, letting his stronger knee bear the weight before allowing his age-worn one to manage the cobblestones. He winced in anticipation as he took the next step, but today seemed a good day, and he crossed the street to the café without any more strain than warranted a few winded groans.

It was early, and the shops were just opening. A few grazers cased the fruit stand, one or two aimed for the bread shop and Jean set his course for one of the empty tables on the sidewalk. He set his jacket down in an empty chair and eased into the one beside it, and he exhaled with the sound of a man with weary bones.

When the server delivered his croissant and coffee, he watched how adept she was at holding the silver tray with one hand, and how she kept it perfectly level without a sign of trembling. “I’d have that thing listing south like a steam ship,” he thought.

“Thank you, dear,” he said, and with a shaky hand, he dipped a knife in the jam and spread it on the bread. He dropped a rock of sugar into his cup, dribbled in some cream and stirred. The rattling the spoon made against the ceramic launched him backward to when his hand was as steady as the hand of any fresh-faced kid, when he was full of the future.

There was a time when Jean could stir cream into anything with the smoothness of light, and the custard he produced was the best of all the cafés on the block. He turned raw ingredients into delectable treats that people stood in line just to sample, and each bite was an indulgence.

Every single layer of his opera cake touched the tongue with pleasure. Each bite of his profiteroles melted as quickly as the cream inside them. And a taste of his apple tart was like home on a cold evening in February.

Jean ran a tight pastry kitchen, and he was proud of his craft. “You’re not making dessert here,” he’d say to his apprentices. “You’re forming bite-sized pieces of art, and if you form them well, you’ll have the entire village lining up at your door.” “People know the difference between a strawberry tart made with no feeling and one made with the art and soul of a craftsman,” he would say. And if a boy who didn’t mind his advice set emotionless tarts into the pastry case, Jean would ship him off to a competitor. “Go make your slop under someone else’s shop sign, then.”

Jean took a bite of the croissant and watched as just enough flaky crumbs fell to the plate. There was nothing worse than a croissant that collapsed like a paper crane, and this one was done well. He leaned back and slurped from his cup, and he let out a satisfied sigh. Art is a good croissant, he thought.

A Quiet Week

2011-08-12T09:38:00.003-04:00

Well, it's been a quiet week in...

I feel as though I should begin this post with the opening line from a Lake Wobegon story even though I don't have a snapshot tale to tell you about what has happened in Small Town this week. It's just been a quiet week here.

Husband has been visiting No. 1 in Berkeley this week, tidying up a kitchen remodeling project we've been managing long distance and spending time with the kid. All reports suggest they're having a nice time, even though the kid will sometimes resort to answering her father in Arabic, a language he does not speak. I can imagine that eventually feels like your child is mocking you in Pig Latin, but I'm sure they're working things out. When Husband embarked on this trip, he said he would approach it like a personal vacation.

So, I'm approaching my time alone at home as a personal vacation as well. True, I don't have a stressful job to breakaway from, or any job for that matter, but a break from the usual routine is good for the soul—and the brain and the creative energy and anything else that needs a rest.

I have bought what seems like a boat load of groceries for just one person, but I haven't been cooking the usual sort of meals every evening. I have made a mediocre batch of mac and cheese, chicken salad, marinara, shrimp with lime, watermelon salad...stuff like that. I don't follow a clock-determine schedule, and I don't shush the cat when he incessantly meows at the door the way he does when he wants to go outside to eat grass and then come back in to vomit all over the floor. If Husband should read this post, he will be happy to know that I have been careful not to leave the porch door open in the heat of the day so I'm not air-conditioning the whole outdoors. What do you think, we're made of money?

So, what have I been doing all week? First, I signed up to be a substitute horn player for one concert with a community orchestra about an hour from Small Town, and I've been to two rehearsal. The Wyrd Sisters brought what we called Bar in A Bag over here one evening, and we sat outside by the pool drinking vodka gimlets and eating shrimp and hummus. It was a wonderful evening of giggling and talking in circles. Not one of us is a linear thinker, it turns out, although we claim circle-processing at varying degrees.

I hosted a small orchestra planning lunch yesterday with the manager of the local farm market, and I made soba noodles and roasted salmon which we enjoyed with assorted bottles of beer, so that was something. I baked a small batch of cookies, I read, I did laundry, I star gazed, I vacuumed the pool, I swam in the pool, I skimmed the pool, I emptied the skimmer basket of the pool after a crazy storm that nearly tore my patio umbrella right out of its stand, I gazed at the pool....I could go on about the pool.

I had Big Fat Summer Band rehearsal one evening, the last one of the season, which is sad, and I played my best given my brain seems to be fully engaged in vacation mode. That means that in the middle of a 2/4 series of measures, I would start counting in 4/4, or on a page full of three flats, I would suddenly forget about the flatted A. I never missed an offbeat though, well, except for that once. That's unfortunate, but by concert time this coming Saturday, I'll be primed, I'm sure.

And that's about it. So, it has indeed been a quiet week in Small Town, and I have enjoyed every minute of it.

Happy Blog Birthday!

2011-08-08T07:56:00.003-04:00

Hey, its my blog birthday! Happy birthday to Just Sayin’, born mostly of curiosity but long-lived because I can’t figure out how to quit.

On August 6, 2006 I finished reading a couple of blogs I had discovered, and I thought I might like to give this odd hobby a try. It is like a hobby, isn’t it? I mean what else would you call something you do almost every day solely for the purpose of amusement and creativity? Well, sometimes my blog posts are creative, although I’ll admit to writing filler posts like everyone else does from time to time. I remember that Post Something Every Day for the Month of November business (I know that wasn’t the name of it, but it’s all I’ve got on hand), and I posted small watercolor paintings on some days just to participate.

I have incorporated some Photoshop skills in my posts, like the series of cat photos melded with historic imagery, or like the photos of book-mobiles modified to represent far-flung ideas I had for traveling businesses. I’ve written some short fiction, played with some memes, recorded me at the piano, shown paintings I’ve done, shared recipes that I loved and let you see my cats in action (long live Big Mike).

And all the while, people actually read and commented. There was a time when my corner of Blogville was thriving, but then came Facebook, which robbed me of some neighbors. And then came my own malaise when it came to reading other blogs and commenting on other posts, so it serves me right that Just Sayin’ has become strung with cobwebs from neglect.

After five years and over 64,000 hits, I wonder about the end of Just Sayin’. I wonder when I’ll write my final post and what will lead me to decide it will be my last. I have considered ending the thing over the last several months, but then someone new will decide to follow me, or I’ll think of something I’d like to say or show, or I’ll feel inclined to be more neighborly with the remaining bloggers and the new ones who appear.

About those 64,000-plus hits—this seems like a lot to me, but there are blogs that get that much in one day, and it has taken me five whole years to get there. And these days, a lot of those hits are from people from around the world searching on Google for Angela Anaconda or Trail bologna or a recipe for Johnny Marzetti, and they never return. I can only sigh at those hits.

So, Just Sayin’ will continue living in Blogville for now, on the corner of Blah Blah Blah and Scout. Thank you to everyone who has graced my front stoop with your visit.

A Short Weekend At Short North

2011-08-07T16:44:00.004-04:00

We know a woman who organizes friends like she's sorting flatware in the kitchen drawer, and it's a good thing. She sometimes organizes us into pleasant events, choosing destinations and making reservations on our behalf, which was the case this weekend,

Husband and I, and three other couples, met in Columbus for Gallery Hop, a monthly event in the Short North, which is a trendy area in Columbus. That section of High Street is now filled with shops and galleries, restaurants, cafes and bars. The first Saturday of the month, the street is also filled with tons of people, street musicians, activists with petitions to sign and a few Harikrishnas.

We spent Saturday night at the 50 Lincoln Bed & Breakfast, a big house just a few short blocks from High Street. The place was big enough to accommodate us all, plus a group of about eight women. We had private rooms and baths, and we shared a comfortable living room and had the run of the kitchen. There was a guest refrigerator filled with wine, cheese and fruit, and we could all help ourselves any time. Breakfast was served in the shared dining room, and it was just lovely—bacon, blueberry pancakes, coffee cake, fruit, juice, coffee.

We had dinner at Rigsby's Kitchen, a great place just a short walk from the B&B. The server was a sort of caricature, and he was very good at what he does. He brought us great meals—arctic char with black rice and oranges for me—but we skipped dessert in exchange of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream. I'll explain.

I first heard about Jeni's when No. 1 lived in Columbus. She called one day to describe the serving of cucumber ice cream she had had, and she raved about every flavor on the changing menu. Turns out there was a Jeni's just down the street from our restaurant, so we decided to go there for a taste of something wonderful. First, we went to several galleries and gift shops and generally roamed around, and then we cross the street to discover the line for Jeni's was out the door, around the corner and down the street. It's that good.

Some of us were perplexed as to why we would wait in a long line just for ice cream, but the rest of us stuck to our guns and got some of the best ice cream I've ever tasted. I ordered two small scoops—one of dark chocolate and one of black coffee. Ohmygoodnesswhatacombination! Next time I'm in Columbus and get a chance to stop at Jeni's, I might order the pear and reisling sorbet. Doesn't that sound wonderful? If you don't follow my links to the B&B and restaurant, at least follow the one to Jeni's and watch the video on the home page.

