December: A Buffet of Choices

(Next posting will be New Year's Day.)

Whether one thinks of the holidays this time of year in religious or secular terms--or as one big solstice metaphor for ending the dark and returning to the light--we have quite a buffet of choices in ways to celebrate.

I can remember when we didn't start thinking about Christmas until after Thanksgiving.  Stores took down their turkey and pilgrim decorations--there even seemed to be a pause--and then put up their Santas.  No such thing as catalogs arrived in the mail.  But now, as someone phrased it, it's one long spill-way "from trick-or-treat to ho-ho-ho."  A friend sent me a Christmas card one year showing a corporate Santa looking down from his office window and saying to his helper-elf:  "They're starting to relax again.  Switch the festive vortex up to maximum." 

It does seem as if we squeeze more and more metaphorical dishes onto the table--all under the heading "Holiday Season."  If there's something to show-case, enjoy, sell, let's schedule it in December, we seem to say.  Church bazaars.  Open studio tours.  Library book sales.  Sing-alongs.  Locally-made craft and farmers market items--holly wreaths, clay pots, jewelry, hand-bags, fruit preserves.  Store sales.  Annual workplace dinners.  A party or two or three.  (One December back in the '80s, one or both of us went to 13 gatherings.)  Or we can stay in and watch one of those seasonal dramas in which a couple of precocious kids--have you noticed, kids in today's dramas are portrayed as having more smarts than their parents?--figure how to fix up his widowed father with her divorced mother who finally recognize true love the night everyone congregates to light the village Christmas tree.  There's often a little jingle of bells on the sound track to indicate that the real Santa was in the crowd working his magic.  (Christmas in TV drama terms today = magic.) 

Interspersed in all this--for me, at least--is a plethora of December birthdays including my own.  (Once, as a child, because my birthday was so close to Christmas, my parents decided to celebrate it in June.  When December came around, it didn't seem appropriate to skip it, so we did it all over again.)

But since December is a buffet, we can take our pick.  What will we choose?  The all-you-can eat plate with seconds and thirds?  The big tree, the end-of-year letter sent out to 60 friends, the splurgy menu?  Over the years, that's been my choice, and it was fun.  But now I choose simple.  I choose not to start the season too early--then I dash into a store and out again before yet another version of Winter Wonderland or Jingle Bells hits the sound track.  I choose to play the music I love as I celebrate this return-of-the-light time of year with a nightly candle, a good book, and a glass of wine.  I choose to shop at (and thus support) local independent stores.  And these days (for myself, at least ... and after all my decluttering), other than something sweet like family photos, a pretty scarf, or a special hand-embroidered tea towel, I tend to prefer gifts that are consumable.  You know:  chocolates, candles, flowers, soaps, a pot of bulbs to bloom mid-winter.  I admit to being tired of poinsettias, but amaryllis or spring bulbs beautifully pep up the days.

Without contradicting myself or getting too complicated about it, I also choose to turn the holiday into an occasion.  Making brownies for the neighbors.  Making the annual fruitcake with family members.  Using pretty tissue and ribbon to wrap gifts.  (I'm not too fond of the new method of putting things in paper bags with a dollop of tissue paper on top.  But it's good for off-size things.)  Hanging a gold paper star from Germany in the front door window instead of fiddling with a tree which I don't have a place for anyway.  Turning berries I've kept frozen since their high summer season into a family pie.  And reading 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to the little ones on Christmas Eve.

Speaking of good music, here's an enchanting two-minute link to Tchaikovsky's Sugar Plum Fairy on the perfect instrument for it--the glass harp. 

What Makes December December

All of the above
Reaching the darkest-shortest days
Then starting the journey back to the lightest-longest 
Transitioning from cold weather to really cold weather, aka winter
Corelli's Christmas Concerto (forgot to add it to my favorites list)
Lots of birthdays
Thinking ahead to a fresh year and a little restructuring

Nine Children's Classics

I've taken to re-reading books lately that I read as a child.  After all my downsizing over the years, I still have enough to fit on a shelf.  I've kept them dusted and have sometimes taken one, opened it, glimpsed through it ... to find that whole era instantly popping up before me as I read birthday or Christmas wishes written in my mother's hand along with the date--1945, 1946, 1947.  The books then seemed especially handsome ... more so than today's.  Well-made, beautifully illustrated, nicely bound, good paper, sturdy.  My brother and I accumulated two splendid collections--he got the Scribner's Illustrated Classics editions, often illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, including such adventures of The Deerslayer, The Scottish Chiefs, Kidnapped.  And I received the Grosset and Dunlap Illustrated Junior Library editions.

Whatever the selection, the books seemed to have soul.  Rather than following the Conflict and Resolution formula publishers now seem to require, these stories simply told a good tale.  Now, even if you're a little pig, you need to have some sort of problem that is then resolved by the end of the book.  And then no children's book today would think of using such a "difficult" word as "soporific"--as Beatrix Potter included in The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, thinking it a perfectly good word, totally appropriate for a child.

After not having read many of these stories for something like sixty years, I wondered how I'd feel about them from an adult (even old-age) perspective.  Here, then, in the order read are the nine I've re-read so far.

1.  J. M. Barrie:  Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, illustrated by Arthur Rackham.  This has always been one of my favorite books--for its large type, the feel of its binding, its absolutely splendid illustrations.  Of course, with the name, Wendy, I have a kinship with the story of Peter Pan.  But, lo, this proved to be a totally different animal.  Here, Baby Peter, all of a week or two old, leaves his home and goes to an island in London's Kensington Gardens to live with the birds who, we are told, are the ones who deliver human babies to their mothers.  Finding that he can't fly, he's stranded until he finds a way to maneuver himself around the park where he meets a new playmate, a little girl named ... Maimie!  Ever heard of Peter Pan and Maimie?  He finally decides to go home only to find a new baby in his crib so he leaves again.  Though I've been dusting this book all these years, even thumbing through the illustrations, I'd totally forgotten the story line--an odd mix of being both sad and rambling.