So, it was a great weekend away. People should do this more often. Maybe if we all had friends who organized us like forks and spoons, we would.

Something To Do

2011-08-06T09:04:00.002-04:00

"And you thought you wouldn't have anything to do." That's what a friend said to me yesterday when I told him how I had spent my day. He was referring to a conversation we had had a few months ago when I was facing a future of watching day-time TV, knitting at noon and becoming one of those women whose lives revolves around working out at the Y and getting regular pedicures. I was preferring a lobotomy in my worrying.

But here's what happens when you see the future and don't like the potential, or lack of potential, you see. You change it.

My tutoring gig for Latins has dissolved because Congress cut our funding; and except for my weekly columns, the newspaper writing has dissolved because the publisher has squeezed the budget to eliminate people like me. My children have moved out, my needy mother lives hundreds of miles away, and here I sit. The idea of getting a job isn't unreasonable, but I wonder what sort of job I could get with no degree and in a small town with few options. Plus, I wonder about the fairness of taking a job so I don't feel bored during the day when there are plenty of people around here who need that job so they and their children can eat.

So, I proposed an idea to Conductor Eric from the local orchestra. How about I launch a newsletter to be sent to the orchestra mailing list to encourage a tighter community of supporters and to keep everyone informed between concerts—I am organized, I can design, I can write, and I'd like to put all those abilities to good use. The idea took off, and after a series of meetings with the promotional people and board president, here I am about to launch the first issue. It will be sent out in a couple of weeks, and I'll link to it after that. I can see this becoming like a job minus the paycheck with lots of thought going into the contents and then lots of time going into gathering the contents.

Beyond that, you really just can't tell what's going to come your way, and yesterday was full. A friend who teaches high school percussionists asked me to create a T-shirt these boys had roughly sketched out. A friend who sells musical instruments to schools asked me to create an ad for a band show program. The orchestra is planning ahead for a festival next May, and I worked on the logo to go with the promotional material. I haven't spent so much time in my office, sitting at my big Mac computer with Adobe applications since my days as a bookcover designer.

And, with the help of some friends, I'm stewing an idea and letting it simmer for flavor. What do you think of this—a monthly meeting of people who gather to learn and create and express. Each meeting would include an artistic element like the reading of a poem or prose and/or a musical performance, possibly the viewing of a particularly well-done short film, a presentation by a guest speaker and discussion following, and then some snacky things and wine. We have some interesting people around here who would make great guests—an advocate for Hispanic immigrants who serves as interpreter in court and in daily life, an artist who runs the local art center (she could lead us in a hands-on project), the founder of the local farm market, a retired English teacher who plays guitar...there would be few rules, beyond no politics or religion...there would be room to let the event evolve over time...We're thinking of this as a mini-Chautauqua Institute.

So, there is plenty to do out there, outside the front door. You just have to go looking for it and make it happen.

The Weird Sisters and High School Friends

2011-07-31T19:37:00.003-04:00

I am a part of a small group of women who meets once a week for cocktails, a specialty of our host, and snacks and talking. We sit around the table in the dark on the deck, and we speak openly about whatever comes to mind, with the understanding that what’s said at that table does not leave that table. So, you will never hear me spill on my sisters.

“Sisters” is a good term for the four of us. A friend of mine, a man who hasn’t attended one of these cocktail hours, called us the Weird Sisters after Shakespeares’s three witches in MacBeth, or maybe after the Wyrd Sisters in the Terry Pratchett Discworld series. Either way, we’ve taken on the name, and the Weird Sisters are a weekly event.

The other evening, I was telling the others about how I was always one of the boys in high school. I didn’t have a lot of friends in my teenage years, but I seemed to have friends who were boys, although not necessarily boy friends. Even if I were dating a specific boy, I still spent time with boys who were friends.

A specific event came to mind to demonstrate for them—I was at home with my parents one evening when I was about 15, and I was getting ready for bed when a car drove down my street and honked at the mailbox. And then boys shouted, “Hey, Wells!” which is what they called me, Wells being my maiden name. Boys do that to girls who they see as one of them, I think. It was my understanding that if they liked a girl as a potential date, they would address her by her first name, and gently. But for me, it was “Hey, Wells!” Sigh.

I hadn’t changed into my jammies yet, so I ran out to the mailbox in the dark because I knew who was causing a disturbance in the otherwise quiet neighborhood, three friends from marching band. They were all funny and nice and decent kids who meant no harm by honking and yelling late at night. They were just out for a drive and thought they’d stop by. It didn’t occur to them to park in the driveway and respectfully knock on the door, greet my parents and see if I could talk for a few minutes.

They parked the car right in the street, and we sat on the hood and laughed and talked and laughed some more, sort of like the Weird Sisters. The whole time, my father kept peering out through his bedroom window, thoroughly disgusted with his daughter’s behavior. The notion that one of his own would just go trotting out to the street in the dark just because some boys stopped by. And three of them. Three of them, mind you, and all up to no good.

I have such clear memories of that evening because it struck my father as exceptionally inappropriate, and I heard about it until the next day at dinner when I had to hear about it all over again. Three of them! And they just honked and stood right out there in the middle of the street, with you laughing and carrying on for all the neighbors to see! Don’t you care what the neighbors think of you?! You better care! I’ll give you something to care about!

Well, as chance would have it, one of those boys, now full-grown, is a new Facebook friend of mine, and I’ve learned he occasionally reads my humble blog. I wonder if he remembers that evening, although I doubt it. His father didn’t give him the what for afterward.

Book Review—Every Last One

2011-07-30T11:16:00.002-04:00

I have just finished reading Anna Quindlen’s Every Last One, and this may prove to be one of those novels that haunts me from here on out. You know, there are some stories that stay with you for a week or so until you begin reading something else, and there are others that embed themselves in some neuron in your brain, and you relive their plot lines or remember the most memorable scenes years after turning the last page.

For me, Cold Mountain is like that, and The Grapes of Wrath, A Time To Kill and Slaughterhouse Five. There are others, I’m sure, but those are the top picks at the moment—maybe some of my neurons are sluggish today.

And now Every Last One can take its rightful place in my internal library.

I read the book on the recommendation of my sister-in-law, who said that just when I would feel like giving up on the thing, something shocking would happen. Boy, was she right. My little paperback copy has 300 pages of actual story (never mind the reading notes—you shouldn’t need notes to read a novel, I say), and I was well into the first 100 pages when I was yawning. Turning the page and reading and turning the next one and saying all right already.

I would have given up had it not been for the promise of some climactic moment that would assure I’d not want to put the book down. And then, on page 108, it happened. I won’t tell you what, exactly, although as the story builds, you’ll probably guess on some level. It was at that moment that I understood the structure of this remarkable story.

100-plus pages of seemingly benign character descriptions, with details of everyday dialogue and descriptions of everyday activities, might seem excessive, but this story needs you to be invested in the characters, to feel as if you really know them and would miss them if they were gone. Had the pivotal action happened on page 25, you wouldn’t care so much. You would wonder about the legal ramifications or expect a televised trial or some form of justice, but you wouldn’t feel any real emotion beyond curiosity.

But because Quindlen was allowed to indulge in her character development, you are likely to react audibly when bad things happen to these people you’ve come to know. At least, that’s what I did. I reacted out loud and set the book down and stood up from my reading chair. “Holy……!” And then I quickly sat down again and went right back to reading to find out what happened next.

Good for Quindlen for weaving a story that makes one person care about another, even if that other person is fictional. I firmly believe no character is truly fictional because he or she is always based on someone actually living, or the reader can connect with the character as someone remarkably real.

And good for Quindlen’s agent and editor, whoever they may be, for allowing her to write a book that doesn’t grab the reader with action on page 1. I would love to have heard their earliest discussions on the manuscript, and I believe Quindlen wouldn’t have gotten far if she had not already been known as a successful author. Agents typically ask for just the first 30 pages of a book or even just a query letter with no actual text at all. How can you possibly know if a book is worth the trouble based solely on a query letter?

Imagine an agent receiving 30 pages of blabbity blabbity and thinking, “hey, this story is gripping. Sign her up.” Let this book, now firmly placed on my mental bookshelf, be a lesson to impatient agents and publishers. Sometimes a story needs time to build.

And One Thing Leads to Another

2011-07-28T10:15:00.004-04:00

It happened like this.

I was sitting in my living room chair this morning, finishing the first cup of coffee for the day and thinking through an email when the door bell rang. I considered not answering it. I was still in my pyjamas and hadn't showered so my hair was a little like Alfalfa's in the early years, not in the "It's A Wonderful Life" years. But then I remembered that just yesterday I had made an appointment with the appraiser to be here at 9:00ish. I could not send this person away, and I had no choice but to answer the door as is.

I let this stranger into my home and laughed, explaining I had forgotten he was coming and was still in my PJs. Please excuse me. The guy was good-natured about it and laughed right along with me, and he explained he would need some time to measure the main floor and the basement, so I had plenty of time to run upstairs and get dressed. Phew.

While I was upstairs, I tidied up our bedroom a little and opened the shades so the appraiser wouldn't feel as though he were walking into a cave, and I ran back downstairs in a more presentable state. I was put back in my place when the guy looked at me and laughed all over again, but there you go.

After the appraiser left, I went back upstairs to shower, and that's when I noticed the dust on the bedroom floor. I wouldn't have seen it had I not raised the shades and let in a little light. So, I got out the Swiffer duster thing, the one with the low-powered vacuum feature, and I cleaned the floor. It only took a few minutes, but that's all it takes to throw out the back of someone with a sciatica issue. I have one of those, and by the time I had put the sweeper back in the closet, my left hip had seized, and I was leaning decidedly to the right.

I hurt, just a little, but just enough to know that I need to nip this in the bud right now before it blossoms into a raging, wincing, paralyzing, please amputate my ailing parts now! situation. The stretches a chiropractor once gave me help, so I've done those, and I've relaxed my breathing, which can help as well. And I carefully made my way down the stairs one at a time and positioned myself in the dining room chair, the one with the soft seat cushion but the hard back. That helps, too.

And here I sit. And here I'll stay until I'm assured I won't end up screaming for traction if I get up. And here I am wondering, why is it that some self-medicating practices are acceptable, and some aren't.

The last time this happened, I needed a muscle relaxer more than anything, but I didn't have those around the house and didn't want to make an appointment with the doctor who would have me sitting uncomfortably in his waiting room for an hour, and then another 30 minutes in the examination room, just to get a prescription, so I had a glass of wine instead. And then another and another until my muscles were unclenched, and I was pain free. Of course, I was also a little schnockered, and my neighbor made me play the piano to see how a drunk person can handle Claire de Lune (not well, really).

If my back thing gets worse instead of better, I'll consider having wine at mid-day, as much as it takes to cure the ill, but a lot of people I know would think that's a bad thing. You shouldn't do that. These same people wouldn't judge me for swallowing a pill that would have the same effect as a few glasses of wine, though, and there lies my question. Why is it OK to relax your muscles and your mind with a synthetic pill your doctor gives you but frowned upon to, at noon, relax your muscles and your mind with something potable made from grapes? It's natural, it's handy and it tastes great.

I'll ponder this question if I'm unable to tame the spasm, but for now, here I sit. And all because I forgot I had made an appointment with an appraiser.

Band in the Rain, or How the West Was Won

2011-07-24T09:21:00.005-04:00

Last night, the Big Fat Summer Band performed a concert, our Road Show, we call it. Instead of playing at the park where we play most of our concerts, or in the street where Small Town holds its festivals, we travel ten miles west to play in Sugarcreek, also known as The Little Switzerland of Ohio. The buildings on the main streets are dressed up with gingerbread and small details that mimic a stereotype of a Swiss village. The town has a Swiss festival every year where cheese makers compete for Best Cheese prizes, little girls dress up in traditional Swiss dresses to march in a parade and burly men throw 138-pound stones in the Steintossen competition.

There is a picnic shelter behind the fire station, and we set up in front of that to face the audience perched up on the hillside. The fire fighters pop popcorn in a portable thing and sell soft-serve ice cream while we play, and the church next door hosts what they call a Haystack Meal before hand, so you can load up on carbs before you sit in the heat and blast away at loud band music. "Haystack," by the way, refers to the appearance of the food—noodles, potatoes and corn piled high on a plate and topped off with Fritos and possibly gravy.

But there was a glitch yesterday. Ohio was nearly blown over by a series of storms that dumped rain and shot blasts of wind strong enough to blow over patio umbrellas if you didn't think ahead and close them. Our power went out at one point, and the thunder was so loud, the windows of my house actually rattled, sending Tiger the Cat running for cover.

It didn't look good for an outdoor concert, but obedient and committed band member that I am, I dressed in my band shirt and black pants anyway, grabbed my horn and music stand and "hit the road." Seriously, I think this concert is closer to my house than the park, when you factor in traffic and stop lights. I arrived at the picnic shelter and discovered we would be playing under its roof instead of beside it. We put our chairs at one end and aimed at the audience that would be seated at the other. While we were setting up, one of the horn players beside me counted all of 38 people who had come out to listen to us play (there are 90 people in the band), and all we could do was shrug. A concert is a concert, and you can't just pack up and go home because you aren't pleased with the numbers.

But then the sun came out, sort of, and the rain stopped, and the air cooled by almost 20 degrees, and more than 100 people appeared. That's still a sad number, but horns up anyway. We played our hearts out for this little crowd, and with the exception of some funky things in Holts' "Jupiter," we did very well. For some concerts, it seems the only reason to have a horn section is for it play off beats or to double up on the trombone parts, but this one had some great horn lines to sink our teeth into—Jupiter, How the West Was Won, an arrangement of a hymn written in honor of Flight 93, America the Beautiful. There were only four of us, but we let it rip, and it was so much fun. So Much Fun! Good music. Enthusiastic applause. The smell of fresh popcorn. An entire horn section hitting the high B-flats and standing up afterward to say "you're welcome."

If you live in Sugarcreek and didn't show up for our Road Show because you were afraid you'd get wet, your loss is all I can say.

Just so you understand why How the West Was Won is so fun for horn players, here you go:

What Music Can Do

2011-07-22T08:37:00.003-04:00

Ohio is one of the states caught in what's being called The Heat Dome. We're swimming in waves of exhausting heat and humidity, although it feels more like trudging than swimming. You walk outside, and suddenly your muscles can't seem to move your bones as limberly as they had moved them when you were inside, and each step becomes a deliberate act. I will step once with the left, and then once with the right and so on until I reach the mailbox. If you tried to swim like that, you'd sink to the bottom like the bag of bones you are.

Last night was band practice night. All week, I had dreaded going because we meet in a middle school band room that is not air-conditioned. The band is up to 90 people now, and even with the double doors opened and the ceiling fans going at full tilt, sitting in that packed room is like sitting on the edge of a boiling cauldron and waiting to be shoved in.

The horns sit in front of the trombones who occasionally fling spit when they play moving parts, and it's evident not all of those men use deodorant. They tell jokes between songs and laugh into their mouthpieces to create this hyena-like wail that sets my nerves on edge. Granted, sometimes they're funny, but I try not to let them hear me laughing because I don't want to encourage them.

Last night, I was counting the minutes on the clock before I could remove myself from the effects of the trombone section. We were all sitting in pools of sweat and valve spit, playing the high B-flats in How the West Was Won without revealing our weakened dispositions, holding our noses against the locker-room stench, and I swear if I hear that hyena cackle in my ear one more time, why I'm gonna......!

But then something surprising and beautiful happened. We took a break from the program we will be playing this coming Saturday and played through a piece we'll perform for the Italian-American festival that's coming up–it's a big deal in Small Town. Our resident baritone stepped forward and asked us to pull up "Avant de Quitter ces Lieux," Valentin's aria from Faust.

The transition was like this—picture a football field full of monstrous football players, all stewing in their own sweat and grunting and farting and scratching themselves in places your grandmother would not approve of. Then flip a switch and picture them all as a delicate flock of birds flying together as one unit, rising and falling with the whimsy of the wind.

The baritone explained the gist of the song—Valentin is going to war, but he is concerned there will be no one to protect his sister while he is away. His hope lies in a sacred medallion he carries with him, and he prays that if he should die in battle that he would be allowed to watch over his beloved sister from Heaven. The soloist began to sing in such tones, restraining the power behind them. And the horn part was like the horn parts you get when you play with the orchestra—soft whole notes and half notes that accompany the cellos, but this time, you're bolstering the soloist, humming base-clef E-flats that feel so great to settle in on.

There was nothing difficult about my part, or anything interesting as far as rhythms and melody lines go, but I could actually hear myself play, and what I played seemed to matter. It was all so wonderful, for about five minutes at least, and I had to dab a dewy eye.

Here is a translation of the opening lines of the song:

O, holy medal
Which comes to me from my sister,
On the day of battle,
To guard against death
Stay on my heart.

Of course, I didn't understand these words at the time because I don't speak Italian, but I was moved as if I knew the meaning of the words. And that, Blogville, is what music can do. It can transport you from a cesspool and land you quietly into the heart of a loving and protective brother, more worried for the well-being of his sister than for his own sake and willing to charge into battle if only he has assurance she will be kept from harm.

Here is the aria as performed by Thomas Hampton. Don't listen to just yet, though. Save this for the worst part of your day.

Something Good—Shortbread Cookies

2011-07-19T21:28:00.004-04:00

The other day, Husband and I were walking to our car parked in a parking lot, and a group of young women passed us on their way into a store. One of them suggested they have dinner while they're in town (it's a place with lots of restaurants), and what should they get, she asked? One of her friends said, "Something good." That's the kind of comment that deserves a smack, as far as I'm concerned. Something good? Something good?! How is the driver or the cook or the person generally in charge of food supposed to work with "something good?"

Well, here's something good—lemon-lime basil shortbread cookies. I found the recipe in the July edition of Bon Appétit and set it aside to try. I kept forgetting I had dog-eared the page, but this afternoon, I finally got to make the cookies. The thing is, when I was shopping with this recipe in mind, I forgot I would need lemons and only bought limes. No worries. I just doubled up on the lime zest and used lime juice instead of lemon. They're wonderful. Really wonderful. They are something good.

Lemon-Lime Basil Shortbread Cookies

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar plus more for pressing cookies
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" cubes
2 tablespoons sliced fresh basil leaves
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (or the zest of one lime)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lime zest
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
Sanding sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 375°F. Place flour, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, butter, basil, both zests, lemon juice, and salt in a food processor. Pulse until large, moist clumps form. Measure level tablespoonfuls of dough; roll between your palms to form balls. Place on a large baking sheet, spacing 2" apart. Lightly dust the bottom of a flat measuring cup with powdered sugar and press cookies into 2" rounds, dusting cup bottom with powdered sugar as needed to prevent sticking. Sprinkle tops of cookies with sanding sugar, if using.