"Peter Pan is the fairies orchestra."

2.  C. Collodi (Carlo Lorenzini):  The Adventures of Pinocchio, illustrated by Helene Carter.  Of course, Walt Disney usurped this story, so our image of Pinocchio doesn't match the illustrations, here almost stick-figure-ish.  But no matter.  Though the tale is very moralistic, assuming all little boys are scoundrels unless they are properly reined in, I was able to find it good fun.  Originally a tragedy in which Pinocchio is hanged for his many faults, on his editor's prompting, Collodi introduced the Blue Fairy in the latter half of the book--someone who helped Pinocchio at strategic points thus producing a happy ending and making the book suitable for children (or so the editor said).  (Jiminy Cricket got that role in the movie.)

3.  Johanna Spyri:  Heidi, color illustrations by Edna Cooke Shoemaker.  As the others, I had not read this in ages but had often thought about Heidi up on that Swiss alp, eating her bread and cheese, drinking goat's milk, and looking out at the stars from her straw bed.  That simple life, to me, always seemed totally charming.  On re-reading it, I was surprised to find just how religious the tale is--how her life only achieved its happy ending through prayer and the grace of God.  But, it is a book of beautiful descriptions of a beautiful place and an engaging child.

4.  Hans Christian Andersen:  Andersen's Fairy Tales, illustrated by Arthur Szyk. Oh, golly.  Except for a rather small collection of his truly great classics, I found the tales surprisingly insipid.  Sorry.

5.  Kenneth Grahame:  The Wind in the Willows, illustrated by Arthur Rackham.  Confession:  I believe this was the first time I'd read this book.  I remember giving it a go as a child, only to find it too difficult.  But now, joy of joys, it turned out to be the prize-winner of the lot.  It was funny, delightful, all about golden afternoons, amusing conversations, and rather sweet adventures.  Plus a beautiful description of pastoral England.  I'd no sooner finished it than I wanted to start all over again.

6.  Mary Mapes Dodge:  Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, illustrated by Louis Rhead and Frank E. Schoonover. This is a dear story about a young impoverished Dutch boy and his sister, Gretel, who take part in a skating competition to win a pair of ice skates.  By the end, everyone is happy and the father, an amnesiac in bed for years, has regained his health.  In doing her research, however, the author (a 19th century New Yorker) incorporated great wads of travel-guide-type information, almost as if she were paraphrasing some source chapter by chapter.  Here's a description of Dutch houses.  Here's one of porcelain stoves.  Here's some Dutch vocabulary.  So one does get an education ... but an overabundance tends to disrupt the story line.

7.  The Arabian Nights, illustrated by Earle Goodenow.  These are mostly unrelated ancient and medieval tales from Persia, India, Turkey, Central Asia, Egypt, India, etc.--tales of artifice, stratagem, jewels, robberies, beautiful women.  The lead story about Scheherazade is a Persian tale.  (And the Persian language and people, of course, are not Arabic.)  And contrary to Disney's rendering, Aladdin is Chinese.  With such a wide geography under its belt, the name "Arabian" is something of a misnomer.  But, again, no matter.  They're wonderful tales.

8.  Rudyard Kipling:  The Jungle Book, illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg.  This is also a compilation of separate, independent stories with the central one focusing on Mowgli in India and featuring anthropomorphized animals who teach him the ways of the jungle (and hence, the world).  Kipling, as always, is a master story teller.  No complaints. 

9.  Rachel Field:  Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop.  I read this book at least twice as a child and enjoyed it just as much again now.  It's an appealing story (not always P.C., though) about a small wooden doll's adventures from the 1820's to the1920's.  After leaving her home in Maine--as she's left behind here or picked up there--she's worshiped as an idol in the South Seas, stuffed for years down into a horsehair sofa, featured as a fashion model for a New Orleans cotton exposition ...  You get the point.  It's great fun and sweet in its way.

More to come ... after I've re-read the others.

A "Just Between You and I" World

A year or so ago, when my New Yorker arrived, I gave a hoot of appreciation when I ran into a cartoon by William Haefeli showing two men at a bar, one saying to the other, "You have no idea what's it's like to be a 'just between you and me' person in a 'just between you and I' world."  I've been hoping for more in a possible series of grammar jabs but no such luck.

I'm not a school teacher but have been "accused" of being one (what's the matter with being a school teacher?) because I have on occasion brought up grammatical issues.  In fact, I've been tempted sometimes to actually go to a school or two and ask when their students study grammar these days.  Or do they?  Or has the study of grammar become obsolete?  Not sure what the problem is but it's definitely become a "just between you and I" world. 

In somehow thinking "me" a "bad" word, people are substituting "I" more and more often.  "They're coming to spend the holidays with Bob and I."  Nooooo.....  You wouldn't say, "They're coming to spend the holidays with I."  That's the clue, the key, the test.  If you don't say "between we" then you don't say "between you and I."  Good old "me" needs to go back in that slot.

Now, here's my biggie.  It used to creep into speech only now and again.  Even a villain portrayed by Kirk Douglas knew the proper usage.  (I'll get to it in a minute.)  All prose knew the correct usage.  Now, it's seeped into everyday speech, movies, books, newspapers, Google news, song lyrics.  Here it is.

I've had a series of shoulder problems over the years requiring long bouts of physical therapy.  Invariably, therapists would tell me, "Lay down on the table."  Ooooooooooo..... nooooo.  To sort of edge in perhaps too subtle a call on their mistake, I'd say, "Do you want me to lie on my back or stomach?"  I'd sort of emphasize the word, "lie," ever so slightly.  (It never worked; they never caught on.)

But now, using "lay" instead of "lie" is such common usage, I'm almost pulled up short when I hear it used correctly.  I think to myself--and yes, I do do this--"my, he/she got it right."  But you hear people telling their dogs to "lay down" or they'll talk about "laying on the sofa" and reading.  I want to say, hey guys, "lay" requires an object.  It means "put."  I want to say that one doesn't "put" on the sofa.  One puts something on the sofa.  You lay your silver spoons on the table.  You lay 58¢ on the counter.  "Lie" means "stretch out, lounge."  You tell your tiger to lie down. 

Of course, just to confuse things, "lay" is the past tense of "lie."  So, you lay down yesterday.  But in the present tense, using "lay" instead of "lie" would be similar to saying, "I'm going to reclined in the hammock." 

In fact, I sometimes wonder if that dear prayer hasn't contributed to the problem:  "Now I lay me down to sleep."  No one much pays attention to the "me" thinking you can delete it.  But if you delete it, you need to rephrase it:  "Now I lie down to sleep."  As grammar books point out, only chickens lay.  So if you're not a chicken and you don't plan to lay an egg, then remember that good old word, "lie."

I actually figured out how to illustrate this posting.  Think:  "Dreaming of mice, Puss is lying on Fifi."

I have other grammatical issues but, lucky you, I'll save them for another day.

A Gallery of Trees: Ways We Fit Them into Our Lives

Driving to town one day recently, I noticed The Big Switch.  Rather than carrying kayaks on roof-tops, passing cars were now carrying Christmas trees.  It got me to thinking about how we fit trees into our lives ... so much so at this time of year especially, that when I read that the President wanted to add a 15¢ tax on the sale of all Christmas trees to (of all things) promote their image, I thought that, of the many images in the world, the Christmas tree is already right up there on top, even in non-Christian countries.  I remember walking along the streets of Bangkok one 90º day when I saw a brightly decorated Christmas tree in a shop window.  "Now what's that doing there," I said to myself.  Of course, I immediately realized that it was December--despite the tropical climate. "But this isn't a Christian country," I countered ... only to remind myself that Christmas was (now) more a commercial holiday than a religious one.  Shopper's Paradise Hong Kong (our next stop) revealed even more decorations plus German carols piped into elevators and (one day) a Santa being pulled down the street in a rickshaw.

So I decided to go through my photos and look for ways we do indeed fit trees into our lives in this and other cultures.  Besides celebration, some trees are used in a spiritual context.  Some for shade ... for fodder ... for food.  Some to attract tourists.  Some to provide warmth.

Too bad we have to chop these dear things down but we do bring them into our homes and dress them up.

If you go to Bali, you'll find occasional statues, trees, large rocks, shrines wrapped with a black-white-grey checkered cloth called Poleng, indicating that whatever is wrapped contains a spiritual (or even magical) charge.  Or, as we sometimes say, that a spirit dwells within.

Sacred tree in Bali

When I visited Paphos, Cyprus, one year, I ran across this tree with its myriad strips of cloth (each with a prayer written on it) tied onto the branches.

Prayer tree above Agia Salomonis Catacomb, Paphos, Cyprus

Here are two photos taken just outside Kathmandu, Nepal.

This is considered a sacred tree.  What makes it sacred, I don't know.  But being sacred, its leaves and branches have not been cut for fodder or firewood ....

....as has its neighbor.  It's easy to spot the non-sacred everyday trees because in this deforested land, this is what they can look like.

A banyan tree outside Pokhara, Nepal, provides these porters with shade and a place to set their dokos (baskets).

One of many in an Indio, California, grove of date palms.

Here's more a case of fitting ourselves into the tree's life by slipping tin cans over the trunk to protect it from bark nibblers.

Willow or poplar trees in Ladakh, India

Here's a vintage photo taken by my father in the early '40s.

A fallen giant sequoia has been turned into a tourist attraction.  Sequoia National Park.

Ah, the end of several good trees, now ready to bring us warmth. 

A Few Words About the First American Memoirs

I've long enjoyed reading memoir.  I even copied out Gore Vidal's definition of memoir in Palimpsest once:  "A memoir is how one remembers one's own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked.  I've taken the memoir route on the ground that even an idling memory is apt to get right what matters most."(1)  I find memoirs very accessible (as are diaries).  As opposed to fiction, I like them because I appreciate knowing how other people really solve their problems ... what they really find when they visit a place or a state of mind ... how their epiphanies and realizations really come about.

So, though I was interested in the subject matter anyway, I paid attention when the author of a book I recently finished mentioned two mid-19th century authors (whom I'll name in a minute) who wrote what she called the first American memoirs.  (Or, in one case, a precursor of the memoir.)  One book definitely details the author's life during a two-year period (1845-1847) and even says on the first page, "I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."(2)  The author of the second book fictionalizes her life but, as the contemporary author writing about her says, "in many ways, even though it's a novel, in tone and voice it is the precursor of the modern memoir--the book that gives voice to people who have traditionally kept quiet."(3)

The two authors are Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott and their "memoirs," of course, are Walden and Little Women.  The book about them is Susan Cheever's American Bloomsbury:  Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau--Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work.

Cheever relates, how, as a friend of Emerson's, Thoreau knew the writings of the Scotsman who influenced the Transcendentalist's thinking which was based on one's intuitive, spiritual experience.  This was Thomas Carlyle who spoke of an omnipresent God, present in the details as well as in the greater whole.  Thoreau even gave a lecture on Carlyle, after which his Concord audience (during the equivalent of their Q&A) expressed more curiosity about him than Carlyle.  Why was he living out there by the pond?  What was his life like?  Wasn't he cold, lonely, hungry?  So Thoreau began taking notes and eventually wrote his classic as an answer to these questions.  Cheever calls it "the first American memoir, the first book in which the days and nights of an autobiographical, confessional narrator are the central plot line.  Thoreau invented nature writing and memoir writing in one swift, brilliant stroke."(4)

Here's a sketch I made when sitting on the grass near the replica of Thoreau's cabin.