Bake until edges are brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack; let cool.

NOTE: The cookies I made were a little smaller than suggested and weren't quite 2 inches, so I baked them for 15 minutes, and they were pretty brown around the edges, as you can see in the photo. If you prefer shortbreads to be pale, keep an eye on the oven. 20 minutes is a long time for little cookies.

Danny Boy's Restaurant Review

2011-07-16T09:40:00.004-04:00

I have thought that if I had the ear of a newspaper editor, any newspaper editor, I'd ask for a restaurant review column, but in a small town, that can be risky. I wouldn't approach the job as a way to promote local restaurants. I'd call them as I see them, and locals can be fiercely devoted to their favorite joints, even if those joints are mediocre. So, no review column, but I can speak freely here.

And today, I would like to speak freely about Danny Boy's. Danny Boy's has only four locations, all in northern Ohio, and Husband and I went to the one in Canton last night. I suggested it because a couple of people have recommended it, and I was driving. The general rule is if you're driving, you're choosing the place for dinner.

The atmosphere. The tag line for the place is "Food, Frank, and Fun," and we didn't get it. What does Frank mean? Then we walked in and discovered Frank means Sinatra. The walls are covered with Sinatra-related memorabilia, including his mug shot from Bergen County, New Jersey (we used to live there); and Sinatra music plays beneath the chatter noise. I particularly like the Columbia Records years, so having Sinatra in the background is a good thing, I think.

The bar is a feature in the layout, and there were some slick (or greasy) characters seated there to give the joint atmosphere. I imagined they were Sinatra's aged cousins who had just driven in from Hoboken. The place doesn't offer sugary concoctions from the bar. In fact, there are no drinks listed on the menu at all. The server said, "We have Pepsi products and a full bar. What can I get you?" I liked that and ordered sangria, which, yes, is a little sugary, but it doesn't come with an umbrella or a hat or microbeads that get stuck in the straw. In fact, you don't even need a straw for sangria.

The service. Our server was delightful, attentive without hovering and pleasant without gushing. She answered our questions and cleared the table as we finished with dishes and replaced drinks in a timely manner. I liked her. The servers wear Danny Boy's T-shirts with phrases printed on the back, and one read "Frank Likes Carbs." I knew we were in trouble when I saw it, which leads me to the menu.

The food. I continue to be dumbfounded by restaurants, especially relatively new ones, that pride themselves on extra fat and extra calories and extra-large portions as if these are characteristics to be proud of. I assumed we would all be aware by now that heart disease is the number one killer in America. We go nuts over AIDS and breast cancer, but it's heart disease that's doing us in, so by all means, let's have more potato chips piled with cheese. And when a couple orders garlic bread with marinara, let's make sure they get enough to feed two families. This happened to a couple at the table beside us–they ordered the mountain of garlic bread and then a large Chicago pizza to split between them and their tiny toddler.

Danny Boy's is all about gigantic portions of slop. We flipped through the menu trying to decide what to order, and when the server stepped up with her pencil ready, Husband pointed to a photo in the appetizer section and asked, "What's this a picture of?" because it was indiscernible. It was Bada Bing Buffalo Chips, potato chips drizzled with buffalo sauce and blue cheese and then baked. We'll take it, that and a small Chicago pizza. We used to live there, too, and nothing beats a real, stuffed Chicago pizza. Nothing.

Seriously, I'm not rigid with a low-fat diet, which is evidenced by the mommy pants I so enjoy wearing, and I can enjoy a good burger as much as the next carnivore, but I was startled when our appetizer arrived. It was a pile of chips the size of a pile of the Rat Pack's empties after an all-night party, and we could barely make a dent in it. Husband has a trick—when he has finished dinner, but it looks like he hasn't eaten very much, he shoves what's left to the edge of the plate to make it look like he has eaten more. We couldn't shove the uneaten chips to the side of the platter without causing an avalanche, so we just had to have the server remove the plate.

Thank goodness we ordered a small pizza. It's 10 inches and six slices, and we boxed up 2 1/2 slices to take home. It was good. I'll give them that. But it's not a Chicago pizza as I know Chicago pizza. I would order it again, if I were to go back to Danny Boy's; and if someone were to ask me for a suggestion should they consider going there, I'd say "get the Chicago pizza." But I'm not sure I would recommend the place to anyone, and I'm not sure I would return anytime soon.

I think KFC is a nasty place to buy food, but once a year or so, I crave a piece or two of extra crispy. I rarely order burgers at fast food places, but now and then, I'll get a Junior Bacon Deluxe at Wendy's instead of a salad. I'll add Danny Boy's to this short list of indulgent food places. Maybe one day next year, we'll be driving around and wondering where to go for dinner, and one of us will say let's go to Danny Boy's for a monstrous serving of gloppy, fatty, vegetable-lacking food piled high on a platter so we can walk away disappointed and feeling in need of a shower and a colon cleanse.

Is that harsh?

Week In Review

2011-07-15T10:46:00.008-04:00

Well, I'm not sure how this happened, but another week has gone by without a fresh post. That wasn't intentional. In fact, every day I would wake up, look at this poor blog and think "I should write something here." And then I would click off to some other site and forget to come back.

So, how has this week been for you? Busy? Productive? (which isn't always the same thing as busy) Happy? Sad? Irritable? Giddy? It's been fine for me.

It kicked off with prime seats for an Indians game in Cleveland—three hours in the blazing sun! I did a little cooking but not too much. I spent some time in the pool, but only once was I in the thing long enough to turn into a prune—my friend, Jane, came over, and we drifted around and talked for a long time. I read a little more of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, although I would have liked some more reading time. I played my horn a little but not nearly enough, and then went to band practice last night where there were only two horns present out of a section of six. That's always a little unsettling, but me and the blond high school kid with the cool shoes did all right for ourselves (I can never remember her name. Starts with an L.) I talked to my mother who moved into an assisted living situation and was relieved to hear her say "I have no complaints." On a couple of occasions, Husband and I sat by the fire pit and stared at the stars while listening to Frank Sinatra. I commandeered the golf cart one evening while Husband was playing nine holes, and I decided I could make a career out of being a golf chauffeur. Is there such a thing, or have I just created a new job in a jobless recovery? I made significant progress in developing a newsletter I'll be producing for the orchestra—time to get to work! A couple of friends came over for lunch one day, and we sat out by the pool and swapped stories. One evening, I met with two women friends, and we sat around sipping margaritas and talked and giggled and even shed a few tears. I designed a T-shirt for the high school marching band and wrote a story for my family website, which you can read here.

And it all culminated with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2. A fellow HP fan and I went to the midnight premiere last night. The film showed in at least three theaters—2D and 3D—and ours (2D) was packed with mostly high school kids but plenty of middle-aged types like ourselves. We had each taken a nap in the afternoon, so we held up pretty well, although this morning, I'm feeling sluggish and will probably doze off at some point today.

So, that's the week in review. This and that here and there. Take a look:

Salmon stuffed with spinach and mascarpone. Yum.

Baseball.

Dementors! Expecto Patronum!

One of Those Days

2011-07-07T10:31:00.005-04:00

Today is our 27th wedding anniversary, and as I said to a friend this morning, we were babies when we were married, which is why we are still so young today—just in case you were trying to factor an age and think we might be pushing toward being elderly.

It's also one of those days when lots of little things must be done, none of them very time consuming, but each of them of value. I'm fighting some kind of sinus thing that makes me want to curl up on the couch and close my eyes, and it makes my teeth hurt, which is an odd sensation, but I'm pretending this thing isn't creeping up on me. Go away, and leave me alone, I'm telling it.

On the list: bake cookies for my children even though they don't live with me anymore, ship some of those cookies, connect with someone about a meeting tomorrow, organize some thoughts about said meeting, send in my weekly column, open and close the garage door in a timely manner because it was painted this morning and can't dry stuck in one position, mail a gift to some new parents, drive Eustacia to her house in Berea, keep my eyes open and sufficient air in my lungs... See what I mean? Not big projects, but a fair-sized list of them.

And there is one more thing on the list—between here and Berea, Eustacia needs to gather photos of odd architecture for an art class. I have just the photograph to add to her collection—this is the main headquarters for Longaberger Baskets in Newark, Ohio. There seems to be a resurgence of giant advertising things like inflatable dinosaur lashed to car dealerships and fiberglass cows to help you spot a dairy. But here's a case where the giant thing is actually the building. Odd indeed.

Our Bravest Patriots

2011-07-04T13:51:00.000-04:00

After a few weeks off, I am back writing my weekly column. I could have written all kinds of sappy patriotism for July 4th and gotten flowery about freedom and flags and God Bless America. But I chose to talk about Band of Brothers instead. Husband and I have just finished watching the series, followed by The Pacific, and there is a striking element that runs through the stories, as well as the interviews that introduce them—throughout the war, the soldiers of World War II might have known the war they were fighting was as just as war can be, but the death that surrounded them became increasingly senseless. A telling scene—as the Americans drive in and the Germans walk out after surrendering, an American perched on an approaching tank screams at the dejected Nazis, saying, "What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives... For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?" With that in mind, here is today's column:

On July 4th, we celebrate our nation’s independence, and we applaud the best of the United States with patriotic zeal. Most Americans will probably spend the day outside or with friends and family, but in honor of today and its meaning, I’d suggest staying inside and watching “Band of Brothers” instead, all 11 hours of it start to finish.