As for Alcott, Cheever relates how she put what we might today call "a good spin" on her life.  Rather than speaking of the family's miserable poverty which required them to move twenty times in as many years, Alcott describes what Cheever calls the family's "friendly penny-pinching."  Rather than writing of her sister's "horrifying and dreadful death" it becomes "a sweet and peaceful letting go."  Rather than labeling her father the misfit he so often seemed to be, she sends him away for most of the book.  So, as fiction, the book portrays a sweetness which her life most definitely did not reflect.  But as Cheever goes on to say, "It was in Little Women that I learned that domestic details can be the subject of art, that small things in a woman's life--cooking, the trimming of a dress or hat, quiet talk--can be as important a subject as a great whale or a scarlet letter."(5)

But there are even earlier works--tales of adventure--which would seem to qualify as well.  (These in comparison to Walden published in 1854 and Little Women published in 1868.)  Foremost would be Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s Two Years Before the Mast about his two-year sea voyage to California (1840).  Another would certainly be Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail which describes venturing west in 1846, then camping with a band of buffalo-hunting Oglala Sioux (1849).  Bret Harte drew on his own experiences to write about life in California mining camps (1868).  As for fictionalized renderings of one's experience (as Alcott), Herman Melville drew upon his two years in a whaling ship when he wrote Typee (1846) and Moby Dick (1851).

As a total aside, I was interested to learn about the dreadful medical practices of the day which, in fact, eventually killed Alcott.  When she was just thirty, in the early days of the Civil War, she went to work in a Washington, D.C., hospital filled with Union Army casualties.  She'd barely arrived when she came down with something that was diagnosed as being either TB or typhoid.  The practice then was to purge the ailing, to give them laxatives, purgatives, cathartics including one, a mercury compound, which produced such bad mercury poisoning that one was debilitated for life.  Hawthorne's wife suffered from this as did Alcott.  Then, to combat the pain, she became addicted to morphine and opium.  She lived with it for some time, however, then died at age 55 in 1888.

What Makes November November

Baked apples and spiced pears
Gingerbread and apple cake
Low-lit afternoons
A new knitting project for dark evenings
Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy!



Gore Vidal, Palimpsest, A Memoir:
(1) p. 5
Henry David Thoreau, Walden:
(2) p. 3
Susan Cheever, American Bloomsbury:
(3) p. 192
(4) p. 125
(5) p. 192 (all quotations in that paragraph)

Celebrating November

The price of gold hovers around $1,750 an ounce.  But the gold that fills the landscape, glinting the hills, dressing the countryside, the streets, the lawns, is now raked up and bagged or left for the deer to walk on.  Blowing machines hum around town.  No longer obscured by leafy trees, road-side corners are easier to maneuver.  Low-lit afternoons reveal open spaces between the branches.

And in that low-light of even early afternoon, I walk beside the West River before the days become too cold and the wind whistling down the river, too fierce.  All is quiet except for a single crow and the inconsequential hum of cars.  Even the river is silent.  Only an occasional brown oak leaf floats along its placid, ripple-less sun-lit surface.  The corn field is now stubble.  If I were to paint what I see, I would get out tubes of raw sienna and raw umber.  A pewter grey for tree trunks and shadows.  All to render the prickles, twigs, fluff, seed heads, bare branches, bittersweet berries, dead curled leaves.

Back home, cup of tea in hand, I get out my poetry books.

November Night (Adelaide Crapsey 1878-1914)

Listen ...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

Fall, Leaves, Fall (Emily Brontë 1818-1848)

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

And, in a more contemporary vein:

leaves

these cool blowy days
          rip time
shaking the garden bare above
shadows windful & aching with
          raw light
as whispers sit through moments
          gone
falling like my summer sleep

(I wrote that using those refrigerator poetry magnets)

Once above, now below

Other Good Eats This Month

Yep, November equals turkey:  smelling it as it roasts ... sitting down with family, plates heaped high ... making turkey sandwiches with the left-overs ... sticking the bones into a big pot and concocting soup.

But.  Besides turkey, November presents us with pretty good eating the rest of the month, too.  Take winter squashes.  Butternut, acorn, delicata.  They're wonderful baked with a little butter and dollop of hot pepper jelly.  I'm not a hot-food fan, but pepper jelly works magic.  It's also fabulous when you sauté carrots or thinly sliced red cabbage. I heat a little olive oil in an already hot(ish) pan, drop in the veggies, stir, add a dash of water, put on the lid, shake the pan, let the whole thing steam/sauté, then mix in a spoonful of pepper jelly.  Soon, with a lid, it can be turned off to finish in a gentler fashion.

The carrots right now are perfect.

Leeks and potatoes are good now, too, and go together beautifully to make a delicious warming soup ... with a little grated cheese on top or a splash of half-and-half.

Then, too, I've come up with a really tasty meatloaf.  The secret is to mix ground pork with ground beef.  (You can even remove the casing from sausage and put that in.)  Here's how I make it.  Sauté diced onions and celery.  Add them to the meat along with one egg, some tomato sauce or bits of diced tomato (if canned, keep the juice for another dish), bread crumbs, oregano flakes, salt and pepper.  Or any other herbs that look good--chives, parsley, thyme...  Then, get in there and mix it with your hands. Nothing else does as good a job.  Spoon it onto an oiled baking dish, form it into a nice shape, and bake for an hour at maybe 385º.  Let rest 10 minutes.

Here's a slice next day, heated up as left-overs.

So, we have soup, veggie, and meat loaf.  A good carrot cake would be perfect for dessert.  Or gingerbread.  I don't have recipes that I can copy here, but they're easy to find.

And for drinks?  I have two excellent ideas.  One is a good mulled wine.  Again, there are recipes galore, but, basically, you need a bottle of a nice red, a sweetener (honey, sugar), brandy (or a fruit juice substitute), an orange, and whatever spices seem appealing--cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, nutmeg, ginger.  The key is to warm it slowly and let it simmer awhile.

The other drink is called Intoxicating Hot Chocolate--something we relished back in "the old days" at K.C.'s Restaurant and Bambooze Bar in the Thamel region of Kathmandu.  On cold autumn/winter nights, it warmed body and soul.  It was simple.  A mug of your favorite hot chocolate.  A jigger of rum.  A sprinkle of cinnamon.  I don't think it had whipped cream, but that would be heavenly, too.

I might end here, but I'm not going to because one of my absolute favorite meals to prepare and to eat (which is perfect this time of year) is to roast everything in one large baking dish.  (Bake for an hour at about 385º, then let rest 10 minutes.)  I made this supper a couple of nights ago:  a breast of chicken, oiled and seasoned with the last of my herb garden sage.  Fingerling potatoes, also oiled.  A delicata squash that I peeled, cut into chunks, oiled, and seasoned with a dab of butter and some pepper jelly.  An onion cut into quarters.  Salt and pepper all around.  As it baked, it smelled fabulous.  It tasted pretty fabulous, too. There was even enough to turn it into a two-night meal.  And all I had to wash was that one baking dish.

Delicata squash--peeled, oiled, with a dab of butter and pepper jelly

Here it all is, ready to serve--squash, potatoes, onions, and chicken breast

Long Nights, Early Mornings

What was it W. C. Fields said?  "The best cure for insomnia is to get a good night's sleep." A family member used to toss that up to me when I'd get up in the morning, claiming little or no sleep.  So I have to remember that, for me, sleep issues aren't anything new.  I'm sure I can still put a few off onto age, though.  Actually, besides being awake for long stretches at night, my problem might be more a circadian rhythm thing.  There are certainly times when I feel my body is on mid-Atlantic time.  I know there are evenings when I've got my light out before my late-eating London friends have finished supper.  Everything for me feels speeded up.  I wake early (like 4:45 this morning), so I get up early.  Breakfast is a reasonable hour, maybe 7:00.  But I start getting lunch ideas around 10:30 though manage to hold off an hour.  Then I have to force myself to wait until 5:00 for supper.  Of course, after that the evening seems long.  I don't watch TV--what is there to watch?  But enjoying a good book, I often get in bed to read only to find my eyes closing.  So I call it quits early ... which then means I wake early.  Isn't that called a vicious cycle?

There was one absurd night when I put down my book and went to sleep around 6:30.  Lo and behold, I had a good night and woke at 8:30 next morning.  The sun was up, I was ready for the day.  But  ... gradually ... something didn't feel right.  I turned on my computer and read the date.  It was still the night before.  The sun was still up because it was the middle of summer ... it was, in fact, just going down.

And then a full moon throws a monkey wrench into things.  Despite window shades, it still seems to shine in.  All that lunar energy wriggling around, going zap, zap, like a magic wand, waking me, and then wanting me to stay awake!

So now here we are switching to Standard Time this very night.  As someone remarked, this bi-annual shift is a pointless aspect of modern life.  Some countries don't observe it--mostly in Asia and Africa.  And then our own Arizona has opted out.  I can remember years as a girl when we simply stuck to Standard Time.  Then people started fiddling with it.  The excuse was that we'd use less electricity.

As of tonight, we're going smack into dark evenings.  How are my confused Circadian rhythms going to handle that?  If my body wakes at what it thinks is 4:45, the clock will say 3:45 ... too early for those of us who aren't dairy farmers or meditators on retreat.  And the afternoon will seem like one long airplane trip going west across the International Date Line when you go for hours and hours and the time never changes.  With the lower winter light, around here, anything after 12:00 noon seems like a perpetual 4 P.M.  Looking out to that low light, I get the impression it's time to start thinking about making supper almost as soon as I finish lunch.  And cocktail hour is a long time coming.  Then finally--whap--the afternoon shuts down (around the real 4:00), I close the window shades, turn on a light, cook supper, and get out my knitting or a book, holding out as long as I can.

Early November when the low light takes over the entire afternoon.

Of course, there's tomorrow morning's clock-changing routine, too.  When adding them up, I find I've got a surprising number of time-pieces.  My computer, cable box, and cell phone change automatically.  But I also have wrist-watches, answering machine, 3 cameras, car clock, kitchen radio, etc.  Fifteen in all.  Most requiring pushing little buttons all with different mode-changing criteria.  (There are so few dials anymore.)  But changing 15 time-pieces is better than the 450 the poor Windsor Castle time-keeper has to adjust--a task that takes him16 hours.

So, between occasional insomnia, Circadian rhythm oddities, and that ole moon, it can be amazing to get through a night at all.  And this time change stuff doesn't help.

Pumpkin Time

I don't think I've been anywhere--and that includes parts of Europe and Asia--that wasn't beautiful in October.  To me, this glorious month never makes a mistake.  There's something about the lowering light, the glowing color, the crisp air .... I even wrote a poem about it once.

          The Mature Beauty of These Pumpkin-Colored Days

          In sumac shoes and scarves
          from the silk of Indian corn,

          in gowns of wildflower prints, shawls
          from challis-soft leaves of the tupelo,

          in goldenrod necklaces and rings of amethyst asters
          (her hair stuck up with scarlet pins),

          she weaves ochres, madders and siennas
          into honeyed dawns and gingered dusks,

          knowing the angels have charge over her
          and that her hour is nearly come.