I realize this HBO mini-series is ten years old, and that I’m behind the times in only just recently seeing it, but it’s worth a plug even now. Based on Stephen Ambrose’s book of the same name and produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, “Band of Brothers” tells the story of Easy Company, paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division who landed in Normandy, fought the Battle of the Bulge and liberated at least one concentration camp before Germany surrendered.

Unlike other war stories, the series is not a propaganda film. It relies on first-hand accounts from survivors of some of the worst battles fought in World War II, and the creators made great effort to tell the story as accurately as possible. In fact, some veterans who have watched the series said they had difficulty sitting through it because it was so realistic and brought back such dreadful memories.

I am no soldier—never have been and never will be—so when I watched “Band of Brothers,” I had no reference point for the horror portrayed in each scene. My husband would pop in a DVD, and I would start out sitting comfortably in my chair, ready with a cookie or two and a cup of coffee as if I were about to watch a musical or a game of baseball. But as the scenes progressed, I found myself curling up into an ever-tighter ball, flinching with each mortar attack and grimacing with each ghastly explosion that would take out an entire group of young, frightened soldiers trying desperately just to get off the beach and find cover.

As you follow the main characters, most of them based on actual members of the company, you watch them join up as boys; and by war’s end, they are hardened men, forever marred by what they have seen and done. In one harrowing scene, a calloused soldier offers advice to a still sensitive one about how a soldier functions. “Without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends on it,” he says.

You believe he meant it at that very moment, but what strikes me about this business of functioning as a soldier is how these young men took on the characteristics that would help them survive in battle but kept their eye on the day they could walk away from the whole awful mess. What they wanted most of all was to return home and to live in peace with their humanity intact.

Clouded by ignorance and inexperience, the men of Easy Company were eager while at boot camp and had visions of short campaigns and by-the-book maneuvers; but beginning with their first landing and their first taste of fear and death, they quickly realized that fighting a battle was not quite like training, and there would not be a quick end to their mission.

In “Band of Brothers,” and in its counterpart “The Pacific,” soldiers often scorned those who appeared to relish the job of killing because being bloodthirsty doesn’t make for a good soldier, but banding together for a cause does. “For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” The best soldiers did their jobs out of duty, but they saw no glory in war. They saw no honor in killing another man, even an enemy, and the faces of those enemies they killed haunted them.

The story of Easy Company is a reminder of what war does to flesh-and-bone human beings. The actual paratroopers, now elderly, recall war’s horrors in detail, still tearing up decades after the fact as a testament to the permanent scars they carry.

Independence Day isn’t about glorifying war, but it is about demonstrating our patriotism and praising our bravest patriots. It’s good for us to remember that when our soldiers return from fighting our wars for us, even if they bear no external scars, they will be forever changed because of their sacrifice.

Cricket and the Summer Park Program

2011-07-04T08:53:00.004-04:00

Dive at Small Glass Planet has shown us some photos of and told us about a true English afternoon—a game of cricket, although one that lasted only one day instead of the usual five—and his post put me in mind of a game we played when I was a kid. We called it “cricket,” but it was only loosely based on the real thing.

The elementary school in my town, which later became part of the high school, was adjacent to the town park, a huge place that offered wonders on every square foot, or at least it seemed huge and full of wonders in the eyes of a little girl who had ridden there on the back of her friend’s bike and was eager to play.

The front portion along Morgan Avenue was the playground, and it had all the usual equipment—swings, slides, climbing things, spinning things. There was one slide that was particularly high, and you had to be extra daring to climb the ladder all the way to top and then let yourself slip down the metal slope. Knowing that at some point in history some kid had fallen off the top and nearly died, and knowing that sometimes the slide was roped off with cautionary tape, just made sliding on the giant slide seem that much more dangerous and exciting.

There was also a red gate on a pole at the park. That was it, a red gate with a footrest and a handrail on a pole. You clung to the thing, pushed yourself off and spun and spun in circles, and it was one of my favorite activities on a lazy summer day, or at recess in the second grade, because you could get lost in the whirling and then wobble for a good ten feet after you hopped off.

Behind the pavilions were the ball fields and tennis courts, and there was always a game or a practice going on. In my earlier years of elementary school, we had recess on the playground, and later when I was in high school, our gym class was held on the ball fields. It’s where the sergeant-at-arms-style gym teacher tried to teach us tennis and softball and kickball and archery, and it’s where we wished we could go inside and have a rest.

But in the summer, when we were kids, the park was where we went for the summer program. I’m not sure who hosted it or funded it, but it was a great day program for kids, and it lasted the morning. I didn’t have a bike of my own, so I either walked or rode on the back of some other kid’s bike—remember the days when you could pile onto a bicycle and ride the handlebars or perch on the seat while the other kid stood up in front of you and did the peddling? Ingenious use of limited resources, I'd say.

At the park, we had free time to roam the playground, and spin on the gate, and we had group activities in the pavilion with crafts like making candles out of melted crayons and games like Candy Land and checkers. And we could check out playground balls and badminton rackets and flat bats for what we called “cricket.”

There were two wickets installed permanently in the ground, so I know we didn’t make this up on the fly. One person stood behind each wicket, one stood in front of a wicket as the batter, and one stood in front of the opposing wicket as the pitcher. The aim was to hit the ball with the flat bat and try to send it flying toward the opposing wicket without somehow having the opposition catch the ball first, and at some point, you had to run. The details are a little fuzzy now, but it all made perfect sense then, and “cricket” was one of our favorite games to play.

It’s interesting to me that we arrange for free summer park programs for kids and plan all sorts of activities and give them all kinds of equipment to play, but no one plans this sort of thing for adults. It’s a pity, because I think we’d be a more well-adjusted bunch if we all had something like a red gate on a pole, and we could just get lost in the whirling for a few minutes.

A Whole Week Has Gone By

2011-07-01T08:27:00.007-04:00

Wow, a whole week has gone by with only one blog post. How did that happen. Oh, it must be because my summer version of a schedule—which is to say I have no schedule these days—lacks structure, and I have to create some of my own. I'm pretty good at that, but without the usual routine of the school year, I sort of feel as though I am swinging from a vine and can't quite reach the next tree. Yes, I know I don't have school kids in the house anymore, so the school year shouldn't affect me, but the notion is deeply ingrained, I'm afraid, and I will forever be guided by it.

• So, what's been going on, you wonder? Well for starters, my mother was here for two weeks, so I shut down everything I would normally do—I missed the final two weeks of the ESL program where I volunteer because I felt bad about leaving my mother here by herself, and she wasn't interested in going along. The idea of sitting in a room with the Guatemalans seemed to make her nervous. And I put a hold on my weekly newspaper column because I couldn't find a lengthy enough block of time to form any reasonable thoughts beyond "what's for lunch."

• I started using my swimming pool for something other than a mesmerizing visual and am actually swimming. Call it a form of claustrophobia or inexperience or wimpyness (you wouldn't be the first to call me a wimp, let me tell you), but I am afraid of deep water and of putting my head under water, so swimming is sort of a challenge for me, but I have made progress, I think.

• I learned something—gold jewelry and chlorine are not friends. My fingers are little large for my 27-year-old wedding ring, and I haven't been able to get it off for about a year, or whatever. After being in the pool everyday for over a week, I noticed my ring finger was a little itchy, as if I had been bitten by something, but it got worse, and I finally had to have my ring cut off. The jeweler explained that chlorine eats away at gold, and that chemical reaction left me with a ring-shaped acid burn that will take about a month to heal.

• I've already mentioned this, but Husband and I hosted a big party over the weekend, with about 20 guests all milling around the house, and it was wonderful. I want my house to always be filled with people milling around—eating food they enjoy, having conversations they enjoy, plopping down onto the couch as comfortably as if they were in their own houses. Just don't put your feet on the coffee table—it's new. No, no one put their feet on the table. I'm just saying.

• We went to two weddings in one day but only one reception. There ought to be a cordoned off section for dancing so the DJ isn't bellowing into the ears of everyone sitting at tables happily in conversations because the minute the music starts, all talking stops, and anyone not interested in cramming onto the dance floor goes home. Just a thought. Eustacia was in one of the weddings, the one where her best friend from childhood was the bride. She's the second from the top in this photo.

• I finally got back to writing my column by forcing myself to sit down at the table yesterday and forming cohesive thoughts beyond "what's for lunch," and I learned that at least a few Small Town readers have missed me. They called the paper to ask where I have been. That's nice. I'm back!

• And in the interest of putting my brain to work, I developed a newsletter for the orchestra and am trying desperately to get that off the ground. I still haven't jumped through all the hoops yet, but I'm willing to jump through them in a tutu, if that's what it takes for the idea to fly.

• Other than that, I really can't say what goes on here in this tree-swinging summer I'm having. I sat outside on my patio one afternoon and took these photos, filtered through Instagram. I think they represent the season well. Enjoy our summer.