And pumpkins, always the totally right color for the season, seem a jolly symbol whether they lie out in a field, are picked up, scooped out, and turned into jack-o'-lanterns (we used to spread the seeds on a newspaper to dry in the sun ... and then eat them), or are baked into a tea cake topped with an orange-flavored butter cream and a bit of candied ginger.  

A local farm, part of an apple orchard.  These outbuildings were filmed as the bunkhouse in "The Cider House Rules"

Same farm.

Outside a farm stand in another part of town.

How's that for a pumpkin!

A week ago, I found myself in the town of Keene, New Hampshire, population 23,000, just as they were getting ready for that weekend's annual pumpkin festival for which they've broken records for having the most lit jack-o'-lanterns in one place.  More pumpkins than population.  I've never been, not wanting to contend with the 70,000 on-lookers, but I did scout out their website which showed some impressive photos.  (Here's the link.)

Without crossing the busy round-about that encircled the town square, I got a couple of shots that show workers building what would become a tree-tall structure with planks to display as many jack-o'-lanterns as could fit. Others would fill the square and border the streets.

Getting ready for pumpkin time in the Keene town square.

The same square with its lit-up "Pumpkin Drop Off" sign.

What Makes October October

Attending a Sunday afternoon Bach concert
Finding that recipe for pumpkin muffins
Carving jack o' lanterns
Coming up with costumes for the little ones
Putting the garden to bed--hoses, flower pots, outdoor furniture
Getting the double-pane windows in place
In other words ... battening down the hatches

Autumn in Oils

As one who enjoys painting landscapes, this is my time of year.  The colorist painter, Wolf Kahn, once said that in the fall, "nature gives you permission to use outrageous colors."  (Although whatever the season, he loves wild magentas and bold cadmiums ... turning tree trunks blue, skies pink, shadows violet.)  Though it turns out that he shares his time between our town in summer and NYC the rest of the year, I first saw his work when I lived in Santa Fe and walked into a gallery where I felt as if I were seeing a new Monet.

After living in Santa Fe, it took me awhile to adjust to the New England scene after I moved here.  So, in order to retrain my eye from the southwestern to the eastern landscape, I faithfully drove the back roads so that I could see my new land with its colors, not the Mexico-like ones still lingering in my mind ... or on my palette.  For one thing, I needed to adjust my vision to the multifarious blacks and whites of a northeastern winter, though it took attending a talk by Wolf Kahn, himself--he wore green trousers and a yellow T-shirt--to make me appreciate the varieties in grey.  Then, too, summer leafed into an omnipresent green with June and July the most difficult months to paint for their lack of nuance.  This state, after all, is covered with trees.  It was only during the change-over to spring and these powerful few weeks in early autumn that the landscape offered a painterly diversity.

Some autumns here are better than others.  Unfortunately, a highly wet spring and summer--peaking with Tropical Storms Irene and Lee--have dulled this year's display.  Regardless, here are some of my oils of the local scene from past years.

"Lowering Light"

"October Pond"

"Rice Farm Road in Autumn"

"Wind-row Afternoon"

"Rice Farm Pond"

"Autumn Hill"

 I have a batch in watercolors, too.  But I'll save them for another time.

"Door Number Eight" at Six Months

I just realized I've now had my blog six months.  Time for a little assessment.  I started it as a creative outlet.  A nice cozy spot where I could write on any topic I wanted.  Which has happened.  I've very much enjoyed each posting though have spent longer on each than I'd have thought.  You know--coming up with the idea, doing a bit of research, doing the actual writing, finding appropriate illustrations, defining, refining.  Anyway, here is a breakdown of my thoughts.

Frequency.  I'd originally expected to do two postings a week.  Until I found the next deadline (self-imposed, mind you) coming up far too quickly.  So I decided once a week was plenty--for both you and me.  So I'm now posting each blog on Saturday.  Which gives me Sunday to come up with a new topic and start writing.  And the rest of the week to let the whole thing perk before I post it.

Subject.  My intention was to present a diversity of subjects which I feel I'm doing.  As well as some which reflect this "door number eight" eighth decade (septuagenarian) time in my life.  In addition, I had expected to include a lot more of my favorite poetry.  But then I came up against the copyright problem ... trying to figure when a poem reverted to the public domain.  Each writer's country of origin seemed to have its own rules.  All of which required comprehensive research.  Even then I wasn't sure if I'd get it right.  Or could I get away with assuming that enough years had passed that anything written before the 20th century was now fair game?  In my original thinking, too, I'd hoped to include excerpts from some of my writings.  Pieces about some of my rough-and-ready travels from years gone by.  But then I didn't think I could squeeze any one subject into one posting.  Which would mean serializing it.  Hmmm.... no conclusion at this point.

Addendum to subject matter.  I also decided to leave out such topics as the economy, politics, the world situation, etc., leaving that to the pros. If you want a good source for that sort of thing, try James Howard Kunstler's blog--he who describes ours as "an economy based on happy motoring, suburban land development, continual war, and entertainment-on-demand."  At www.kunstler.com

Blog comments.  I'd originally thought any reader could write a comment at the end of any posting.  You know, feedback.  But, with the one exception of a blog-pro (she has her own blog)--plus a couple of others who did, in fact, manage to get through--comments have been nil.  Maybe there's a technical reason.  Not sure.

Readership.  I have a small but faithful following whom I treasure.  In truth, I wouldn't want a large readership.  But to be quite honest, I don't know how the readership is going in terms of numbers.  Maybe a dozen a week.  But are they people who access it because they know about it and want to read it ... or are they looking for something else entirely and just happen on it?  You know, a quick click and then they're gone again?  Impossible to know.  I was amused one week when I had 26 readers from the Netherlands and 26 readers from Latvia.  Now what could that have been about?  But, the key here is not to write the blog for anyone but myself and then to be pleasantly surprised if and when anyone reads it.

Illustrations.  My hope, in dressing up each posting, is to include at least one picture.  Since I do not want to infringe on anyone's property, so far, I'm only using my/our own pictures.  A category which includes paintings and photographs.  I do hope they can't subsequently be pirated, but maybe they can.

Anonymity.  In all this, I seek to remain low-key.  I don't want anything to turn topsy-turvy, triggering some spin-off that's going to connect me, say, to some weird group of cyber-pirates, junk-mailers, etc.  So, I tread lightly.  And in doing so, I seek to keep the blog as anonymous as possible.  So that means not posting pictures of family members.  Or identifying anything more than is necessary.  Too ... in respecting others' privacy, I doubt I'll post many pictures of people.

But the blog is fun to create.  I lie awake some nights re-writing things in my head or wondering what subjects to include ... or what photos, especially when I have a non-pictorial topic.  I do think of all this as a conversation of sorts.  Which is why I love the two chairs idea.  One for you as the reader.  One for me as the writer.  The two of us conversing in whatever way we want.

Home Cooking in the Old Days: '40s and '50s Stuff

Maybe it's a result of my weekly grocery shopping--seeing so many tasty, organic, imaginative (also, expensive) food items--but lately I've been thinking about what we used to eat.  Simple fare.  What my mother made for us back in the '40s and '50s.  You know, stuff like Jell-O molds with canned fruit cocktail.  A supper of creamed chipped beef or creamed tuna on toast.  Chicken fried in bacon grease.  Boiled-to-bejezus vegetables.  So I got to thinking about the old food we don't eat anymore.  (Like the above.)  And the old food we do.  Baked potatoes.  Meatloaf.  Home-made split pea soup with ham-bone and a bit of dried sage. All of which seem like comfort food today.

We didn't know the term "stay-at-home-mom" then.  My mother called herself "a homemaker."  But it meant the same thing.  It was what the women in her family had been and were.  Her mother, grandmothers, aunts, cousins.  She was a pretty good cook, managed three meals a day (all made from scratch!), and produced a conscientious variety ... though once she said that if she had to think about all the meals she'd have to cook for the rest of her life, she'd never get out of bed again.  I think I was 11 at the time.

We were fortunate to live in a part of the country where one could literally pluck fruit off the trees.  In fact, in one of our many houses (I think we moved 10 times in about 10 years), we grew persimmons, plums, apricots, tangerines, mandarin oranges, figs, cherries, strawberry guavas ... and we even had a jujube tree.  The landscape was filled with avocado and lemon groves ... walnut and orange groves, though many of those got bulldozed to make way for suburbia.

Lemon groves (with smudge pots for when the temperatures went below freezing).

So what were some of the things we ate?  I'll include a list at the bottom, but there are a few particular (even goofy?) items I want to mention.  The first was a lime Jell-O concoction (it had to be lime) with a ball of cream cheese tucked into each halved canned pear.  Sometimes my mother rolled the cream cheese balls in chopped walnuts.  If she then put a scoop of that onto a lettuce leaf (ice-berg lettuce), it was a salad.  If into a bowl with a sprinkling of confectioner's sugar, it was dessert.

No, those aren't marshmallows.

A serving of same.  Sometimes, my mother rolled the cream cheese balls in walnuts.

She was good about the toppings on things.  She liked things to be done well, to be pretty.   She'd put a dusting of paprika on top of mashed potatoes--always served in a serving dish, never helped out individually in the kitchen.  Chopped parsley on stuffed peppers.  (Grocery stores didn't charge for parsley.)  She always had lemon slices to go with glasses of iced tea.  And, while we're talking about things being done well, we always ate together at the table with napkins (sometimes napkin rings) and a full setting of table-ware.  And we children were admonished to sit tall and straight at the table, not hunched over.  Bring the food to us, we were told, don't go to the food.  We were shown how to hold a spoon, a fork, how to eat soup (spooned away from us, not toward) ...

Another special dish was what she called Eggs Goldenrod.  She'd had them as a girl and thought they were pretty elegant.  For this, she made a cream sauce, dropped in chopped chunks of hard-boiled egg whites, scooped it onto a piece of toast, and (here's the best part) topped it with the hard-boiled egg yolk which she mashed through a sieve to give the dish a sprinkly, sunny look.  She might then top that with a hint of paprika.

Eggs Goldenrod with all that cute mashed hard-boiled egg-yolk on top.  Oops, forgot the paprika.

Holidays, she stuffed dates with walnuts and rolled them in confectioner's sugar.  She rolled more cream cheese balls--plain and pimiento-flavored--in chopped nuts.  Her turkey stuffing was always the same--and what I prefer today:  stale bread bits, sauteed onion and celery, chopped parsley, melted butter, a bit of water, and enough poultry seasoning so that it smelled nice when still in the mixing bowl.

Walnut-stuffed dates for special occasions with a dusting of confectioner's sugar

I don't know if she made up the next recipe or got it someplace, but she liked to mix maraschino cherry juice with peanut butter, slather it on a banana slit down the middle, and put that on a lettuce leaf.