My patio table top:

My potted tree:

My patio umbrella:

Our Open Door

2011-06-27T09:24:00.003-04:00

We hosted a shindig Friday evening, quite a nice party with just over 20 people milling around the house. I had hoped to be outside on the patio, but of course, it rained; and just as the first guests began to arrive, it poured. It was still nice and possibly even more intimate inside than if we had been seated around the pool with the birds and the white noise from the highway as distraction.

I didn't talk about this party beforehand because it was sort of a mums-the-word affair. The guests were part of a much larger group of associated people with too many for us to accommodate, so we chose just a select few as representatives. Next time, we'll choose a different set and so on, with the intention of being sociable and hospitable with every one. Have you noticed I'm still being sort of secretive about the group? I just don't want to hurt anyone's feelings—I would hate to feel excluded myself, so shhhh.

Because the party was larger than our typical dinner party, and even more had been expected, I opted for a buffet instead of a sit-down meal with traditional courses. I have some standard things on such a menu, things I think I might retire for a while—a pasta salad with pesto and peas, a tomato/feta salad, shrimp with mint pesto. I served those and some newer things, a collection of crostinis topped with a variety of flavors—crab salad with a dill garnish, herbed cream cheese/goat cheese with cucumber and apricot with blue cheese and walnuts. I also served chilled cucumber soup that I would make again. And I had a separate table for dessert—tiny lime curd tarts, chocolate-dipped strawberries, miniature carrot cupcakes and miniature chocolate cupcakes with an orange/butter frosting.

People seemed to enjoy themselves, which always does my heart good. I plan these things as if my life depends on it (and in some way, I suppose it does because I enjoy taking care of people with food and a comfortable chair so much), and with all of that thought and preparation, I always hope that people can walk in and feel welcome right off the bat. With the first hello and may-I-take-your-coat, I want anyone and everyone who walks through our open door to feel at home and be glad they came. Have another cupcake, and have you tried the sangria?

One of my favorite things on the table was the apricot crostini. I loved it so much, I think you should make it and love it, too. I found it at mirassou.com. Mirassou is a California winery that offers some wine-friendly recipes at its website. Here's the stuff—because I was using goat cheese with the cucumber things, I sliced Danish bleu cheese for these, using thin slices so as not to be overwhelming. I think the flavors work well together. Even though the recipe calls for white balsamic, I used a syrupy dark balsamic from Perugia, Italy someone had given me for creating a postcard for them. I may have to see about doing another project for those people because now I'm all out.

2 (15.25-oz.) cans apricot halves, drained and chopped
2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons minced onion
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme, plus additional for garnish
1 cup chevre (may substitute bleu cheese, brie or another soft cheese)
3 tablespoons chopped walnuts, toasted
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Baguette slices

Place the apricots, vinegar, onion and salt in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat for 15 minutes or until mixture is thickened, stirring frequently (reduce heat to low towards the end of the cook time to avoid scorching). Stir in thyme and let cool. *Meanwhile, brush the baguette slices with walnut oil. Place on a baking sheet and broil for 2 to 3 minutes or until lightly browned. To serve, top each baguette slice with ½ tablespoon of cheese (or a thin slice of good bleu cheese) and ½ tablespoon of the apricot mixture. Sprinkle with chopped fresh thyme and toasted walnuts.
Makes 32 appetizers.

*I used a crisp baguette from a local store and chose not to toast it, so I skipped the oil.

Blogville Needs Fresh Blood

2011-06-22T13:06:00.002-04:00

I think Blogville needs some fresh blood, don't you? And I found just the person to step up. Lisa at Oh My Lard write clever bits about illustrations provided by Adrienne, who has her own blog. Both people are smart and funny and worth visiting. Go see, and leave comments.

A Day All My Own

2011-06-21T08:47:00.002-04:00

Let me just start by saying IT’S MY BIRTHDAY. You would think that by the age of 49 this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but I love my birthday. Even if nothing happens, and I receive not a single gift, that’s OK. I don’t need gifts to enjoy my day. I'll make myself happy.

I have had some memorable birthdays. When I turned 12, my sister Myra was married, and I was a bride’s maid in a floral dress and white hat. One year, Husband gave me a Kitten, which I named Theodore Roosevelt. Another year, he gave me a French horn, which I did not name. A few years ago, we went to a James Taylor concert, and I had to stop myself from singing all the words because that's annoying to other people in the audience.

One year ago today, Eustacia and I landed in Bucharest to begin our volunteer adventure at an orphanage, which probably tops the list as being the most memorable. Today, I’ll be making lime curd in preparation for a party (unrelated to my birthday) I’ll be hosting on Friday; and if it doesn’t rain, I might do a little swimming and floating. I think I might also clean the shower and change the sheets on the bed, mop the kitchen floor and create a pro-bono business card for somebody. And I might read—Tender At the Bone by Ruth Reichl—and play my horn, which is feeling neglected and lonely, having been tucked away in its dark case for so long.

My mother has been staying with us for the last weeks, and yesterday she flew back home to Georgia. Before she left, I thought about reminding her that my birthday was coming up, but her short-term memory is basically in the toilet, and I was afraid she’d feel bad about not remembering that fact on her own and about not even sending me a card. She’s excused, I think, but I find myself trying to remember how she celebrated my birthday when I was growing up.
My mother was one to make cakes every Saturday, so I suspect she made one just for me, although I don’t recall specific cakes. I probably got a couple of gifts to unwrap, but the only one that comes to mind is the stuffed dog radio I got the day of Myra’s wedding. I used it to listen to a forbidden AM rock-n-roll station, quietly tuning in at night under a tent I made with my top sheet and quilt. When I was ten or so, she threw me a birthday party and invited my little friends, the only birthday party I have ever been given.

Interesting, I think—I remember so much about my childhood—the clothes I wore and the games I played and the books I read, my teachers and the layout of my school buildings—but I remember so little about my birthdays during those years. Maybe we just didn’t make a big deal out of birthdays, and maybe that’s why I make a big deal privately out of mine now.

Or maybe I just like having a day all my own. There is so little in life that we can each call all our own, that we don’t share in some way with people, either by choice or by force. Today is the day, and it’s all mine. That’s enough, and I don’t even mind using it to mop the floor.

The photo up above was taken just after I turned one. We were still living in a nasty, old rented house in Trinity, Alabama at the time. My mother says that house, owned by my slum-landlord great aunt Lillian, didn’t have a consistent water source inside, so I was given a bath in a metal tub in the back yard, surrounded by cotton fields and cows. Clearly, I didn’t mind the humble circumstances. Apparently, I didn’t need a big-deal birthday back then either, just a day, all my own, in an old metal tub. Happy birthday to me.

Cornbread, The Bread of Youth

2011-06-15T15:02:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago, while my family was scurrying around in my mother's garage preparing for her estate sale, my mother told us there was a stash of old iron skillets under the stove in the kitchen. We were to go look them over and each take one home if we wanted to. They were the kind you hope your new iron skillet becomes, crusted from years of use and so seasoned, you hardly have to add food to make a meal. I'm exaggerating, of course, but we each remembered these old pans from our childhood, and we each took one.

There were round skillets of different sizes, and there was one divided into wedge shapes for scone-shaped corn bread—this pan used to belong to our grandmother, and my sister and I remember finding a rat's nest made from snake skin in it when we were visiting once—and there was one with wells shaped like ears of corn. My mother used to make corn sticks with this pan when I was a little girl, and I remember eating them like candy, crispy on the outside and grainy and delicious on the inside.

Yesterday while we were making dinner, I ran across the corn stick pan in my cabinet and got so excited. Let's make corn sticks to go with the roasted chicken and sauteed corn and peppers! And my mother looked at me like I had gone over the edge of the sanity plane. What's the big deal about corn sticks, anyway? I made them for years, and there's nothing to it.

My mother is beyond stringing together those phrases, I'm afraid, but she isn't beyond saying them with her facial expression. I was determined. I got out the ingredients to make corn bread, following the recipe on the Aunt Jemima corn meal package, and baked them in time to be served with dinner. They only take 15 minutes in this wonderful old pan, so you don't have to wait long.

I have to confess, I was disappointed. My mother ate hers quietly and didn't complain, but when I suggested they didn't taste as good as hers used to, she smiled knowingly. I think there is a difference between the corn meal we use in Yankeeland and the corn meal my mother used. I will have to find a new source for the meal. In the mean time, here is the recipe she used to follow when she bothered to follow a recipe at all.

Cornbread

Some recipes call for bacon drippings instead of shortening, but my mother thinks bacon drippings are too greasy, and it can hold other flavors you might not want in your cornbread. She also said it’s important to pour batter into a hot pan because the heat keeps it from sticking and helps form a nice, brown crust.

1 cup plain white cornmeal
1 tablespoon flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg, beaten slightly
3 tablespoons shortening, melted

Preheat oven to 450˚. Generously grease 6 to 7-in round iron skillet and heat in oven until very hot while mixing bread.

In a mixing bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, soda and salt. Mix buttermilk and egg separately and add to dry ingredients. Stir until just combined. Pour into melted shortening and mix well. Pour batter into hot skillet and bake about 20 minutes or until brown.

Too Fat For My French Horn

2011-06-14T07:55:00.004-04:00

Note: Photo added after Dive's comment. This is GF Handel's monument at Westminster Abbey.

I used this phrase yesterday, “Too fat for my French horn,” and it made me laugh out loud. I know it’s rude to laugh at your own jokes, but I was surprised when the words came out as if someone else had typed them, and I couldn’t help my reaction.