We only ever ate iceberg lettuce.  For pasta we only ever had spaghetti or macaroni and cheese.  Legs of lamb were always served with mint jelly out of a jar.  Chicken à la king (creamed chicken, mushrooms, peas) always elicited her memories of inviting her high school crowd over for dinner, then throwing the rugs back and dancing afterwards. We had no yogurt in the '40s and '50s.  No pizza until maybe 1956.  No fast food until a soon-to-be-popular company began selling hamburgers for 15¢ each.  And except for some olives my uncle grew and cured, we only ever ate black olives out of a can.  Sometimes, for the sake of economy, we had gravy on bread for supper.  And though my mother made good soups, we often opened a can of chicken noodle or alphabet vegetable.  Oh, and our hot dogs always came with classic yellow mustard and sweet pickle relish.

I continued some of these dishes when I had my own family.  (As well as era-specific dishes that have now gone the way.)  One family member was highly accepting of just about anything I cooked.  He was a good eater.  But there were two dishes from my childhood that he asked me to delete from my menu-planning.  One was stuffed peppers.  The other was stewed tomatoes.  I'd always sort of liked them but never made them again.

So here's my list of Forties/Fifties food that we commonly ate:

Meat:  chicken à la king, creamed chipped beef or tuna on toast, chicken and dumplings, chicken dusted in flour and fried in bacon grease, leg of lamb with mint jelly, meat loaf, spaghetti, stuffed peppers, ham, hot dogs, hamburgers

Non-meat:  Welsh rarebit on toast, gravy on bread, baked beans, mac and cheese

Potatoes:  scalloped, baked, mashed

That good soup in the can with the red and white label ... I still love it.

Soups:  green pea, canned chicken noodle (plus all the rest)

Veggies:  boiled all to hell, stewed tomatoes, boiled green beans with bits of bacon or a glob of bacon grease, cauliflower with cheese sauce topping

Salads:  a wedge of iceberg lettuce with mayonnaise, Jell-O molds with canned fruit cocktail, potato salad, tomato aspic (see below)

Bread:  white bread, Parker House rolls (my aunt was particularly good at making these), canned Boston brown bread, home-made corn bread and banana bread

Desserts/candy:  fudge, brownies, oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, lemon meringue pie with graham cracker crust, apple pie, two-egg cake, refrigerator ice cream (made with gelatin)

Special:  canned black olives, dates stuffed with walnuts, cream cheese balls rolled in chopped walnuts, cheese-straws

Breakfasts:  Eggs Goldenrod, pancakes, homemade biscuits, waffles, bacon, eggs fried in bacon grease, porridge, hot chocolate

Sandwiches:  peanut butter and jelly, chopped olive, tomato and cucumber, avocado and mayonnaise, peanut butter and raisins, tuna, bologna

Here's her recipe for Jiffy Tomato Aspic:

     2 envelopes gelatin
     juice of 1/2 lemon
     1 thin slice of onion
     1/2 c. hot chicken broth
     4 drops Tabasco sauce
     2 T. Worchestershire sauce
     1/2 t. celery salt
     2 c. tomato juice
     1 c. crushed ice
Blend in a blender for 30 seconds.  Pour into a 4-cup ring mold, chill for 10 minutes.  Fill with vegetables or seafood if desired.  Then chill until firm.

Cutting the Corn

Even as there is an apple crispness to these early autumn mornings, there is a softness to the day, to the wide land as summer's burst-to-bloom breathes a sigh that its work is finished and autumn's burst-to-glory can now take over.  The day lilies are gone.  The herb garden is in tangles.  The land, too, is softening even as it readies itself for its big show this month ... as summer's array turns to early autumn's disarray ... as youth's enthusiasm becomes maturity's last hurrah before its quietude.

Many days I walk out beside the West River--the water on one side, a corn field on the other.  Out to where early spring reveals old bittersweet berries and curls of wild grape clinging to leafless trees--the river a steely blue with as many ripples as the national debt.  Sometimes, late spring, I see a man in a red canoe fishing as birds chirp and frogs click.  Or a north-bound freight toots and, though it crosses the river down a ways, my legs seem to reverberate.  By early summer, the sun beams down on me.

River on one side, corn field on the other

But no matter what time of year, my eyes turn to that corn field.  I study it as the snow melts, it turns soggy, and Canada geese come and prowl.  If I'm lucky, I watch it being plowed, harrowed, planted.  I look for the first shoots.  By the 4th of July, I check that the corn's knee high.  And then I spend the rest of the summer watching it grow tall and sturdy.  (And though ears appear, no one picks them, for this is field corn, not sweet.  It doesn't end up in a farm stand's display baskets.)  Mid-to-late September, I witness the cutting.  It always takes a few days.

Before the cutting begins

Now, not long afterwards, you can see the cutting has started

Here he comes ...

After two or three more circuits

Finishing up for the day

But beforehand, sometime in early September, something else gets there first.  I can trace its path--along an animal "slide" from the river up to the road, across the road, and into the fields where it rummages, cuts, and hauls, leaving tell-tale stalks in its wake as it then returns river-ward.

Evidence of something rummaging in the field ...

... dragging the stalks across the road

... then using this burrowed-out path to slide back down to the river.  (Though this looks like an uphill shot, it's really a downhill shot.)

I once stopped a woman with a little white dog coming my way.  "I have a question," I said and pointed to the burrowed-out path.  "What animal is making this?"

"Oh, it's the river beaver," she told me ... cousin to the beaver that dams streams and creates ponds. "It builds its lodges down by the river.  You can see them if you ever paddle along here."

It times its lodge-building perfectly--after the stalks have attained a golden tinge and have dried a bit but before the farmer starts cutting.

By now, the first of October, both workers have finished their tasks.  The lodges are built; the corn is cut.  The field is now stubble.  And though the air is still soft, soon enough a fierce wind will come whistling down the river.  And everything will turn the colors of raw sienna, raw umber, or pewter grey--shadows, tree trunks, twigs, fluff, seed heads, bare branches, dead curled leaves.

Finished

I never tire of watching the process.  I always look out for the corn cutting.  By both the river beavers and the farmer.