I was thinking about how physically sluggish I have become and how I probably need a little exercise. Plus, I have noticed that when playing my French horn, I need to take breaths more often than I used to. My lung capacity doesn’t seem to be what it once was, so I suggested I might be too fat for my French horn. See, even repeating it here makes me giggle. I like the alliteration, and I think the phrase is almost poetic.

So, in the interest of poetry:

I am too fat for my French horn,
too burdened on the lungs
to inhale and exhale enough.
I breathe just enough
but want more, to breathe more.
I am too fat for the swings at the park
where I whirled with my girls
when they were younger.
I am too fat for my wedding dress
I wore when I was younger, too.
There were jeans I slid on day after day
but I am too fat for my old jeans.
They hung in my closet until dust caked the fold
and I gave them away,
bagged them with size eights
and tossed them straight in the bin.
I don’t ride the swings or wear the dress,
and the jeans went away with good will.
And I shrug.
I sit tight with my French horn
and breathe and breathe just enough.
I am too fat for my French horn,
and I want more, to breathe more.

The Big Fat Band Is Back

2011-06-13T11:09:00.001-04:00

I often tell you about orchestra concerts—how we performed and how we were received—but I don’t often bother with band concerts. Well, here’s a treat, then.

The Big Fat Summer Band performed this past Saturday. We cozy up on a small, outdoor stage, all 75 or so of us, and do the best we can to keep up when the beat is not always evident, when the base line overpowers the melody and when the people in the front row of the audience talk from down beat to cut off. In the park where we play, the 1920 carousel continues to chime and people eat ice cream and birds sing and bugs fly and we play like we’re the center of attention.

There are concert programs in which the horn section has not much more than off beats, or we’re doubled up by the trombones who only know one volume—triple forte—but this time, we had some real gems. We actually had the melody now and then, and the director bothered to tell the tubas to back off so we could be heard. Your whole notes are of no consequence, gentlemen, so tone it down, why don’t ya, and let these people sing out.

We did sing out, but a weird thing happens in this outdoor setting. When you practice with the group in the bandroom, your ears adjust to the dynamics around you, but outside, your sound goes straight up into the trees, and it sounds as if you’re the only one playing. If you tend toward insecurity, as I sometimes do, you second-guess yourself. Wait, no one else is playing. Did I miscount those measures of rest and come in early? But then in that split-second of questioning your abilities, you realize you did not count incorrectly, and everyone else is playing. You just can’t hear them as well as when you’re inside. And then you hurry and catch up and kick yourself for being such a weenie.

It takes a song or two to adjust to outdoor acoustics and get with the program, and that’s when you start to have fun. Whether it’s blazing heat or wind intent on blowing your music off of the stand or a mentally retarded boy in the front row who mimics the drumset person, you’re playing with the group and having a great time.

Next concert, we may be back to offbeats, but I’ve set a task for myself. We end every concert with Stars and Stripes Forever, and the last several lines are nothing but offbeats you can barely hear for all the other hoopla around the horn section. So, I have rejected those notes for the melody. For next time, I will have the fingering for the melody memorized so I can play it with certainty instead of just guessing with each note. Just try and stop me, Mr. Director. I’m having too much fun on stage to be bothered with the notes on the page.

What Should I Be Doing Today?

2011-06-09T09:46:00.001-04:00

Sooooo…my mother is visiting for two weeks. The other day, I asked local Facebook friends for suggestions for things we could do to amuse ourselves, and people gave me all kinds of nice ideas. The thing is, none of them seems to be appropriate at this point.

Small Town has an outdoor amphitheater with a production of a local-history drama—Indians and massacres and what have you—but the show doesn't start until 8:30 at night, and my mother’s bedtime seems to be 9:30ish. Wooster, Ohio has nice shops and cafes, but it’s a drive, and a return trip would interfere with nap time. Roscoe Village requires lots of walking, and that just won’t do.

So, we twiddle our thumbs a little bit, and maybe that’s OK. We’ve made cupcakes and sat outside when the weather allows and had lunch by the pool. We’ve talked and reminisced and pet the cat. Who says we need to stay busy at all times or always need to be about a task?

The thing is this: my mother, at 85, has slipped into a level of dementia, and it’s a mystery. At moments, she seems very lucid and on top of her surroundings. And moments later, she sits on the edge of her seat, looks lost and asks, “What should I be doing today?” She wanders the house looking in random cabinets for unknown things. She puts events together to form new events, telling stories about things that never happened and getting offended about conversations that never took place.

To some extent, we all live within our own heads, but when our heads turn on us and detach from what goes on outside them, living day to day gets tricky. If you’re half alert, wouldn’t you question everything you think you see and hear? Wouldn’t you wonder if what you believe is actually fiction you’ve created and then doubt and second-guess and become absolutely paranoid?

My mother has always been paranoid and full of self pity and bitterness. It would be a nice gift if dementia would relieve her of those cankers, but sometimes what goes on in her traitorous head seems to exacerbate them, and that's not gift at all. It's a dirty trick.

Yesterday I came to a realization—if my genes have any say in the matter, I have about 35 years before my own head turns tale and runs. That’s the blink of an eye, or it’s a life time, depending on how you see it. At the moment, I’d like to think I have a life time left to do brilliant things with breaks to pet the cat and have lunch. What should I be doing today?

Happiness and Possessions

2011-06-06T13:00:00.003-04:00

This is today's column in Small Town Newspaper:

The Greek philosopher Democritus said, “Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold. Happiness dwells in the soul.” Hogwash. At this moment, I believe happiness resides in my grandmother’s china cabinet.

Just six months ago, my family sifted through my mother’s belongings as she moved out of her house and moved in with one of my sisters, and we planned for a yard sale. It was quite an undertaking, and when we finished the sorting, I was determined never to hold onto possessions again. I came straight home from that experience and began cleaning out closets and drawers and throwing out old stuff without sentimentality. Stuff is stuff, I said, and it holds no meaning. Then, I informed my children I was doing this work so they wouldn’t have to in years to come.

Well, my family recently gathered again to re-sort my mother’s stash and to host a two-day yard-sale-slash-estate-sale-slash-family-reunion. In the morning when we first opened up the doors and set out the signs, my mother remarked that this would not be her favorite day, and in attempting to offer consolation, I suggested she just look at it all as stuff, just stuff. Boy, was I naïve.

My mother stood by as strangers poured over stacks of her kitchenware and piles of her linens. She watched them flip through her old record albums and books and picture frames, all things she had enjoyed but could no longer keep, and she saw them walk away with her ironing board and sewing machine and pink wing-back chairs she bought because she loves pink so much. As each item left her possession in exchange for a few dollars, she handled the transactions with dignified grace, but for all of my initial nonchalance, I found I was clinging.

A gentleman offered to buy two framed prints, and I asked if he’d like to know the family history behind them. A woman asked about the wedding dress patterns, and I told her how my mother used one of them to make my prom dress because it was just matronly enough for her purposes. And when someone checked out the ornate buffet that had been in my mother’s dining room for as long as I can remember, I told him how I used to play under it when I was a little girl. It doubled as a castle for my paper dolls, and the matching dining table next to it made the perfect cave. I would hide under it as my parents were about to come home from work, and when they opened the door, I’d jump out and shout, “Surprise!”

Before the sale, my mother had suggested that we each choose something we wanted to take home, and my husband and I chose a china cabinet. It had belonged to my grandmother, and I remember gazing into it as a child and admiring the delicate glass treasures she kept on its shelves. My mother inherited the cabinet, and she kept her set of china and her crystal glasses on those same shelves.

Just the other day, we carefully placed the cabinet in our own dining room, and I am now the third generation to display my best china in it. As I stand in the room and gaze at it, just as I did forty years ago when it belonged to my grandmother, I feel fiercely attached to the thing. I won’t take it to my grave, but there may come a time when someone will have to pry it from my defiant and gnarled grasp because there will be no room for it in my new down-sized residence.

This piece of furniture isn’t just stuff. It’s a constant. I have always known it. I have always admired it. I have always been transfixed by the way it filters light whether it’s standing in a room in Alabama, Indiana, Georgia or in my house here in Ohio.

When my mother walked away from her things at the end of sale day, she must have been bereft, but I’ve got her china cabinet in safe keeping. This one possession has become a symbol of continuity for us both, and that brings me happiness.

Instagram!

2011-06-02T09:19:00.008-04:00

Last week, my sister Karen introduced me to the iPhone app Instragram, and I am completely hooked. I mean I cannot stop playing with this thing that turns ordinary pictures into interesting pictures. It turns plain old snapshots into photographs. Have you noticed people normally reserve the word "photograph" for really great looking pictures, and they use the shortened "pics" for the more pedestrian shots? I take pics, but Instagram turns them into photographs.

While walking around my sister's acreage the other day, I took this snapshot (on the left) of her husband's tractor. So, what. But when I ran it through Instragram, I created the image on the right—the dirt miraculously turned into patina.

And I snapped a picture of the little log house that used to be a play house for her kids, and with the app, it now looks like the spider-infested creepy thing it really is.

She has a lovely house her husband designed—it's modeled after a traditional farm house plan. I ran the plain picture through Instragram and got something more dramatic, and then ran that one through again to get the Amityville Horror house.

Last summer, Eustacia, my mother and I toured a historic village near Small Town, and the kid used my iPhone to take some pictures. With the app, you can modify older photographs stored on your phone, so I ran some of them through and got these ghostly images, which really help place the images in the 1800s, I think:

This dormitory was part of the historic village—I seem to have deleted the original, but by running the same image through the app several times, using different filters each round, I was able to create a variety of effects:

Now, every time I look at something, I wonder if it would make a good Instagram image, and I snap my iPhone camera just to see. And if I find myself sitting idle for a few minutes, and my iPhone is in reach, I pick it up and go straight to Instagram and dig up some old "pic" to see what marvelous "photograph" I might create.

Yard Sale Done

2011-05-31T14:30:00.005-04:00

I've never had a garage sale or yard sale before, and now I see why. They are a heck of a lot of work!

Last week, I flew to Atlanta to help my family with a sale—my mother moved in with my sister, and the house she left behind, which has been sold, was filled with stuff. Earlier in the year, we had cleared out the house itself and moved everything to the garage/basement (the house is built on a hill), so we gathered again to organize and open the big doors and take the cash.

On Thursday, Karen and I worked like pack mules to sort the stuff. After months in that musty room, everything seemed to take on a layer of grime and dust, so we aired it all out and put things with things. You know, like picking up an aluminum pan and walking over to set it down with all of the other aluminum pans and finding a box of glassware and hauling it over to the table with all of the other glassware.

We had a section for silk flowers, one for kitchen pans, sewing patterns all the way back to 1948, knick knacks, clothes and shoes and purses, Christmas decorations, tablecloths, curtains, curtain rods, games and puzzles, pictures, decorative plates, sets of dishes, serving bowls, empty picture frames of various sizes, and furniture. Then there was a wall of shelves filled with appliances, and then there was a day bed stacked with linens, and then there were nasty looking boxes filled with nails and gunk for $5 each (they sold!). I could go on. By the end of that day, everything was sorted and displayed and priced. And then we collapsed into a sweaty heap.

We opened the door the next day for Day 1 with our mother assisting, and despite the threat of rain, we did all right in selling things. Later that evening, the rest of the sisters arrived so that, on Saturday, we had a combination family reunion/estate sale that was sort of festive. That atmosphere was just right because our mother was grieving over the loss of her things. I think she handled the experience with dignified grace, but it wasn't easy.

Here is the living room vignette we set up in the driveway to convince yard-salers they needed this scene in their houses. We sold almost everything in this scene.

Here are some of the prints that my mother had collected over the years—we sold just a few of these:

And here are some of the silk flower arrangements—we had others because Karen is a floral designer and had product to unload. People really loved them:

At the end of the day, we closed those big garage doors, said good bye to it all and walked away. What else could you do? A guy with a thrift store at his church will take what was left. As for me, Husband and I took the one item we had requested, my grandmother's china cabinet that we have admired for years. Here's what it looks like in my dining room. I'll treasure it until the day my kids open up my garage and sell off my stuff. That's a long way away, I think.

Yet Another Trip

2011-05-25T08:01:00.005-04:00

Well, here we are, selling off my mother's belongings.

In January, my mother moved in with one of my sisters. At the age of 85, she had reached a stage in which she should not be living alone, and although the move was not managed against her will, she was in no way happy about it. We've wondered if she was secretly relieved, and that may be, but that relief didn't stop her grumbling about having to give up her independence and her things. Who can blame her, really? To my own children—be warned. If I live to be 85 and am alone and need to live with one of you, you will hear plenty about how I enjoy my independence and don't appreciate your going through my things and either throwing them out or selling them off.

Back in January, my family helped my mother (when we weren't working behind her back) to sort through her many belongings and to get her moved in to her new digs, and we set aside a pile of stuff to sell at a yard sale at a later date. This weekend is the date for the sale, and we are all assembling in Georgia to help out. It's going to be a lot of work, but I also envision all of us sitting in the driveway, perched in our folding chairs with some sweet tea and Chick-fil-a and laughing until the neighbors complain.

We also may find time to explore our family's roots. The last few generations are originally from Alabama, but my mother's father was from Georgia just a few miles from where my sister and mother live now. Hosea Maner, born in 1800, was our great-great-great-great-grandfather. He was born in South Carolina but lived and died in Smyrna, Georgia, and his grave stone is still visible today—we may visit it (photo later).

Hosea was a land owner and farmer in Cobb County, and although he died without a will, he left behind valuable property. The executor of his estate wrote this:

"To the Hon. H. M. Hammett, Ordinary of said county: The petition of J. Z. Foster, administrator, of the estate of Hosea Maner, late of said county, deceased, shows that certain personal property belonging to said deceased, is of a perishable nature, and is likely to deteriorate in value, the same consisting of Corn and Hogs, and that it is to the interest and advantage of said estate that said property be sold."

After the corn and hogs and his 190 or so acres of land were sold, his estate amounted to $4,226.35 ($101,000 in today's value), and the money was divvied up among 35 heirs. Joseph was one of Hosea's sons, and Joseph's son William was the father of Henry who was the father of Guiles who was the father of our mother.

What goes around comes around, they say, and we're basically back where we started, or at least back as far as we can document. Cheers to old Hosea, and cheers to my mother for allowing us to rifle through her stuff and price it with stickers and let strangers handle it like it's nothing. Maybe our laughter, which used to annoy her to no end, will help make it all a little easier. Or maybe she'll screech what she used to screech at us—"If you girls don't stop all that noise, I'll skin you alive! I'd rather hear crying than laughing hour after hour!"

It'll Rot Your Brain!

2011-05-23T13:09:00.003-04:00

In doing research for a newspaper column, I came across the television lineup for the major networks between the years 1970 and 1976. Keep in mind there were only three major networks and very few minor networks at the time. In Chicagoland, we had NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and WGN.

I spent most of my time watching WGN because it was the source for movies and cartoons. This is what I had always believed, at least, because when I came home from school every afternoon, this is the channel I flipped to. Gillian's Island, The Flintstones. The Mickey Mouse Club with Annette Funicello. But after I looked at the lineup of evening shows, and as I responded so enthusiastically to it—"Oh, my gosh! I remember that show! I loved that!"—I realized I must have spent most of my waking hours in front of the television, one with just a handful of stations and a channel-changing knob on the side. You actually had to get up off the couch and make physical contact with the TV.

Now that I think about it, my parents were the culprits. They would be tired after a full day's work and just want to plop down in front of the tube after dinner and not get up again until the nightly news at 10:00 (central time). An evening didn't go buy that we weren't planted in that little TV room, we called it, staring blankly at the flickering screen. It's a wonder any of us amounted to anything at all or that we even learned to read.

In no particular order, here is a list of the shows we watched on a regular basis.

Laugh—In, Love American Style, Bonanza, The Carol Burnett Show, The Walton, Flip Wilson, Dean Martin, The Brady Bunch, The Partidge Family, Room 222, The Odd Couple, The Sonny & Cher Show, Sanford & Son, Chico and the Man, Alias Smith & Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, All In the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Phyllis, Bob Newhart, MASH, Night Gallery, Wonderful World of Disney, McCloud, Columbo, Kung Fu, Nanny and the Professor, Marcus Welby MD, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, That Girl, High Chapparal, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Little House On the Prairie, Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O, My Three Sons, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Hogan's Heroes, Barretta, Welcome Back Kotter, Starsky and Hutch, Barney Miller, Ellery Queen, Kojak, Charlie's Angels

In my house, the TV is rarely on during the day unless I have absolutely nothing to do and feel like watching a little Turner Classic Movies action. We watch CNN in the morning and a little during dinner, but then I don't come back to any of it until around 8:00 when the kitchen has been cleaned and the book has been read.

We have a few shows we watch regularly—House, Dexter, The Borgias, Weeds, The Big C, Nurse Jackie, The Middle, Modern Family. But otherwise, if we're watching TV, we're watching a rented movie or old episodes of West Wing. And lately, we've been watching Band of Brothers, which has become my new favorite thing to watch. You don't just sit and take it in. You absorb it and think about it later when you're supposed to be doing other things. And you most definitely hum the music.

So, TV will rot your brain, and I watched so much of it as a kid, apparently, I must not be operating on all cylinders. Watch it in moderation, though, and it's not so bad. I'm sorry my parents didn't follow that rule years ago. Laugh-In, for goodness sake!

The Last Piece of the Puzzle

2011-05-18T22:03:00.006-04:00

More than three months ago, we got the ball rolling on a remodeling project—we decided to recreate our living room. Here is what it looked like last Christmas (the spot on the wall is either a poltergeist or dust on the lense. Which do you prefer?):

We basically altered every surface. We replaced the carpet with hardwood floors; painted the walls a different color; switched out the window shades for wood shutters; replaced the furniture with cozier stuff that has people facing each other instead of sitting all in a line on a long couch; installed surround-sound speakers; replaced the wood mantel with a stacked stone wall; and hung a TV where a print used to be.

The whole thing took nearly three months to complete, and although this may go without saying, we did none of the work ourselves. If we had, we might still be living in rubble. Here is an example of some of that rubble;

and here is what the room looked like for a couple of weeks while the work was being done. I was disturbed and have never seen so much dust in one place in all my life:

We've been in the room for a month now, but just yesterday, the shutter guy installed the last little shutter, and now the project is complete. Here it is, the finished room—we love it: