Amen with a T

Serendipity Once More

2010-03-13T11:20:00.000-08:00

This photo shows my bedside table. I am about to read yet another book about K2 from the warmth of my bed. Anyone who has read this blog in the past may know of my couch-potato fascination with adventure. In that post was a reference to a book I had just read, The True Stories of the First Five Women Who Climbed K2 by Jennifer Jordan.

One of the five women was the English climber, Alison Hargreaves, so last night, when I checked in with Daphne, who is fast becoming one of my favorite English bloggers, I was astounded to read this post. Read her post—there’s really not much else to say—and follow the link to the Timesonline and look at the photo of Alison and her two small children shortly before she died.

If you click on my photograph, you will be able to read the subtitle: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain. I don’t know, I really don’t know.

Horticultural Error

2010-03-11T13:48:00.001-08:00

It’s THAT time of the year again. This year I want to point out a horticultural error. All winter long I have been able to dig under the snow in the little herb patch outside my back door and find a reasonable amount of sage and thyme. Enough to dress up a pork loin or make a pathetic attempt at what those guys on Top Chef refer to as “presentation.” But what I really want is parsley. Not that curly stuff that people leave on their plates beside a barely nibbled orange slice, but the flat kind that I put into soups and stews and even meat loaf and sprinkle recklessly on just about anything to give a lovely touch of color.

So here’s my complaint. When the big gardener in the sky moved on from fauna to flora, he divided plants into perennials and annuals and that totally incomprehensible variation, biennials. Parsley was a mistake. It should have been a perennial and allowed to flourish all winter, even in cold climates.

I can’t wait to open the back door and snatch up handfuls of parsley (and not have to surreptitiously chew on a leaf in the grocery store to make sure it isn’t cilantro.)

And that is all I have to say about parsley.

I Just Wish . . .

2010-03-08T10:27:00.000-08:00

. . . I had listened more closely to my brother-in-law’s conversations with us. It wasn’t that we didn’t talk to him often. We did. There were long phone calls, either on special occasions or just to check up on each other. I greatly admired the fact that in his late seventies he faced —and overcame—the challenge of conquering a computer and our whole family exchanged frequent e-mails. In spite of his delight in his new skills, he never lost the practice of sending hand-written letters, often accompanied by clippings from papers and magazines. He usually painstakingly underlined the passages that were of most importance to him.

It wasn’t that we didn’t see him often in person. We did. Family was important to him and he spent a great deal of time with Ernie and his two sisters. He loved and showed much interest in his nephews and nieces, marrying many of them, traveling as far as Montana and New Jersey. But because he was always stationed in small towns in northern rural Iowa and eventually retired to one of them, it seemed easier for him to travel to visit with family members. He spent many holidays with Mary Ann in Chicago, because he often couldn’t travel until services were over. He loved to drive, so vacations in Montana, Michigan and New Mexico were frequent. We did on occasion visit him in his various parishes, but for the most part he came to us. So when he talked of his friends and his activities at home, there was no “hook” to hang his narratives on. We knew of the Pilgrims, a group of farmers for the most part who shared his love of Harleys. Together they traveled around parts of the mid-west and even took trips across America. Bob rode in all forty 48 contiguous states. The Pilgrims married and had children and they adopted Bob as a second family. We heard their names and anecdotes about them, but we were often too busy with family obligations to etch their stories in our brains. I heard about much, listened carefully to little.

It was hard last week to stand by Bob’s casket and shake so many hands and realize that I should have known more about the myriads of people from miles around who came to pay their respects. My knowledge of the surrounding towns was sketchy; my understanding of the lives of Iowa farmers was abysmal. It was Bob’s readiness to listen to the words and the stories of these people that made him so beloved. I wish I had been more like him.

Sad Hiatus

2010-02-21T07:18:00.000-08:00

Last week we were in Chicago, now we are back home before a trip to Iowa for the funeral service and burial of a beloved brother, brother-in-law, uncle and great uncle—a priest for over fifty years. More later.

If You Build it, I Will Come

2010-02-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

You know by now I am a great fan of trashy mysteries. I’m not a fan of futuristic books, trashy or otherwise. There is one author, however, who combines murder and police investigation with just enough of a futuristic edge that I look forward to her next book. And I am soon satisfied; she’s wonderfully prolific. I refer to J.D. Robb and her series with titles that end, “in Death.”

The heroine—Lt. Eve Dallas. The time—somewhere around 2060. The setting—New York, where Lt. Dallas lives in the palatial mansion of her husband Roarke. He’s gorgeous, by the way, and fortunately doesn’t expect much from Eve, who is totally domestically challenged. What he does expect is not fodder for a family blog.

J.D. Robb does not push the “life in the future” aspect. Police work certainly seems a lot easier with an identification system that the American Civil Liberties Union would have great trouble accepting. Roarke has no need of Martha Stewart when he can go to a wall unit and program a meal. Most of the other household appliances seem pretty normal—except for one. After a shower, Eve just walks into a drying tube/cabinet. No towels, no rubbing, just a flow of warm air. Doesn’t that sound like a great idea? And the thing is, there is no reason why such a convenience shouldn’t be a standard appliance even today. Perhaps they are in some snooty bathrooms. I checked and I find cabinets for drying surgical instruments and herbs, evidence or damp clothes. None as a bathroom fixture.

Anyone know the address of the Patent Office?

Post War Britain and All That.

2010-02-04T13:05:00.000-08:00

I have written elsewhere about my new-found interest in post-war British history. I even followed up that post with one on baked beans on toast .
I finished David Kynaston’s book and went right to the computer to order from the library two books I wanted to fill in some gaps. I’m not sure if Family Britain could truly be called a History book: Kynaston has pulled together the strands of everyday life and wrapped them around the historical framework of postwar Britain. I had never even heard of Mass Observation, a giant undertaking which captured and preserved the views, opinions and everyday life of ordinary people in Britain. These people were the original bloggers and I was mesmerized by their accounts. Both Austerity Britain and Family Britain brought back so many memories for me—everything from politicians, radio shows, entertainers, the 11+ and the National Health Service. Some of the discussion about the latter could well be on current news programs.

Just after I finished these two volumes, around 1500 pages covering 1945-57 (the author is still writing the next), I saw a mention of Our Times by A.N. Wilson and I had it sent to our library from Michigan State. This is a history of 400 or so pages, covering 1953-2008. Much more succinct, you might say? No. Like Kynaston, A.N. Wilson flits hither and yon and pulls out various strands to examine. His is an upper-class microscope; his world is inhabited by people with names like Anthony Chenevix-Trench and Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, he decries a sermon delivered “in Croydon of all places”. He attributes the decline of the Church of England, at least in part, to the televising of John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga on BBC in 1967. “So completely gripped was the nation by the unfolding drama week by week that many vicars and their congregations abandoned Evensong, never to revive it.”

Mr. Wilson has no sense of proportion. His description of the events leading up to and following the whole Profumo affair is detailed and well documented. I now know much more about it than the Suez Crisis. If he considers something interesting (Anthony Eden was the “the only male British Prime Minister known to have varnished his fingernails”), he includes it; if there is an opportunity for a purple patch, he embellishes it.

I’m not sure what I am learning from this book but, since my avowed purpose is to celebrate the absurd, let me quote a short passage. Mr. Wilson is writing of the home life of a Prime Minister who shall remain anonymous in this post:

At Birch Grove, the **********’s country house, the police patrolled the gardens by night before the visit of General de Gaulle, and were disturbed to note a light bobbing about outside the house. They were surprised to find the Prime Minister’s wife, wearing only a slip and gumboots, a miner’s lamp on her forehead and two hot-water bottles strapped to her ample midriff—“I got a bit behind with the bedding out*”.

Rule Britannia.

*transplanting

You've Got to be Carefully Taught

2010-01-27T14:05:00.000-08:00

I went in to watch the news yesterday partway through a segment on revising school text books in Texas. Apparently it involved omitting and/or changing references to the War between the States, the Liberty Bell and Christmas. Lots of people were upset, but I can't comment on the report, because I just didn't see enough.

I can, however, write on a text book which has a home in our basement. Among Ernie’s large collection of books is a relic from his early education. It is entitled Southern Lands, written by Harlan H. Barrows, Edith Putnam Parker and Margaret Terrell Parker and published originally in 1929. It might be worth keeping just for the graffiti inside the front cover. 75 cents for a textbook!*

It’s a "geography" book: you know, the subject that doesn’t exist any more—it’s Social Science these days. They might just as well have called it social science even way back then: this is a dense book, packed with facts and figures, charts and study questions, way more complex than anything you would find in today’s grade schools, or maybe even colleges.The authors write of the Belgian Congo and Rhodesia and there's not a single stan in sight.

And here's page 131, in which our triumvirate describes the problems of Mexico:

As a rule, they received little pay for their work. Sometimes the received none. Small wages mean low standards of living. Great numbers of Mexicans have become used to such standards. Since they do not know better ones, they do not wish for them. They do not know how to help themselves if they have a chance to do so.

You've got to be carefully taught

*I hate geography
In case of fire, throw this in.
Don't be hard on this book
me lad–75¢ it cost me dad
This book is nice and new
but the junk inside it is just gue (sic)

From Sharks to Hedgefunds in 100 Pages

2010-01-23T17:43:00.000-08:00

Murder mysteries are my favorite escapist literature. Not the Agatha Christie/village green school where there are six stock characters and we have to figure out who dun it, but international or high tech, biological weapon or political, medical or some variation thereof. Just read a financial mystery, Top Producer, by Norb Vonnegut. (No relation of THE Vonnegut.) It starts off with all the right ingredients, including a slick stockbroker protagonist, Grove O’Rourke, and a shredded body in the shark tank of the Boston Aquarium. But by page 100, this is what we get:

JJ owned $190 million of one stock. The markets can cut share prices 60, 70 or 80 percent in seconds. If Jack Oil crashed 50 percent, for example, JJ would lose $95 million. That’s why I wanted him to hedge.
A zero-cost collar would insure JJ against losses greater than the first 10 percent. Of the $95 million loss, JJ would eat the first $19 million. That’s 10 percent of $190 million. But with SKC’s hedge in place, my firm would pay him $76 million. That’s $95 million minus the $19 million. JJ limited his downside and avoided catastrophic losses.

And so on. . .

From a promising murder mystery we get to a wealth management manifesto in a hundred pages. However, you’ve got to admire the finesse of these hedge fund operators.

Maybe they should get a large bonus.

Literature for a Snowy Day

2010-01-17T21:03:00.000-08:00

I have written on a couple of occasions about Scandinavian mysteries. I wrote about Henning Mankell here and Åsa Larsson here. I intended to write about Stieg Larsson. Maybe I wanted to wait until I had read the third book in the trilogy—and there are 24 reservations ahead of me at the library for The Girl who Kicked the Hornest’s Nest—or maybe I was just lazy. I must say I was severely tempted after reading the passage in the second volume of the trilogy where Lisbeth Salander furnishes her apartment. She had stolen vast amounts of money by hacking into a bank account and then bought a 27 room apartment. She only used a few rooms and went on a shopping spree which read something like this:

She bought a Klippan loveseat, a Bjursta table, a Florö bed, a Knubbig lamp, an Ektorp armchair, a Hemnes chest . . .

I think there was an idea lurking in the back of my mind that there was something worth writing here. A high school essay . . . a senior thesis . . . a Ph.D. dissertation. At least a post about couches and chairs. But I didn’t write it.

Laura Miller did. This wonderful article on Nordic gumshoes appeared in Saturday Morning’s Wall Street Journal. Surely her article said it all about detectives on snow-shoes. Then, by one of those glorious pieces of serendipity, the Grosse Pointe Library Newsletter, Library Pointes, appeared in my mailbox, exhorting us to try Kjell Erikkson, Hakan Nesser, Helene Tursten, Jo Nesbo, Karin Fossum and Mari Jungstedt. I think I will take their advice. After I’ve gone to IKEA.

Dear Ace Hardware

2010-01-13T13:03:00.000-08:00

Do you think this is a glass half full, or a glass half empty?

I’ve written about our local hardware store before. That time I was somewhat amazed by their merchandise.

Now I turn my attention to their marketing. I just received an e-mail from them containing the following paragraph:

Thanks for being one of our most valued customers. We appreciate your business during this past year and look forward to helping you turn your next to-do list into a "to-done" list.

From your friends at Village Ace Hardware

What a Sally Fields moment! They like me! They appreciate my business!

Then I see this:

Hi Beryl Ament, as of 01/08/2010 you have 180 points. You only need 2500 points to earn a $5 Reward.

Anyone know anything about Marketing? Does that seem a good incentive?

I am Thankful

2010-01-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

Part of my New Year organization involves a re-vamp of my blogroll. My previous one called for blogs to be divided into English blogs and American blogs. But how to classify the expat blogs by an Englishwoman living in Tennessee or by Paola in Seattle, what to do with Michael, an American who writes from Horsham? Then there's all the Englishwomen living in France . . . and so it goes. So I have just listed a few of the many writers I read. If I had any manners, I would introduce you to them. But you are not wallflowers, you can make their acquaintances, and follow their links to meet their friends.

Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery? I don't intend to imitate any of my favorites, but I do love the structure that "The Bookworm" gives to her blog by featuring every Monday the Simple Woman's Daybook, where she completes a litany of sentences. One of them is "I am thankful" . . . and in my case it can be completed, "I am thankful that I have a wonderful neighbor who cheerfully uses his snow plough to clear our driveway and front path."

Pay Attention, Mr. President

2010-01-06T16:40:00.000-08:00

By today’s standards, I was a pretty awful mother. I told my children they were bad—forget that hate the sin, love the sinner stuff. I told them that they had done something wrong. I used lots of “you” sentences, as in “you hurt your brother”, rather than the “I” sentences, like “I am sad that you hurt your brother.” I do understand the advances in psychology here and I no longer wince at “that behavior is unacceptable”. It is the language of child-rearing. So imagine my consternation yesterday when President Obama addressed the American people:

Now, I will accept that intelligence, by its nature, is imperfect, but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged. That's not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it. Time and again, we've learned that quickly piecing together information and taking swift action is critical to staying one step ahead of a nimble adversary.

Those are my italics. I think I know what happened. In his hasty attempt to show the world that terrorism has no place in his administration, the President grabbed his copy of “Child Rearing in the 21st Century” off the bookshelf (that’s the book crammed up against that best selling book for children Captain Underpants) instead of “The Wartime Rhetoric of Winston Churchill”.

Now, as I understand it, another rule of enlightened child rearing is to say firmly what you expect and set out the consequences for not conforming. As in “Janet Napolitano will apprehend the bad man or have a time out”.

In my day he would have spanked her.

Cri de Coeur

2009-12-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, when newspapers were in bloom, the Detroit Free Press ran a writing competition every Christmas. I’m not sure if there was a prize, but I do remember that they printed the best three or so entries. The winners were always imaginative and well written. Detroit is a city with numerous colleges and universities with strong English departments, and countless writers who can make words sing.

One year I entered the competition. It must have been in the seventies. Mine was not a serious entry, not did I mean it to be. In a different time, in a different place, and, let’s face it, if I had any spare cash, I would have poured out all those words to a psychologist, trying to reconcile the countless chores of a parent with young children at Christmas with the need to make the Advent season a time of quiet and reflection and unhurried preparation. I still had memories of my annual trip to the Royal Festival Hall to hear The Messiah, I loved the idea of shopping for the perfect Christmas gift and sitting by the fire with a leisurely cup of tea, listening to carols. We were alone in a big city with no family to lend a hand and Toys"R"Us had lost its lustre. You may wonder where I found the time to write this opus if I didn’t have the time for a quick chorus of Silent Night, but it was important to me, so I did. I can’t remember if I wrote it in the first person or how I constructed it, but I am pretty sure that whoever read it threw it in the nearest wastebasket.

It served its purpose and I think that’s what words are for. That’s why there are so many blogs. If this were Redbook I’d come up with some schmaltzy ending, something about having the time and the leisure now and how I’d give anything to go back to those days when the beds were un-made, I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. to make cookies and the shining lights on the Christmas tree made even the whiniest kid smile with delight. I wouldn’t.

Oh, that entry? I never heard from The Free Press. And a few years later they stopped running the competition.

Three Score Years and Ten

2009-12-07T20:28:00.001-08:00

I have spent the past week basking in memories of last weekend, which combined Thanksgiving with a wonderful party on Saturday in honor of my seventieth birthday. All the children and grandchildren assembled on Friday morning for a "photoshoot." Mike, our photographer, did a masterful job with eighteen children under the age of twelve (though some thanks go to Lucy's friend Janie. Her dance routine behind Mike mesmerized the little ones!)

The house is still full of flowers, the refrigerator contains a few interesting left-overs and the hard work of my terrific family warms my heart. Thanks, guys.

A Fairy on Stilts?

2009-11-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

Soon Thanksgiving will be over and December will be here. You know, that time of year when we re-read Dickens' A Mid-Winter's Carol, send out Holiday cards and grow misty eyed as we hum along to I'm Dreaming of a White ... Come to think of it, that song has not joined the ranks of the politically correct.

Not yet. But Scotland is leading the way. Dundee, to be precise. Clearly the good citizens feel the need to celebrate something and, "instead of the traditional nativity story, the festival will feature a solar-powered disco, a continental market, a circus and a fairy on stilts."

Oy vey.

Technology Marches On

2009-11-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

Need to cut a thread while at a basketball game? Need to unscrew something while out in the woods? Ernie has always come to the rescue, pulling out his trusty Swiss Army knife.

His style has been considerably cramped of late by the efficient TSA inspectors at airports, who tell him in no uncertain terms he can’t take his knife on board a plane. Twice he solved the problem—once by sticking the offending object in a planter and retrieving it on the way home, once by secreting it under a wastebasket. On one occasion when he remembered to put the knife in his carry-on baggage and take it all the way to DC, he was stopped from entering the Library of Congress. Bet you didn’t know there are indentations in the brick facade of the L of C where you can stick a knife for an hour or two. It will be a while before he tries that one again: on our last trip to Washington he once again forgot he was carrying the knife and had to surrender it.

I just saw the latest Swiss Army knife in the National Geographic Catalog. In addition to all the usual blades, screwdrivers, files etc., there is now ... a USB drive. So next time you are out in the woods you can skin a snake, cut little pieces of kindling and, if you come across a computer, write up your field notes.

But those crafty Swiss, they think of everything. “The drive also detaches easily from the tool so it can be placed in your carry-on bag.” I don’t suppose the USB drive would work too well after sitting in a planter for a week.

A Crinoline Lady

2009-11-13T20:19:00.000-08:00

Recently I was telling Kate about the Collyer brothers and how their fatal passion for hoarding gave their name to fire department codes indicating a house packed to the gills with potentially flammable materials. As is so often the case, within a few days there was an article in the Wall Street Journal describing other tragedies caused by this addiction to collecting excess possessions.

I’m not guilty of this kind of behavior, although I will admit that as I was putting stuff back into the dining room and re-arranging the drawers in a couple of chests, I lovingly ran my hands over a few things which I have been hanging on to for over forty years.

My mother’s mother lived
about a mile away and every week day afternoon (except Monday: that was washday) my mother walked to my grandmother’s, where they sat and drank tea and knitted until Mrs Dale’s Diary was over and it was time to go and get our tea. Sometimes, instead of knitting, my mother would do what she called “her embroidery.” She would embroider pillow slips or tray cloths or little doilies. Some of these are now in my possession—rarely if ever used. I wash them once in a while, starch them, iron them and put them back in the drawer. I can’t bear to throw them away. I am not sure if they are all my mother’s work. Some of the white on white and cut work items are exquisite and I think they may have been done by my Auntie Doris. What I remember my mother doing were variations of a design known as “A Crinoline Lady” or sometimes “An Old Fashioned Lady”. It always involved a large crinoline skirt and a parasol and there were usually flowers or butterflies in the background. The Crinoline lady in the photograph on the left was on a pillow slip, finished with crochet work.

I’m not even sure if my mother used them. I treasure them, and hope that my similarity to Langley Collyer ends there.

Pathetic

2009-11-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

"He'll be there between 3:00 and 6:00". He is the refrigerator repair man. One of these days I will write about my refrigerator. The lemon.

Anyway, the hands of the clock edged closer and closer to 6:00. And once again, the waiting window served its purpose.

Makeover

2009-11-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

Remember my post about the waiting window? I wrote it over two years ago and in my last sentence I lamented the need for some new wallpaper. Well, here’s the waiting window today. I love the riot of scarlet and crimson in the paper. I wasn’t exactly looking for wallpaper when I found this, but when I saw it, I knew I must have it.

I seem to throw sidebars into most of my posts. Here’s today’s. We bought this house 40 years ago and I wallpapered the dining room twice before. The first time was in the seventies. Avocado green and yellow floral stripes. Well, I told you it was the seventies. It was actually rather attractive, though I was too inexperienced to realize that when you have an old house, the walls tend to be crooked and broad stripes are not the way to go. This paper was followed in the late eighties with the teal paper in the earlier photograph. Both times I did the entire job by myself. The first time I had a slew of small children running around, the second I was working full time. But I don’t seem to remember the job seeming onerous.

Flash forward to 2009. My plan was to do it all again. When Kate offered to help me, I was delighted. You guessed it. She did it all, while I stood around tired and clueless. I can't thank her enough. It was difficult paper to work with, but it is done and I will never wall paper that room again.

We still have to agree on a rug and I will have to reupholster the chairs, but I smile every morning when I catch sight of this cheerful paper. I still wait by the window once in a while, even if it is just to remember waiting for a husband to make it home from work and for children to creep home in the wee small hours.

Yuck

2009-11-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

I need to lose a little weight. Quite a bit of weight, actually. A lot of weight. If I decide to get serious, I know where to start. I must reactivate my gym membership and spend a few hours on the bicycle, the rowing machine and the treadmill. And I need to watch what I stuff in my mouth. I am pretty sure it is not what I eat, but how much that is the problem. Portion control will be my new mantra.

One thing I will not do is eat this disgusting looking food. I cannot for the life of me see how a person could lose weight—let alone keep diabetes in check—by eating pancakes and syrup, lasagne, chicken salad with mayonnaise, and brownies. Nary a green leaf in sight (except for a ruff of lettuce and a pickle or two) and these foods are being held up as objects of desire!

Perhaps you think this company’s advertising couldn’t get much worse. You are wrong. Here comes the sidebar. Ernie graduated from John Carroll with Don Shula. They were on the track team together, and that association caused us to follow Don’s immensely successful career as a football coach avidly.
He’s been retired for a while, but he suddenly popped up and informed us that a steady diet this food caused him to lose 32 lbs. Mrs. Shula got in on the act, losing 23 lbs. Why am I so upset? The lovely Mrs. Shula doesn’t refer to her husband as “Don” (“Donny?”), but proclaims (click on image), “It’s really important for Coach and me to enjoy our life and our family." Coach! Does she go around saying, “Coach, here’s your breakfast” or, “Coach, it’s time for the party.”

Too much Decadent Fudge Brownie is not a good thing.

Let's Eat Candy

2009-10-31T19:15:00.000-07:00

I hope I will get a photo of Evelyn in the Dorothy dress I wrote about the other day. Until then, here are some old favorites:

We're not in Kansas Anymore

2009-10-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

Over the years I've made a number of Halloween costumes. There is quite a wardrobe to pass around, so I only made one this year. This one will start its journey around the cousins with Evelyn. Let me show you the pattern. It's a Simplicity pattern and it comes in sizes 3,4,5,6,7, and 8. I made a size 7. Cute little model, isn't she? She's poking at her dimple a la Shirley Temple.There was another pattern starting at a size 8. I did not see fit to buy it and this photo is a bit blurry and shiny—I had to creep into JoAnns with my camera and commit sartorial espionage.

The question for today: compare and contrast these two models and their
dresses and decide which one you would send your daughter to elementary school in.

A History Lesson

2009-10-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

I enjoy the occasional present: fun when it is something I have expressed a desire for, even nicer when it is a surprise. Several years ago Andrew presented me with a surprise—a book entitled Educating Women, A Pictorial History of Bedford College, University of London 1849-1985. I got my Bachelor’s degree at Bedford and I had always surmised that the names of various buildings and Scholarships were derived from founders of the college and the book proved that to be true, while it traced the history of the college from the beginning, through the war years, through the addition of (gasp) male students to the eventual merger in 1985 with Royal Holloway.

I was thumbing through it yesterday. I am afraid I had not paid much attention to the history of the college while I was attending it. I should have, because the women who supported it financially and with hard work in those early days were fighting for an unpopular cause—the education of women. There were photos of them, most the kind of women we would have uncharitably called old battle-axes. I came across a photograph of the first Principal, Miss Emily Penrose. Here she stands erect and imposing in her pleated shirtwaist. The book is vague about her own degrees—remember it was not until 1878 that the University of London allowed women to take degree examinations, and not until the 1920’s that they were allowed to do so at Oxford, thanks the diplomatic skills of Miss Penrose, who had left Bedford for Somerville College. I do know that she taught Ancient History.

Why did I notice Miss Penrose's photo? Yesterday the Wall Street Journal interviewed a trio of experts on the reasons why America lags behind in Math and Science. I wasn’t going to read the article, but this photo of a radiant blond caught my eye. Who is she? Amy Gutman, president of the University of Pennsylvania.

What a difference a century makes.

Calling all Economists

2009-10-23T17:28:00.000-07:00

Surely gold is gold is gold is gold . . . That being the case, why does it matter who I buy gold from? I really don't get it.

It goes without saying I wouldn't buy it from some guy who was last heard of breaking into an office suite in the Watergate.

Fares Please

2009-10-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I wrote about our family's transportation in post war Britain. It was a pleasant surprise to come across a tangible memento of those days.

This is a tuppenny hapenny bus ticket issued by London Transport. When I first started riding on buses there was a driver, who had no contact with passengers, and a conductor, who held the color-coded tickets on a wooden board with springs, not unlike a series of mousetraps. This contraption was replaced by a machine with a roll of paper. The conductor punched in the relevant information and out came a ticket like the one in the photo. Since most buses were the iconic red double deckers and the conductor could be upstairs when the passengers boarded, there was a certain amount of honor involved, because fares were calculated from the point of boarding to the destination.

Some time later as buses were re-designed and transportation costs needed to be cut, the system was changed, conductors were eliminated and fares handed over to the driver on entry.

Oh, and that tuppenny hapenny business? Back then our currency consisted of pounds, shillings and pence. Twelve pence = one shilling, twenty shillings=one pound. A halfpenny, pronounced hapenny was legal tender as was the bright copper coin equal to half a hapenny, i.e. a farthing. Of course, England eventually switched to a decimal system and it is a source of some embarrassment for me when I am in England that I have to rummage through my wallet like someone who is completely ignorant of the system. Which I just about am. Give me a thrupenny bit any day.

It's All in the Title

2009-10-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

I heard a homily today about leadership and how great leaders eschew titles: Francis of Assisi wouldn’t take Holy Orders and assume the title which his elevation entitled him to, Fr. Bill Cunningham, who founded the successful Focus Hope program in Detroit, refused the rank of Monsignor.

Would that my Medigap insurance company felt the same way. They erroneously refused to cover my shingles shot until my phone call made them admit they were wrong. Actually, they never said they were wrong, but they sent me a nice letter telling me they were “pleased to inform you that your claim was approved”. Then came the “if you have any questions paragraph”, followed by a signature which must have come from an early work of Gilbert and Sullivan:

L***** H****
Inquiry Resolution Specialist
Government Grievance Inquiry Unit
Client Services Department

I have no idea what it means, but she did (eventually) make the payment.

Get off the stove, grandma . . .

2009-10-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

. . . you're too old to ride the range. A dumb putative title for a country and western song, but one that Ernie loves to quote. I was reminded of it last night.

As a sidebar, I must admit that there were two deterrents to resuming this blog—one, the fear that the templates, the settings and the HTML editing would have changed, and two, the challenge of updating links.

The first fear was pretty ungrounded and the link update is tedious, but not difficult. While I was away I didn't read any blogs and now I discover some of my favorites are gone or moved to other platforms. So I'm not done yet.

One link I am keeping is to a well written, well researched blog entitled Time Goes By. Any of you who are older or are planning on becoming older, would do well to read it. The author, Ronni Bennett, runs the gamut from pending legislation, including everything Medicare recipients should know about Health Care to whether long grey hair is attractive. One of her biggest bones of contention is the stereotyping of seniors and the vocabulary used to describe them.

Back to last night and the latest edition of Top Chef. There's always bickering and backstabbing among the contestants and yes, I know it is edited for maximum effect, but last night, as they were awaiting the judges' decision, someone said, "I hope grandma is gone." He was referring to Robin Leventhal, aged 43. That's forty three, people.

Robin was not eliminated and "Grandma" is still riding the range.

Only in Grosse Pointe

2009-10-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

One of the aims of this blog is the celebration of the absurd. Where better to find inspiration for a post than the Crime Watch section of the Grosse Pointe Times. Take, for example, the October 1 edition. I pass over the bunny trapped in the window well, the criminal suspected of “wasting perfectly good butter by putting it on a colleague’s car” and give you—

Bear Complaint made.

Police responded at 4:37 p.m. Sept. 21 to a possible ordinance violation after a neighbor complained about a 10-foot inflatable bear in a University of Michigan shirt on a front lawn.

The city’s ordinance states that lawn ornaments can only be displayed for a reasonable amount of time. Since U-M football games are still going on, police did not feel this was an ordinance violation.

No mention of the neighbor taking this all the way to the Supreme Court.

I have news for you, ANA

2009-10-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

So, Air Nippon Airways has started asking passengers (in Japanese) to use the bathroom before boarding their planes. This in the interest of a greener planet.

I don’t know about you, but I make as many visits to the bathroom as is humanly possible before getting on a plane. Ever hear, “Hey, Mabel, let’s not use the ubiquitous, clean and spacious bathrooms in the terminal, so we can wait until we reach cruising altitude to climb over the fat guy in the aisle seat, squeeze around the coffee or meal service carts, wait in line in the cramped aisle and finally use the Lilliputian facilities in a space which resembles a sardine can?”

What planet is Japan on?

Sylvia Smith, December 14, 1939-September 15, 2009

2009-10-08T17:56:00.000-07:00

Lindsell Hall was a University of London residence hall in Swiss Cottage. There were four houses of the “Upstairs Downstairs” variety, joined to two more on a couple of levels. In this photo you can see an outside bridge on the left. The houses were converted into a myriad of rooms, mainly by constructing a wall from the corridor to the middle of the handsome bay windows. I moved in about 50 years ago to the day. My room was on the ground floor, somewhere to the right of this photo, across the hall from the Lindsell Hall Dean, a Chemistry professor who wordsmiths must have had in mind when they came up with the phrase, “dour Scots woman”.

The prime rooms were on the top floor—once the bleak sleeping rooms of tweenies and housemaids. I had one in my last year with a glorious view over the housetops of Swiss Cottage and St. Johns Wood. The kitchen and laundry room were in the basement and there were a few student rooms down there, mainly, I think, in the left hand building.

It was from one of those rooms that music came pouring out as we explored on that first day—music that was alien to most of us who were just discovering the Beatles. The record was “Four Freshmen and Five Trombones”. The record player belonged to Sylvia Smith, and she quickly became a close friend. She assured me in a letter just a few weeks ago that she was also humming along at that time to a Bartok violin concerto, but it is the Four Freshmen that I remember. I loved the way she said “Scunthorpe” and she introduced me to a delicious bread, forever know as “Sylv’s mum’s plum bread.” Try saying “ moom’s ploom.” She visited my house in Enfield and intrigued me with details of her minor, Agricultural Economics.

She moved out of Lindsell in our senior year into a flat with Anne and Maggie and Jan. I don’t know how much they studied, but they sure had a good time.

Then came the year when I was working on my ed. certificate and Sylv lived in a minute flat on Haverstock Hill. She put her minor to good use working for the Pig Industry Advisory Board—“This is my friend Sylvia. She’s in pigs.” Later she was in sheep. She got to know my friends. I got to know hers. When I needed cheering up, she came to the rescue with a mushroom omelet.

Then for almost 50 years we lived thousands of miles apart. Our correspondence was sporadic. Sometimes there were gaps; sometimes the letters were frequent (Sylv refused to use e-mail.) We stayed in her house in London and Kate and Ron used it as a base for exploring London on their honeymoon. She reminded me lately that she had taken Al in when he failed to find a job in Paris. We usually managed birthday cards: her birthday was just four days after mine. She remained friends with many of my former friends.
Here she is (second from the right) when she witnessed the wedding of my classicist friend, Frances.

She remained passionate about music, traveling all over England and Europe to Music Festivals. I was forever getting postcards from Prague or Stockholm extolling the Mahler or the Mozart. She took advantage of everything cultural London had to offer. About 20 years ago she bought a second house, in Scotland. I never could pronounce Kirkcudbright, but I looked forward to the day when I could get organized enough to visit her there. When she retired and left London, she bought a second residence in Scotland, a flat high in a house at the mouth of the Clyde where she could watch the ships making their way up to Glasgow. Just as she was beginning to enjoy the results of the remodeling of the flat, she was diagnosed with cancer. She never told me: I am not entirely sure who knew the severity of her illness. I think it gradually leaked out and our mutual friend Frances kept me in the loop. It was easier to live on the one floor of the house in Kirkcudbright, so she spent most of her time there, refusing, in her Sylvia fashion, any intrusive treatment. Even more defiantly she bought a new car, attended as much as she could of this year’s Orkney music Festival and spent two weeks driving around the northern tip of Scotland. Then it was off to the hospice ward in Dumfries. I spoke to her there and she didn’t want sympathy. She enjoyed a lovely day in the sunshine in her garden when an ambulance and nurses took her back for a day. The last time I phoned, she was too ill to talk and a few days later Frances called with news of her death.

I have asked her sister for some recent photos of Sylvia. I don’t really need them. Her real face, the face of a young woman starting college, flashes before my eyes when I see the words Kirkcudbright or Scunthorpe, when I eat a mushroom omelet or when I hear a snatch of the incomparable Four Freshmen singing Angel Eyes.

Placeholder

2009-03-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

This blog will return soon. Right now I am posting some recollections I compiled as a contribution to remarks to be made at the next (and penultimate) meeting of the Enfield County Old Girls’ Association. The photo inserted in the earlier post identifies the subject of these remembrances. The pin shown here was our official Enfield County School pin, worn by us with much pride. You can also find more memories of our camping days here.

Miss F. Sharp—my memories

It’s the suit I remember first: brown and mustard tweed, with a straight skirt. She can’t have worn it every day, but it seems that way. When I look at the photos I have of the school prefects, I recall her “photo” suit. It was a lighter brown with a white stripe. And in summer wasn’t there a beige linen dress? But it is her everyday suit that made the biggest impression. There’s the iron grey bobbed hair, tucked behind the ear on one side, held back by a tortoiseshell clasp on the other. She completed the picture with lisle stockings and sturdy brown lace-up shoes.

There was so much we didn’t know about her: in those days we would never have dreamed of asking. Until Carol referred to her as F.E., I always assumed it was Effie. Where did she go to university? How old was she? Somehow we believed that she, like most of our teachers, was “old.” She first became my teacher in 1952 and it was much, much later, when I read Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, that I learned that women her age had had a hard time being admitted to degree programs, let alone in Latin and Greek. She knew her stuff and had kept up to date with teaching methods. She greeted us, the class of 2L, with a confusing “Salvete, discipulae,” leaving us convinced that not only was Latin a subject worth learning, but a language that could be spoken. Winston Churchill said “I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour and Greek as a treat.” There were a handful of us who enjoyed that treat, and our results in A and S level were an indication of her effectiveness as a teacher.

Her role, however, was not confined to teaching. As deputy head mistress she was charged with keeping discipline, and a summons to her little room outside the library left many students quaking in their shoes. Beneath her steely exterior was a kind and gracious woman. During a rehearsal for a school play I had managed to step on my glasses case, skid across the floor and break my ankle. My leg was put in a cast and I walked on crutches, and for my whole recuperation Miss Sharp made a huge detour from her home in Woodford Green to Freezywater to pick me up and drive me to school.

She drove a little black car. People who knew about cars said it was courting disaster to travel with her, but several of us willingly did so every year when we went to compete in the Classical Verse and Prose Speaking competition. She drove us across London to Dulwich College, knowing all the while that the prizes would be won by schools like Haberdashers' Aske's, but Miss Sharp trained us and gave us the confidence that we could compete with them. Fifty years later I can still recite the beginning of Clytemnestra’s speech from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.

A few of us were privileged to know her in another role, that of Cadet Captain. We met once a week after school, although I can’t remember at all what we did at our meetings. I do remember we made tea before the meeting started and that, as we came closer to summer, we spent a lot of time sorting and repairing the camping equipment. There were Easter and Whitsun camps in places like Theydon Bois and Chigwell. Summer camp was the highlight of the year and I went to three camps, two in Scotland and one in Cornwall. We traveled by train and were met at the station by a farmer in his lorry. Somehow all our equipment had been loaded onto the train and transferred onto the lorry with us. With our teenage ignorance of logistics, we failed to realize how much work Miss Sharp and her trusty deputy, Miss Hodges, had put into finding a site, arranging transportation, ordering groceries and arranging for the digging of latrines. I have several hazy black and white photographs of our time in camp and I see Miss Sharp sitting on the ground with us to eat our meals and even paddling up to her knees in the sea in Cornwall. She organized the meals, including the famous summer pudding, and I will never forget how she admonished a girl who went to get a new pot of jam when there was just the smallest trace of jam in the old one. (Remember that rationing was not too far in the past.) These camps took us to many places that we, as suburban children still feeling the economic effects of the war, would not otherwise have visited. We did not pay an excessive amount and I wonder now if she found a way to subsidize the cost, not only of the camp but of the trips we made in the afternoons. My photo album bears witness to trips through the Trossachs, Holy Loch, the Kyles of Bute, St. Just-in-Roseland and Megavissey, among many others.

After I left school, Ms. Sharp wrote to me several times. I kept up the correspondence even after I moved to America, married and had children. It is one of my biggest regrets that I let my busy life stand in the way of the thoughtful letters she deserved. After a while, the letters stopped. I was convinced that marked her death, but I had no way of finding out.

In complete contrast to Miss Sharp, with her ramrod straight back and her no nonsense hair and suits, there was Mrs. Parker. She too taught Latin and Greek. I did not have her for many classes and I have no idea how they divided up the students. When I think of her I recall sausage curls, flowered dresses and pearl necklaces. But, sadly, I have no photos to jog my memory. Again, I know nothing of her background— with the single exception of her son, Michael. I don’t think there was a husband in the picture, but Michael was her pride and joy. Most students at the County School were smart enough to figure out if a teacher knew her subject, and the grandmotherly Mrs. Parker belied her appearance and taught us well.

These are my recollections of our Classics teachers. Maybe some of you who taught at the County School (Joan Hart?) want to jump up and say, “No, you got it wrong!” Maybe I did. If anyone can fill me in on the lives of these two fascinating women, please do so, but somehow I think my recollections are forever engraved on my memory and will never change

Auf Wiedersehen

2008-09-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

I think the time has come to fold up my tents and steal away. There is still a lot to write about and I may return, either to this blog or in a different incarnation. I suspect that if I do come back, some of the bloggers I currently enjoy reading will still be writing stellar posts, while others will have abandoned their work. It always saddened me when people whose life and opinions I had come to enjoy went away. Now I understand: life has a way of intruding on avocations.

Thanks for reading.

A Confession and a Lecture

2008-08-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

I am embarrassed to admit that there is one whole category of blogs I steer clear of: blogs by and for people with disabilities and illnesses. I am ashamed of this, because there are countless blogs by people who are suffering mightily with little hope of respite or who are without the means to pay for the drugs which might help them. I justify my callousness by thinking I can do nothing to help. I pray for them daily.

I have spent most of this summer wrestling with my own condition. My kids said I should write about it—not to garner sympathy, because it is just about under control, but as a help to anyone who may meet the same symptoms and not know where to start. The condition is called trigeminal neuralgia and it is easy enough to look up. Early in the summer I noticed short blast of pain while I was eating or cleaning my teeth. By the time my brain realized there was pain involved, it usually stopped. I mentioned it to my doctor who told me to see my dentist. But I wasn’t due for a check up and it mostly went away until a Friday night in early July when I was awakened shortly after I fell asleep by the most astounding pain I had ever felt. It crept up the right side of my face like an un-remitting labor pain. I couldn’t speak: tears were rolling down my face. I didn’t want to go to the ER and I spent four pain-racked nights before I could get to see a dentist. (Note it only attacked me at night: during the days I was perfectly normal.) My dentist banged on all my teeth, but couldn’t trigger an attack. He took x-rays and after muttering “tic douloureux” he personally picked up the phone and made me an appointment with a diagnostic dental surgeon for the next day. A fancier office, words like maxillary surgeon, more pounding on the teeth. “It is not TMJ” was his verdict and he too personally got on the phone to make me an appointment next day with a neurologist, an adorable man called Boris who is the first doctor I have ever met with a sense of humor.

I’m going to make this short: it upsets me to write about it. Boris prescribed a drug called tegretol. It took away the pain, but had horrendous side effects. I threw up, walked like a drunken sailor and all my limbs twitched. Just as I was getting used to the drug, the pain came back, though by no means as harsh. Last week Boris upped the dosage and gave me a slow release form of the drug.

The situation is much better now and I promise not to write about it again. But if anyone reading this ever suffers the same problems, or knows someone who does, here’s a place to start. It tends to afflict women over 50 and almost always on the right side of the face, so I fell right into the demographic. Apparently it sometimes takes years to be diagnosed, but thanks to three wonderful doctors, it only took me four days.

Boris claims that my body will adjust to the medication. I can’t stop sleeping, I suspect my short-term memory is even worse than usual and my hands are quivering badly: typing and writing are an adventure, but I am grateful to be one of one of the fortunate ones. Otherwise I would be writing an agonizing blog that callous people like me wouldn’t read.

From the Analyst's Couch

2008-08-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

I think I need to contact Dr. Phil. Let me explain. The other night I went with Kate and Lucy to see Mamma Mia. Much to my surprise, I loved it. I have certainly never been an Abba fan, but I found myself tapping my toes. And what’s not to love about that fantastic Greek scenery which brought back memories of a trip to Greece in (I think) 1962. But for the first part of the movie I found myself getting anxious. Here’s Donna who is giving a wedding the next day and she is turning somersaults, climbing up a goat house, singing and dancing and generally having a good time, when even I can see that a trip to the hairdresser might make us all feel more comfortable. Well, I admit, she does at one point wield a caulking gun, ineffectively but ultimately with a felicitous result. Now, I have had two daughters marry, and the day before I was checking with the florist, ironing tablecloths and various dresses, feeding guests and generally micro-managing the whole affair. I remember my friend Sally collapsing with laughter once when she read a tip in a woman’s magazine advising the hostess to spend the last minutes before the arrival of guests sitting down and resting. “I’m always cleaning toilets”, she said. Aren’t we all? Well, apparently not Donna, though I do admit she seemed to have a staff of Greeks, but most of them joined in the dancing with abandon.

All this took me back to an earlier Meryl Streep chick flick The Bridges of Madison County, which caused me a similar sense of unease. Francesca has invited Robert to dinner and spent part of the day preparing stuffed peppers. When Robert arrives, it soon becomes apparent that eating is the last thing on their minds and dinner gets cold. Perhaps Dr. Phil could explain why I can remember the menu and why I was upset over the waste of a perfectly good dinner.

On the other hand, if the three lovely men from Mamma Mia or even Clint Eastwood were to show up on my doorstep, maybe my psychological hang-ups would do an about -face. I never liked stuffed peppers much anyway.

Dear NBC

2008-08-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

I love the Olympic Games. I wait expectantly for four years. I get goosebumps when I hear your Olympic Anthem.

But I have seen enough beach volleyball to last me to 2012. Thank you.

A Tale of Two Trays

2008-08-06T20:28:00.001-07:00

Sometime after my mother’s death, my dad came to stay with us. It was summer and we frequently ate outside. He noticed what a job it was for me to lug all the plates, silverware and glasses outside and since he was the kind of man who didn’t like to sit around and who liked to make himself useful, he made us a tray. I don’t know whether he used wood that we had lying around, or whether we bought it, but it wasn’t real good wood. However, by the time he’d varnished it, it looked pretty handsome and it was sturdy. We have, in fact, used it for 30 years. It does, however, have one drawback. I’m sure Daddy measured our doorways, but he failed to allow quite enough room for fingers to pass between the jambs. Ernie claims my dad had it in for him, but I think he was trying to make the tray as big as he could. So maneuvering the tray through doorways has become quite an art in this house.

Elizabeth didn’t fail to notice how useful our tray is, and she asked Ernie if he could make one for her. He rose to the challenge, making this magnificent tray with cherry sides and a black bottom, finished with 5 (five) coats of varnish. My job was to crouch down in the workroom and personally guarantee that the drill was being driven in at exactly the right angle to allow the screws attaching the bottom to the sides to go in perfectly aligned. They did. I hope that Jeff and Elizabeth will still be using this tray in 30 years time.

It’s Ernie’s Birthday Today

2008-08-06T20:08:00.001-07:00

It’s going to be impossible for everyone to get together this weekend, so we are celebrating in bits and pieces. The kids got together and bought him the wrought iron table and chairs he coveted for the garden. Now he wants to build another patio to set them on …

Have you noticed how stereotypical birthday cards for men are? Most of them have pictures of golf courses, fish or moose. The occasional one will show a book. I had to make do with three sailing boats.

So, happy birthday, Ernie. Next year will be a big one.

A Tale of Two Barometers

2008-08-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

The barometer —or rather wireless weather station—on the left hangs in my brother’s hall in his house in Burwell. It is hooked up to a gizmo on his garage (my brother is the technical one in the family) and among other things, it records the number of inches of rain that have fallen and predicts when a tsunami is likely to attack Cambridge, in which case I suppose the little man at the bottom right puts on suitable clothes. He certainly grabs an umbrella, and maybe his wellies too, when it is going to rain. It is very complicated and Brian explained it all to us. I got most of it, but I am a Fahrenheit gal and this thing works in Celsius. I don’t like having to attack the conversion as a math problem, multiplying by 5/9 and adding 32, but the first couple of columns of this help.

The barometer on the right hung in the hall of our house for as long as I can remember. Every time my dad passed it, he gave it a strong tap. I was never entirely sure what that accomplished, but it seemed to tell him if it was going to rain. This, of course, was England and it was always going to rain. But I always associated the barometer with my dad, and when he died it was the only thing I wanted. All was well until I got to the airport, where I was told that I couldn’t take a barometer on board. Even in those pre-9/11 days, mercury was a no-no. When the agent at Heathrow told me that, I did what any mature, middle-aged mother of five would do. I cried. But he was adamant and the best he could do was keep it in storage for my brother to pick up, pack up and send by sea. That was a lot to ask my brother, but I let the agent take it and boarded the plane.

When I got back to Detroit I told the whole story to my dear friend Bill Murphy, who was Pan Am’s marketing manager and who had got me a ticket when I told him that I needed to get to England right away. Bill expressed his sorrow about the barometer, but made no promises.

A few days later there was a knock on my door and a very special delivery. My dad’s barometer. It has hung on our wall ever since. I don’t tap it often, but whenever I look at it I am taken back to a long ago place and time.

Sorry, Alex

2008-08-05T18:13:00.001-07:00

Blogger was messed up last night and it wasn’t possible to load photos, so I am one day late posting a photo of Alex and wishing him a happy birthday. Six years old on August 4! It’s been fun to see him several times this year—with the possible exception of the time we saw him play soccer in 97° weather. He’s a husky little chap—but he loves hugs. He’ll be in First grade this year, so I expect you to write me some letters soon, Alex.

The Day After . . .

2008-07-29T19:54:00.001-07:00

. . . and two days before. Today falls between two anniversaries, both of which I want to commemorate.

Yesterday marked the third anniversary of this blog. Last year I waxed philosophic: this year I don’t feel much different about my blogging efforts, and though I would like to add a few paragraphs, I can’t manage it tonight. Let’s deal with it later and turn to a delightful anniversary, Kate’s fortieth birthday. We celebrated it for the first time last Saturday. Ron organized a terrific party at their park and lots of family members were there, together with Kate’s book club and fellow workers. All this after they had been so helpful last week with the four little boys I had staying here. Even at my most energetic, I don’t think I would have thrown a big party the day after spending the night in a tent with that bunch!

I remember well the day that Kate was born. There was some question as to whether Ernie could get his summer school grades in before getting me to the hospital. It was close.

Happy Birthday, Kate and thanks for everything.

Duh!

2008-07-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

Another paucity of posts, this time caused by an influx of guests. Most of them were expected, but there was one set of surprise visitors. Every woman’s magazine has tips on how to tidy your house in fifteen minutes, and I was prepared. I had tucked away a packet of “Furniture Polish Wipes”, which I unzipped and flourished with gay abandon. At one point my curiosity got the better of me and I read the “instructions”.

When wipe is soiled, throw in trash. OK.
Do not use on untreated unfinished wood. Makes sense.
Do not use on floors as they may become slippery. I found that out the hard way.
Not for personal hygiene.

Heavens to Betsey.

What a Dumb Question

2008-07-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

In the past week I have visited the offices of a dentist, a dental surgeon, a neurologist, a family practice doctor and a facility for Bio-Magnetic Resonance. Without exception the nurse who ushered me into the inner sanctum asked me “How are you today?” I understand the importance of getting a visit off to a good start, but just once I would love to hear someone yell, “Lady, if I was feeling OK, I wouldn’t have come here in the first place.” My suggestion would be a friendly, “Let’s see what we can do to help you today.” What would you suggest?

They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait …

2008-07-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

I bought a T-shirt at *macy*s recently. It was a brown T–shirt. I had bought one in a different color a few weeks previously, so I didn’t need to try it on. I simply removed it from the display, looked around for the nearest customer service station (guest assistance administration area?) and presented my T-shirt to the woman standing there. Then I ran my credit card through the machine, punched the buttons as prompted and signed my name. She put the T-shirt in a bag, removed the receipt from the machine and wrote her name and badge number on it. “Please go online,” she said, “and comment on the quality of my assistance.”

I’d send you to the URL if I still had the receipt, but I didn’t keep it. I bet you can guess why.

There’s Many a Slip . . .

2008-07-18T18:51:00.000-07:00

It is difficult for a woman of a certain age—and a certain girth—to dress comfortably and appropriately in the heat of a Michigan summer. Long sleeves thwart the mosquitoes, but you just can’t wear long sleeves when the temperature is 95°. And if you go sleeveless, you risk the whispered, “Who does she think she is? Michelle Obama?” Shorts? Just possibly. In the back garden. When the neighbors are away. Why are summer weight pants often in dark colors? They look hot, even if they are not. And who was the genius who decided to market “cropped” pants? I’ve seen a few shapely women who look cute in these garments, but the rest of us look stumpy. For many years I made myself cool, swingy sundress-type garments, but my ever expanding hips now require enough fabric to house a tribe of nomadic Bedouin. Besides, those summer fabrics with enchanting names like lawn, batiste, and muslin (Jane Austen and sprigged muslin are forever linked in my mind) tend to require the services of a bunch of downstairs maids armed with starch and goffering irons.

In the last couple of years salvation has arrived in the guise of cotton skirts, often without a waistband, often comparatively wash and wear. I have now bought three such skirts and I love them. They were inexpensive, but quite well made. All of them are lined with matching cotton fabric. “Why”, my daughters ask, “do you wear a slip if the skirt is already lined?”

It’s hard to explain, but I learned growing up that nice girls always wear petticoats.

Unannounced Hiatus

2008-07-17T19:39:00.000-07:00

I’ve been away for a while and now July is more than half gone. I always try to mark family birthdays, and I missed Al and Gody, both of whom have birthdays in early July. I took this photo in Virginia a few weeks ago. We hope to see them and those four delightful boys here soon.

So, what happened in the last few weeks? There were several sets of visitors, a number of storms, including one which dumped over two inches of rain in forty minutes, flooding our basement. Fortunately it was clean water and not too much was damaged. Lucy lost some stuff in her drawing portfolio and our large twelve by eighteen rug was soaked. It would have been churlish to complain after talking to some of Ernie’s family who live in Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids. British readers may not have seen these pictures which appeared in The Boston Globe.

I’ve renewed the acquaintance of a number of people who had slipped out of our lives, fed and watered a cat, a hermit crab and several fish for vacationing family and received a tentative diagnosis of trigeminal neuralgia.

Back to blogging tomorrow.

First, Do No Harm

2008-06-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

Contrary to popular belief, these words do not, in fact, appear in the Hippocratic Oath, but they make a good title for this post. I am pleased to pass on the news that in spite of the salmonella caused by our tomatoes and the E coli in the ground beef purchased from the local grocery stores, there is one place in Michigan where we will soon be in less danger from bugs and nasty organisms. Our hospitals. According to an article in today’s paper, “Metro Detroit hospitals are stepping up efforts to reduce costly and often traumatic medical errors, in preparation for new rules that will make them bear the cost of the mistakes they make when treating patients.” Traumatic medical errors and hospitals are two concepts that should not appear in the same sentence.

We’re not just talking about amputating the wrong leg, or “surgery on the wrong patient, surgery on the wrong body part and carrying out the wrong surgery,” as the article succinctly puts it. Read this paragraph:

One low-tech practice recommended by the hospital association to improve hand hygiene among staff -- a simple but crucial way to prevent the spread of infections -- is for hospitals to deploy workers, secret-shopper style, to watch over their colleagues on whether they've washed their hands before entering a patient room. "It is not a high-tech intervention, but it does have an enormous impact on the hospital setting," said Peters of the hospital association.

I have noticed in some public bathrooms a sign indicating that we should wash our hands for as long as it takes to sing a couple of verses of “Old MacDonald had a farm”. That’s the sign that appears next to the one that says “Employees should wash their hands before returning to work.” Obviously this sign should be amended in hospital bathrooms to add “Please add a couple of extra barnyard animals if you intend to perform open heart surgery.”

Too bad that it is concern about Medicare changes and not concern about patients that is bringing about these initiatives.

Ya Gotta Love the Pointes

2008-06-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Thursday today and the mail brought the local paper. The usual stuff: water rates, expanding the library, notes from the school board. I turned to the Public Safety Reports. You may remember I quoted from this section some time ago because I found the reporter’s vocabulary so funny. You should know that the Pointes are made up of five different communities and Grosse Pointe “crime” is itemized by community. We live in the Park, which is a pretty nice place to live, though it isn’t as fancy as some of the other cities, and our crime is pretty basic—a bike-jacking, a “home invasion” resulting in theft, a gas grill removed from a yard in the wee small hours, and the attempted theft of a 2005 Dodge Caravan from the 800 block of . . . hold it, that’s our block. Don’t worry, the thieves were thwarted: the car didn’t start.

We move on to the more esoteric crimes reported in the rarified air of the Shores. Three of them:

. . . officers were unable to confirm an unknown caller’s report of five coyote puppies playing on a front lawn. . .

. . . officers investigating reports of a smoking street light discovered the fixture’s cover had come off. Fish flies were being zapped by the light, which caused a little bit of smoke. . .

. . . two officers investigated a complaint of four turkeys running around the yard of a residence. Officers herded the birds back to a neighbor’s pen. Police said the complainant “does not mind the birds as long as they stay in their pen”.

Never a dull moment.

Et Tu, Head and Shoulders

2008-06-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

Remember I commented on the proliferation of tomato products in the grocery store? Last week I grabbed my grocery list from the counter and saw that Ernie had added, “Head and Shoulders, old kind.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but when I got to the store (and this is the grocery store, mind you, not the drug store) I was faced with a mind-boggling choice. Did I want “Smooth and Silky” or “Extra Volume”, “Dry Scalp Care” or “Ocean Lift” (that’s the one with sea mineral essence)? Then there’s “Refresh”—with a cooling sensation—and 2-in-1 plus conditioner. There’s a version for sensitive skin, too.

But nowhere do they sell plain “Head and Shoulders.” The old kind.

Think Twice, Write Once

2008-06-25T13:17:00.001-07:00

Shortly before we left for Washington I received an e-mail from a friend listing a bunch of unfortunately crafted URLs. In every case the company or entity involved had accurately embedded their name or function into the title of their website, but had not taken the necessary step backwards to see how the final product looked. I’d give you the references, but this is a family blog.

As we rolled along the Ohio turnpike on the trip east, I idly studied the cars and trucks around me. Da-da, there was a truck belonging to a company which picks up unwanted computers and electronic waste material and disposes of them. “When you’re done with IT, we’re just beginning.” Sounds good, but it translated to this.

The Other Kennedy Boy

2008-06-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

We were off in DC at the beginning of June when the country marked the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. I remember how surreal the event seemed at the time. We were living in the upper unit of the duplex on Marlborough. It had two bedrooms, one of which was Ernie's study, the other was Al's nursery. We didn't own much furniture, so at the time we had our bed in the living room, along with a couch and a television. It was six weeks before Kate was born and I didn't see much point in getting up until Al woke up. Ernie was teaching summer school and was already up and getting ready. Did he turn on the television? I don't remember, but I do know that eventually I was sitting up in bed watching the tragic events unfold.

I don't know the date of this copy of the Billings Gazette capturing the visit of the democratic candidate to Montana, but we have it in our possession because the smiling woman in the center shaking Bobby Kennedy's hand is Ernie's sister Flo, and it seems important to preserve even a vicarious brush with history.

You got to know when . . . to fold em

2008-06-16T19:30:00.000-07:00

I’ve been fretting away about writing a post describing our trip to Washington. We returned exactly a week ago, and if I haven’t got around to writing by now, I never will. Let’s just say it was a wonderful time and we spent four eventful days with our sons. There was a power outage in Rockville, which meant that Andrew and Liesl had a day off school and an extra day to spend with us, and the temperature rose to a record tying 98º on Saturday. We spent the morning watching Emmanuel play three soccer games in a row while Al stood in for the coach, and returned to the same field on Sunday for Alex’ game. There’s a lot going on this week, so enjoy the photos of the trip while I clean house.

A Year Ago Today . . .

2008-06-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

. . . I was in Andrew and Marcie’s house in Rockville, MD, ministering to Liesl, Theodore and Linus. We had done the baby pancake bit (who wants syrup, who won’t eat butter?) and now we were building houses out of Lego for the gazillion dinosaurs marching across the basement floor. The phone rang—it was Andrew, announcing the birth of Sebastian Robert. I put the kids in the car and we took off for George Washington Hospital to see the tiny new member of their family.

And here he is one year later. I took this photo a week ago. Sebastian was a tad tired at the time after incremental attempts at walking. He’d got it all figured out and when we call tonight, I expect to hear he’s chasing his siblings around the yard.

Happy First Birthday, Sebastian.

Sorry, George

2008-05-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

I am attracted to autobiographies by people born in England about the same time as I was. That’s how I came across Lorna Sage and Rosemary Kingsland. Remember Rosemary? I have analyzed the reasons to my own satisfaction, and a psychologist could probably make much of this tendency. And when I found these books on the “New Books” shelf at the library, I made a beeline for them.

Eric Clapton’s background was art and design and music and Pattie Boyd’s was colonialism and modeling—not areas which played a large role in my growing up in Enfield. But, as is usually the case, I found a couple of nuggets of interest.

Pattie Boyd (who was Mrs. George Harrison before she was Mrs. Eric Clapton) wrote at length of the places she lived. When the Beatles and other pop groups were at the height of their careers in the 60’s, their managers suggested they buy houses outside London, in remote parts of the home counties, all the better to avoid screaming fans and paparazzi (who at the time were the lesser of two evils.) So young musicians purchased a number of estates which were by now beyond the diminished wealth of the minor aristocracy, but chump change for the rockers. I was amused that she mentioned at least two of these houses with gardens designed by Gertrude Jekyll. I had visions of stoned musicians sitting around muttering stuff like, “Look, Ringo, notice how Gert used beds of siberian iris to draw your eye down to the horizon?”

I was uncharitable. In The Telegraph I found this article about the 2008 Chelsea Flower Show, where there is a garden celebrating George Harrison’s love of his garden at Friar Park. I am not sure that the “scrubby thistles and allotment vegetables, brightly clashing perennials, white-stemmed birches and scented roses” are my idea of a well laid out garden and they are certainly nothing that Ms. Jekyll* would have designed, but, George, I do owe you an apology.

* If you followed the link to the Wikipedia article on Gertrude Jekyll, you will have noticed that her name is not pronounced “Jeckle” , as I had always supposed, but “Jeakle” (rhymes with treacle.) That word may not mean much to people born on this side of the Atlantic, but for those of us raised in post-war England it brings back memories of school dinners and treacle stodge.

And why, you may ask, is this pronunciation noteworthy? Well, Gertrude’s brother, the Rev. Walter Jekyll, was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and the author appropriated his friend’s name for the protagonist of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Bet you, like me, have been pronouncing it wrongly all these years.

Thirty-two years ago today . . .

2008-05-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

. . . I told the doctor that I was sure number five was imminent. It was late on a Friday afternoon and I didn’t want the doctors to take off for their weekend pursuits leaving me in labor. “Go on home”, said the doctor who examined me. But the nurse on duty told the doctor that she thought my contractions were coming on strong and the doctor reluctantly sent me over to the hospital. I pretty much walked in the door and gave birth to Lucy, who has been doing things her way ever since.

Yesterday there was a big family celebration and today Ernie and I and Lucy and her boyfriend enjoyed a quiet birthday dinner. Here is Lucy with her niece Lydia at Lydia’s first baseball game. Happy birthday, Lucy.

Go Pistons

2008-05-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for the Pistons-Celtics game to start and hoping that it will be every bit as exciting as the game on Thursday night. Lo and behold, look who is a guest commentator tonight. Chuck Daley, the former Pistons coach. I tried to take a photo from the screen: he's dyed his hair blond and pouffed it up a bit. The blond hair and the fancy pin-striped suit are a far cry from my one and only face to face encounter with a professional basketball coach.

The place: Detroit Metropolitan Airport

The time: probably around 1991

The occasion: our entire family went out to the airport to welcome Al back from his Peace Corps service in Chad. Those were the days when you could meet a person at the gate and our whole noisy entourage went down to await Al's luggage on the carousel. I turned around — and there was Chuck Daley. Without thinking I accosted him and said that I had a son who had played varsity basketball, who had just returned after two years in Africa and who would consider it an honor to shake the hand of the Pistons' coach. And coach Daley obliged.

Now back to the TV.

Reach Out and Touch Someone

2008-05-21T20:18:00.001-07:00

I have already told you about my letter from the Queen. I didn’t tell you about my letter from the President. In fact, I had forgotten all about it until I found an envelope while searching for a photo of Pat for yesterday’s post. The envelope was empty and it took a bit of head scratching before I came up with its provenance.

Sidebar: I have always loved “correspondence.” If I had my druthers, I’d like to be an Edwardian lady of means, the sort that appears in Masterpiece Theatre productions. After breakfast, wearing a rather flattering wrapper, she retires to the drawing room to attend to her correspondence, answering invitations, catching up on her social calendar, and writing notes and letters to friends and family. Moreover, I have always loved the accoutrements of correspondence: I collect regular stationery, air-mail stationery, note cards, sealing wax, stamps, stickers and labels. When we first moved into this house, my mother in law gave us impressive stationery with our new address embossed on the paper and envelopes and she accompanied the gift with the engraved metal die so we could continue to have paper and envelopes personalized as long as we lived here. I regret I never re-used the die: in this era of computers I can whip up my own letterhead, change the color and font of the type as I please, and I don’t think I even know where I would take the die to get paper embossed.

All this leads me to Christmas 1966. It was our first married Christmas and we looked forward to sending out cards to friends and family throughout the country and abroad. We spent hours selecting the perfect card and I really loved the one we selected. The cardstock was thick and cream and the bottom edge was an elegant deckle. The design in my favorite terra cotta colors was attractive and edged in gold. Somehow it looks a little “60’s “ now, but I was so proud of it. I kept back one in an album and vowed to select a perfect card each year and add one to the album as a memento of our Christmases. But . . . that was our only Christmas without children, and in subsequent years our attention turned to bikes and toys and chunks of plastic. In 1966, after we had addressed our cards, we decided it would be downright neighborly to send one to Lyndon Johnson.

And Lyndon Johnson was neighborly enough to write and thank us. I can’t remember the contents of the letter. Perhaps it will show up one day. I do remember being impressed that we received an acknowledgement. Now as I look at the envelope, I am somewhat disappointed. It’s a flimsy item and the return address is printed in rather crooked blue type: my embossed envelopes were so much nicer. Our address is written on a plain old typewriter and if you click on the image, you can see where the number was originally mistyped (remember whiteout?) And the street was spelled wrongly. Surely the pre-Lewinsky intern who got the job of sending out “thank you’s” should have been historically literate enough to get Marlborough right.

Nevertheless, I ‘m glad I came across the legacy of the only Christmas card we ever sent to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And no, your eyes do not deceive you. That’s a 5¢ stamp. First class.

A Good Friend

2008-05-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

I don’t suppose anyone will ask me to nominate a person as a candidate for sainthood. I was thinking about this the other day, and I figured that of all the people I have met in nearly seventy years, there are about five possibilities.

One of them celebrates her seventieth birthday today. Happy Birthday, Pat. We were with her on Sunday when her children threw a surprise party for her. The party was held in the house where she and Larry lived for a long time after they left Grosse Pointe and where her son, Joe, now lives. What memories that house has. Maybe one of these days I will tell the story which involves a storm, a friend with hemophilia and a snowmobile. But this party was about Pat, one of the first people we met, together with her husband Larry, when we first came here forty years ago. I am sure I have better photos of those bygone days, but I could only find this one, pretty typical of our lives then, since it features two pregnant women, several children (some of these not ours) and food. (That's Pat in the middle in the back yard of our duplex on Marlborough.) We missed Pat and Larry so much when they moved and we are happy that their oldest son, Delmas (named after Grandpa Doyle), has moved back to the neighborhood with his family. The Doyles were a mythical bunch, the Kennedys of Grand Rapids, and we are still meeting new ones.

Pat certainly didn’t let the side down, but I won’t embarrass her by listing her sterling qualities. She has learned the secrets of serenity and I look forward to celebrating her eightieth birthday with her and her delightful family.

Prototype

2008-05-18T16:26:00.001-07:00

Thanks for some nice comments about the quilt I described in the last post. Here is the first one I made, which for some inexplicable reason I didn't think suitable for a girl. My niece Becky is having a baby in a month, so she'd better make it a boy. The yellow squares are actually a much softer and prettier shade of yellow than they seem in this photo. Enjoy it: I don't think I'll make any more quilts with these fiddly boats. I do think the blue fabric with the stars on it was a good choice.

Matchy Matchy

2008-05-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

The winter was long and my sewing room was warm and cozy. I wanted to welcome Elizabeth’s baby with a quilt, so I spent many an hour piecing a rather complex (for me) quilt. It turned out pretty well. The boat hulls were yellow, the sails were white and the rest was in lovely shades of blue. Because surely the baby was going to be a boy! I also started this quilt, known in the family as the androgynous quilt, on the remote off chance ...

Well, as I announced, Lydia was born. And before I even had a chance to finish quilt number two, Elizabeth told me she was going to girlify the green nursery with pink curtains and rugs and gewgaws. So this sherbet number was out and I rushed out to buy pink and green fabric.

Three weeks ago my godson and his wife had a daughter and I was delighted to have a ready-made gift for them. The blue one still sits by my sewing machine. All I have to do is wait for someone to have a boy.

Esprit d’Escalier

2008-05-04T18:38:00.000-07:00

The wit of the staircase. Finding the perfect response or retort only after you have left the room. It happens to most of us with depressing regularity, but it was surprising to find esprit d’escalier the theme of not one, but two, comic strips this past weekend. It probably happens to those of us in the geezer set more often:

(Click to enlarge)

but our younger counterparts can fall prey to slow-wittedness too.

As for me, I’ll probably think of a witty ending for this post as soon as I have published it and turned off the computer.

On the Way Down

2008-05-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

A good friend and former colleague always used to tell me that he would retire when the Dow Jones hit 13,000. That seemed a long way off, but one day it happened and I e-mailed him immediately to remind him of his pronouncement. Steve is pretty conservative, at least fiscally, so he didn’t immediately announce his retirement and as he continued to work, the Dow actually climbed past 14,000. Finally, he came up with a date for retirement, but he looked at the figures carefully and changed his mind. I saw him not long afterwards and he clarified his statement: “When I said I would retire when the Dow Jones hit 13, 000, I didn’t mean on the way down.”

I am on the way down. Like Miss Jean Brodie, I had a prime, but it is long passed. Perhaps I should devise a graph like the one for the DJIA and plot my descent. There would be several lines, each representing a different function, like mental acuity, physical coordination, ambition, energy, decision making skills—well, you get the idea. All of them would point to the nether regions of the graph. It would be interesting to see if they descend lock step, or if some years some functions fall apart in some kind of geometric progression while others are in free-fall or remain relatively stable. Some disintegration is obvious and can be documented: some long overdue house cleaning yesterday left my body in agony and caused havoc with the arthritis in my right ankle, I watch Lucy jump up between courses and whip up a desert which I thought of making a half hour before dinner, but which seemed “too much work.” Some of my unraveling is a disconnect between what was and what is, when I look on in total amazement as my children gracefully wrestle with their families and jobs and school and church and sports and all the responsibilities I could once perform without breaking a sweat.

The economic picture has not been bright, but yesterday the Dow passed 13,000 again and continued its climb upwards today. Perhaps the economy is on the way up.

I am not.

Time for Another Birthday

2008-04-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

This time it is Frederick, and he is four today. Fef is a lovely little guy, who can spend hours playing by himself. It was wonderful to have him here right before Easter and we look forward to seeing him again soon.

Happy Birthday, Fef.

After Danger of Last Spring Frost is Past

2008-04-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

That has always struck me as a stupid phrase. It’s like telling someone who asks if the bus on which you are both riding goes to a certain location and answering, “Get off at the stop before I do.” But I do understand the importance of waiting to plant annuals. I am always cautious: I can’t afford to be otherwise and I still have vivid memories of the year when a late frost decimated trays of flowers and herbs in the local nurseries.

Yesterday as we sat basking in the sunshine, Lucy asked me when I was going to plant flowers. She was flabbergasted when I said not for a couple of weeks. She spent seven years in DC and by now the city is in bloom. So I was delighted when the gardening column today rapped the knuckles of the early planters and warned that the average date of the last frost in metro Detroit is May 15.

Then there’s this.

Almost Finished

2008-04-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

Over a dozen bags of garden debris on the kerb: a few were put out last week, and I estimate three or four bags more will do it.

What next? Why, the first hamburger of summer, the first gin tonic of summer and the first picnic of summer.

Anecdote For Today

2008-04-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

If I am interested in a topic, I read all I can. I am about to read my third book on the exploration of the Tsangpo Gorge, even though vivid descriptions of giant leeches and yak butter-laced tea have not put it on my list of top ten places to visit. I have just finished yet another book on the Enigma code, the “unbreakable” system devised by the Germans in World War II. The machine used, together with its rotors, indicator keys, ciphers and bigrams has been to subject of many books, and even a movie which attempted to make the whole subject commercial by starring Kate Winslett. This last book, by David Kahn, is the most technical (i.e. incomprehensible) I have read, but the hard-to-follow bits were interspersed by interesting stories, one of which I am passing on.

The British assembled a team at Bletchley Park to decipher the code. This was a daunting task: the Germans estimated that if 1,000 cryptanalysts, each with a captured or copied Enigma (device), each tested four keys a minute, all day, every day, the team would take 1.8 billion years to try them all. The team of linguists and mathematicians made some headway, often helped by human error on the part of the Germans. Sometimes a cryptographer would encode a message in the naval version of Enigma and then send out the identical message to ships which did not have the Enigma machine using a code which the Allies had already broken, forming a kind of cryptographic Rosetta Stone. The best help came from captured ciphers and rotors which were recovered from torpedoed u-boats and other vessels, though German standing orders called for all such material to be thrown overboard in case of attack. The British began to consider ways of capturing keys, and the first concrete proposal came from a civilian who was the assistant to the director of naval intelligence. “I suggest”, he wrote, “we obtain the loot by the following means.

Obtain from the Air Ministry an air-worthy German bomber.
Pick a tough crew of five, including a pilot, a radio transmitter operator and word-perfect German speaker. Dress them in German Air Force uniform, add blood and bandages to suit.
Crash plane in the Channel after making SOS to rescue service in plain language.
Once aboard rescue boat, shoot German crew, dump overboard, bring rescue boat back to English port."

Initially there was a problem finding a volunteer crew, since most people agreed it was the quickest way to a posthumous Victoria Cross. But eventually a “love-sick pilot” volunteered for the kamikaze project, codenamed RUTHLESS. In the end a boat suitable for boarding never materialized and the plan was scrapped.

But the civilian who conceived this act of derringdo found other outlets for his imagination.

His name? Ian Fleming.

About that Cup of Joe. . .

2008-04-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

So you still want a caffeine fix, but my last post convinced you that some coffee is a four-letter word. Allow me to introduce you to Mystic Monk Coffee. I first saw this product mentioned in print and the advertisement caught my eye, because the combination of poor copy placement and my faltering eyesight made me think it read "Roasted Carmelite Monks." That concept conjured up images of some kind of gastronomic auto-da-fé, designed to help the monks with a bit of fund raising while weeding out the brothers who sing their Gregorian chant flat. (And the good brothers will sell you a CD of their Mystical Chants of Carmel to play while you sip your brew—Visa and Master Card accepted.)

What a splendid idea and what a change from the typical monastic candy makers. Let's face it, more people have been known to invoke the name of the Almighty as they take their first gulp of coffee in the morning than ever did when they slurped on a caramel. It's a tad pricey, but someone needs to give Starbucks a run for their money. I wonder if you can write it off on your Income Tax.

Continuing My Mission

2008-04-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

One of the stated objectives of this blog is to celebrate the absurd, and there is never a shortage of absurd to celebrate. Newspapers are usually good sources of risible tidbits. I regret to say I found some humor recently in a couple of articles from the BBC.

It appears that :

The UK Treasury is facing a £3.5m bill, because of VAT wrongly imposed on a Marks and Spencer teacake, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.

Some background: VAT = value added tax, Marks and Spencer is a venerable English (originally Dutch?) store which always had the reputation for selling the Queen her underwear, but now does a roaring trade in food, and teacakes are, well, teacakes. The problem is, are teacakes cakes (and not subject to VAT) or biscuits, on which VAT must be levied? I leave aside the whole question of “cookies” and refer you to the article on the BBC website. It isn’t so much the question of the tax that boggles the mind, it is the fact that the question could not be settled without the participation of the House of Lords and the European Court of Justice.

Should you wish to read the article while nibbling on a teacake, you may want to accompany it with a cup of coffee. That’s if you have a spare £50. I warned you about this disgusting brew last July, but it appears to be catching on. I can’t tell if it has gone up in price as I am totally unable to convert the £600 a pound in the article I quoted to the £324 a kilo in the BBC piece. I certainly believe that £50 a cup is more than I want to pay. Does anyone drink it?

Finally, we move on to another of those ideas on which I heap scorn, but secretly wish I had thought of so that I could be raking in the cash. Remember the taco holders? According to an article from the Cox News Service, the newest accoutrement for a divorce is a “wedding ring coffin.”

Lined with black velvet and covered with a smooth mahogany finish, the miniature wedding ring coffin is just big enough for a wedding band, diamond engagement ring and perhaps a few dried rose petals, tears -- or cheers depending on where you're at on your closure time line.

There’s a metal tag for an appropriate engraving. To quote the president of a divorce support organization, "There's a legal closure to the marriage, and it takes a while for our hearts and souls to catch up. Rituals like these can be very powerful."

And a dumb idea like this can make someone rich.

Two More Birthdays

2008-04-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

Grandchild number two reached double digits during my blog blackout when Patrick celebrated his tenth birthday. Since the big day came the week before Easter while Al and his family were here, Patrick has some Washington cousins on hand for the celebration. I don’t seem to have the customary blowing out the candle photo, but here are Emmanuel and Patrick in the back row and Daniel and Alex in front looking pretty happy to be together.

Today is Henry’s third birthday and his dad and at least one of his grandfathers celebrated by doing their income tax. His party took place on Saturday, and he was having such a good time with his cousins that he skipped his nap. He was pretty grouchy when Jeff woke him up, but cake and ice cream soon worked their magic. Happy Birthday, Henry.

I Did it Again

2008-04-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

Another big gap between posts. Let’s just say the last few weeks have been eventful. We had two lovely weeks with three sets of visitors—and then a little recuperation period. I couldn’t tell you the details of what we did even if I wanted to: even as I organized the photos, I was having trouble remembering the patterns of those busy days. I do know that in the course of two weeks I got to see all our seventeen grandchildren. I miss the Washington bunch. All I have left to show from their visit is some happy memories and a refrigerator stocked with Dora the Explorer yoghurt!

It's getting closer . . .

2008-03-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

I ran across a new blog recently which has given me much pleasure. It is called box elder and hails from Brittany. Lucy spent a year living and teaching in St. Brieuc. We were never able to visit her there, so our impressions of Brittany came from her descriptions of a place which she found grey and oppressive. The creator of this blog, also called Lucy, has found color and much beauty in the place and her blog is filled with rich and evocative photos. On a day when all I had to show for spring in my garden were these scrubby snowdrops, Lucy’s photo collage gave me hope that better days were coming soon.

Two Forgotten Holidays

2008-03-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

In my eagerness to commemorate Andrew’s birthday yesterday, I forgot that the day before was also worthy of celebration. It was National Potato Chip Day. Then I learned from Glenda’s blog that it was also National Pi Day. Clever, that one. 3.14.

I’m marking them on the calendar for next year. I am not sure how I will commemorate the Pi part, but the potato chip celebration is a no-brainer.

Happy Birthday, Andrew

2008-03-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

“Thirty-seven years ago today Andrew was up on the moon looking for a family to come and join. He saw a family that needed another boy . . . “ There’s always a mantra like that at the end of grace when one of the kids has a birthday, so in an hour or so that’s what we will be reciting. Alas, no Andrew at the table, but we are counting the days until he comes home for a visit. Maybe I will get a better photo than this, which shows him with two of his children, Linus and Liesl.

I talked to his godmother this morning. A lot of happy memories there. And Andrew, I apologize. 6’4” it was

Welcome, Lydia Jane

2008-03-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

The phone call came at 5:00 a.m. last Friday, and though I had been expecting it, it did not waken me. But a few minutes later the insistent beep of the answering machine jolted me from sleep and I heard Jeff’s voice telling me that he and Elizabeth were already at the hospital. Thank heavens he had been able to rouse his parents around three o’clock and they had made it over to hold the fort. I waited for the light (and a few cups of coffee) and drove across town. Sandy had given the four kids breakfast and got them dressed, so all we had to do was sit and wait.

The girls were busy drawing. Evelyn (she’s five) drew mother and baby grinning from ear to ear in a room with a playground outside. Caroline, who is four, had relegated the baby to a corner of the room and had populated the room with a couple of ducks. She really loves ducks. (Click on photos for details.)

I answered the phone around 10:30 and heard Liz announce that Lydia Jane had been born half an hour earlier. It was such fun to give the children the news: they were delighted that the baby they had been calling “Peanut” was finally here. Elizabeth called Ernie and her siblings. Benjamin jumped on the school bus, eager to pass on the news to his teacher.

There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing that day. When Jeff came home I made it to St. Mary Mercy to see the long-awaited sight of Elizabeth and her daughter. This little girl has so much going for her: hardworking, loving parents and delightful siblings. You’ll be hearing a lot more about her.

Snow Day

2008-03-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

Time was when I would have been glued to the television early in the morning, waiting to learn whether school was cancelled, whether I had to drag kids out of bed and feed them breakfast or if I could relax with the paper and another cup of coffee. It was 9:00 a.m. by the time I realized that today was a “snow day”, and that was because Kate called to ask if she should send over a team to shovel. Thanks to my wonderful neighbor, Dave, who had worked his magic on the driveway with his snow blower and a cheerful energetic woman who shows up with her shovel on snowy days, everything was clear by 8:00 a.m. The sun has been shining, and although the snow is still thick, many pathways are now clear.

I can smell beef stew simmering in my kitchen and I’m going to take some over to Dave. Then I’ll check out the neighborhood snowmen. Happy Snow Day.

An Alan Ladd Moment

2008-03-04T20:13:00.001-08:00

I like Charlie Gibson. I think he’s a good news anchor. I don’t think he takes himself too seriously and he doesn’t look over manicured. But I’d never really studied his physical appearance until last night when he had left his customary seat in the ABC studio and was standing outside somewhere in Texas reporting on the Texas primaries. He was talking to George Stephanopoulos and I wasn’t paying much attention until I heard Ernie ask, “Is Gibson tall or is Stephanopoulos short?” Then I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Gibson was towering above Stephanopoulos. I kept thinking “Hobbit.”

It was warmer in Texas tonight but they were still wearing their overcoats and standing side by side. Tonight, however, they were pretty much the same height. I kept waiting for George to fall off the box on which he was standing, but then Ernie reminded me of the stories of Allan Ladd and the ditch. Wonder who else had noticed the incongruousness and who came up with a solution.

A Matter of Convenience

2008-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

For more years than I care to remember, I cooked three meals a day for seven people. Eating out was an occurrence rarer than the appearance of Halley’s comet, especially as the kids got older and our “party of seven” included teenage boys who grew to 6’7’’ and 6’3”. Keeping the food bills under control was a full-time job. Even if there had been the huge array of today’s convenience foods available, the additional cost would have ruled them out in our household. (In the interest of full disclosure, I confess to using cake-mixes. I don’t do cakes. And there is an apocryphal story the kids like to tell involving me, driving lessons and Hamburger Helper, but you don’t need to know that.) So I chopped, pared, peeled and diced with the best of them.

Now there are just two of us and it is not unknown for me to buy a bag of salad or a container of melon pieces. But here is where I draw the line.

Click on the photograph for more detail: 14 ounces of individually wrapped apple slices. I didn’t check the ingredients carefully, but these apples are surely packed in something pretty chemical to stop them turning brown during their shelf life. And even if the company could prove to me that there is no health hazard involved, they can’t prove this product is a bargain. On the day I took this photograph, the pre-packaged apples were almost $4.00, while these tempting looking fruit were on sale for 99 cents a pound.

Do the math.

Change of Plans

2008-02-26T19:22:00.000-08:00

Up early today. We were looking forward to going to Elizabeth’s to look after grandchildren while she went for her (possibly) penultimate check-up with her doctor. For once, the weather forecast was correct and there was a healthy snowfall on the ground and snow coming down, soft and fluffy, but relentless. It looked pretty and it wasn’t really enough to keep us from venturing out, but Jeff’s company had told everyone to take work home, so our services were not needed. There will be plenty we can do to help in a few weeks.

There’s something luxurious about “found” time: the time you didn’t expect to have. I started with an extra cup of coffee as I dealt with the newspaper. It was somewhat disheartening to read this article. If Detroit doesn’t get its 2005-06 and 2006-07 audits filed in a couple of days, the city stands to lose $52,000,000 in state revenue sharing. Apparently city officials figure they will have the earlier audit(14 months late) done in a day or two, but the 2006-07 audit hasn’t been started yet. A councilwoman said "This is a matter of grave concern to me. It could have a dramatic impact on our ability to deliver services." Duh.

So I turned to something more fluffy and learned that the preliminary ratings for the 80th annual Academy Awards telecast are 14% lower than the least-watched ceremony ever. I am not surprised. TV executives will deconstruct the events. Who should host next year? Were the jokes too political? What film clips should we use? But they miss the point.

Time was people flocked to the movies and became enamored of “stars” for their acting ability or their looks. Then the Oscars were a huge bonus. It was a rare opportunity to see your favorites, what they had chosen to wear and whom they came with to the ceremony. Did they smile and look friendly? Did they applaud each other?

It is all so different now. Tabloids and E! Online and Entertainment Tonight and You-Tube and People Magazine and even the mainstream newspapers write stories and show photos of romances and addictions, babies and rehab, infidelity and Hollywood haute couture. You know what the stars are (and aren’t) wearing every day and if you wonder about their fashion sense, you need go no further than those witty, vitriolic women at go fug yourself. I watched a couple of Red Carpet shows and heard the same dresses being labeled both the best and the worst. One tatty-looking Brit-sounding man with a blue satin rag instead of a tie (or shirt) was gobsmacked that the most spectacular woman a on the Red Carpet was a model, Heidi Klum, and not an actress. Hadn’t he noticed that none of the people entering the theatre was required to perform a Shakespearean monolog? Rather they minced and posed and made a moue for the camera. What’s that got to do with film?

Once inside the theater we had, as John Stewart promised, a bunch of people giving each other awards. I think I might actually enjoy a segment explaining what a sound mixer is, what he does, what he is attempting to achieve. But I do not enjoy seeing a bunch of sound mixers bound on the stage and start thanking a lot of people I have never heard of. I doubt the “stars” do either.

The recent crippling writers’ strike was caused in part by an industry refusing to acknowledge that times have changed. New technologies and delivery methods require new compensation procedures.

And maybe someone needs to re-think the whole Oscar business.

Last February Birthday

2008-02-24T20:15:00.000-08:00

Today is Ron's birthday. I won't say how old he was, but the beard he grew a few weeks ago had several silver threads nestling in it. So goodbye beard. As usual, I have way too many photos of dead ash trees and not enough of family members when their birthdays roll around, but I rather like this photo of Ron with his niece, Evelyn, which I took last summer. Happy Birthday to a great son-in-law.

Embarrassment de Riches

2008-02-23T13:53:00.000-08:00

I love tomatoes. A big, juicy tomato, its bursting skin still warm from the rays of the sun, is my idea of good eats. I have written before about our inability to grow decent slicing tomatoes. No matter, I have resigned myself to a lifetime of cherry and grape tomatoes and we get through plenty of them.

In any event, homegrown tomatoes are only readily available in Michigan in August and September. Then I buy tomatoes for salads at the grocery store or at farmers’ markets, and as the winter gets more oppressive and comfort food beckons, I turn to recipes calling for cans of tomatoes to supply color and, so they tell me, lycopene. What could be easier than adding a few cans of tomatoes to my shopping list?

What indeed! For years recipes for soups or stews stipulated, “Add a can of whole tomatoes and break them up with a wooden spoon.” It seemed an exercise in futility, so I was happy when the manufacturers introduced diced tomatoes. But look what Messrs. Hunt, Kroger, Dei Fratelli, Red Gold and Del Monte have come up with now. We can buy our tomatoes stewed, peeled, whole, crushed, diced (even petite diced) or chopped. We can buy organic versions of all of the above. There are subsets of the main varieties: steam peeled, chopped Mexican and chopped Italian. Our choices are not limited to cut. We have to decide whether we want our tomatoes with basil, garlic and oregano, no salt added, chili ready, fire roasted, all natural (as opposed to . . . ?), zesty chili style, with jalapeno peppers or with garlic and onion.

I have headache writing about it. I must go and get dinner, which tonight will feature pork chops and applesauce. That’s chunky applesauce, as opposed to organic, unsweetened, home-style, natural, cinnamon flavored . . .

Cadets, 1956-59

2008-02-22T14:06:00.000-08:00

When we reached the age of sixteen or so, we were no longer eligible to be Guides, and for most girls, that would be the end of the road. But we were fortunate: our school, Enfield County, had a troop of Cadets, a companion organization for older teenagers.

Our troop was lead by Miss. F. Sharp, my formidable Classics teacher, assisted by Miss Margaret Hodgson (funny, we actually knew her first name), who was a retired County School gym teacher. We must have held our meetings after school—we all traveled a way to get to school, so we wouldn’t have gone home to change and then returned. Did we eat a meal together? I think I need to pick the brains of some of the people who attended these meetings with me. I don’t recall a single activity in the two or more years I was a cadet. This photo of my friends Diana and Ann is labeled, “Cadet Investiture Test, Chigwell, Easter 1957”, so we must have had to prove our worth, and it looks like cooking sausages over an open fire was a requisite skill.

What I do remember is the camps that we held in the summer. I have lots of fading black and white photos commemorating a trip to Cornwall and two to Scotland. I remember the train journey north. I assume we had all our tents etc. in the luggage compartment and Miss Sharp had arranged for us to be picked up in a lorry. All the food for the week or so were to camp had been ordered and the latrines had been dug. It never occurred to me at the time what a headache all the logistics were. They were great times. We took it in turns to cook, we went on walks and trips, and in Cornwall, at least, we relaxed on the beach. I remember that Miss Hodgson, who was pretty ancient at the time (or at least, she seemed so to us) was especially fond of standing on her hands in the sea with her head under water. We probably sang Kookaburra, too.

I labeled my photos well. Holy Loch, Kyles of Bute, Glen Massen, the Trossachs, Glen Eagles Station and the final destinations in 1959, Portscatho and St. Just-in-Roseland. After that, I would be off to University, never again to be assigned latrine duty. Here we are, gathered around the flagpole. That’s Miss Sharp on the left, Miss Hodgson on the right. Both of them are now dead. I am still in touch with one of the cadets in this photo and I would dearly love to know what happened to some of the others.

For Your Reading Pleasure

2008-02-22T12:41:00.000-08:00

I interrupt my memories of childhood to introduce you to a new figure on the Detroit blogging scene. You will find her blog, Detroit PR Guru, listed under “People I know.” I have known Barbara since she was a student of Ernie’s at Wayne State. She now runs a successful PR business and I look forward to reading more of her views on the Detroit and national scene as viewed through the eyes of a Public Relations professional.

Be Prepared

2008-02-21T13:02:00.000-08:00

We were eating lunch the other day when Ernie asked, à propos of something he was reading, “Have you ever heard of someone called Baden-Powell?”

How could I not have? So many of us grew up in England as members of the Boy Scouts or Girl Guides (known in the States as the equal opportunity Girl Scouts) and we revered Robert Baden-Powell as the founder of the organizations.

Girls under the age of 10 or 11 could be Brownies. I don’t know why, but I was never a Brownie. They wore —you guessed it—brown uniforms, cotton tunics, I think, and their pack (nest?) leaders were called Brown Owl and Tawny Owl.

Around the time of the 11+ exam, we were eligible to become Girl Guides. We met on Monday evenings at 6:00 in St. George’s Church Hall, and I remember Monday teatime being a rush to find the Brasso and iron my tie. I must have walked to the meetings with my friends Diana and Yvonne and we joined about 25 or so other girls in the 11-16 age group. Our leader was Beryl Miller and her sister Brenda was her assistant. I really am having trouble with my nouns here: if there is anyone from England reading this, help me out. I am not sure what the leaders were called, or whether we were troups or packs. But I do remember we were divided up into patrols, with patrol leaders. My patrol was called White Rose and we proudly wore the White Rose emblem on our uniforms. I eventually became the White Rose patrol leader. That’s the significance of the two white stripes on my left pocket and probably of the lanyard, to which a whistle was attached. I am not sure what we actually did at the meetings. I remember a lot of marching around the hall and we finally landed up in our patrols, lined up to the left of the leader. We then had to adjust positions to finish up an arm’s length away from the next person. Then came inspection and we saluted with our special Guide salute as the leader made her way to our patrol. We could be found wanting for unpolished badges (hence the Brasso) or malformed ties. These ties were actually large triangles of yellow cotton, which were folded in some arcane ritual into a strip. The fancy knot was pre-tied and the whole business fastened around our necks with a knot at the back under the collar. The point of this complex accessory was preparation for the eventuality of finding ourselves in the presence of someone with a broken arm, so we could whip off the tie, unfold it and make a sling. We practiced constantly, making sure we asked the patient whether the break was in the upper or lower arm, because each scenario required a different sling methodology. Fortunately, I was never required to use my expertise. While in line we recited the Guide promise:

I promise on my honour to do my best to do my duty to God and the Queen, to help other people at all times and to obey the Guide law

and we then broke off for patrol meetings. I remember a lot of knot tying, but I have little recollection of what else we did as we huddled in our little groups of six or seven.

All that marching came in handy, because the patrols took it in turn to carry the Union Jack down the aisle at Morning Prayer at St. George’s. The patrol leader wore a leather flag holder and struggled to keep the flag at the right angle while she bore it to its place in the sanctuary, escorted by two members of the patrol.

We usually wound up our meetings with singing. I am tone deaf, so I hated that part. Some of the songs and rounds were South African, a legacy of Baden Powell’s history, but the one I remember is Australian:

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree
Merry merry king of the bush is he
Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra
Gay your life must be

The badges on my right arm are merit badges. You could earn these for showing expertise in some area. I don’t think we were encouraged to go overboard earning these badges, although I remember some other troups with girls festooned in them. I don’t recall what merit badges I earned. I have a nightmarish recollection of one called Child Care. I had never taken care of a child in my life, but for some inexplicable reason the Cranfields at the end of Bedford Crescent loaned me their four year old, Ruth. I took her somewhere on a bus and we spent the afternoon together in a hall and took part in some activity with bread and jam.

In the pursuit of healthy outdoor activity, we sometimes went camping. This photo bears the caption “Whitsun Camp, 1956: Theydon Bois.” I appear to scrubbing a pan. Our camps were close to home and of short duration. We didn’t get serious about camping until we became Cadets. But that’s for another entry.

Three More Birthdays

2008-02-18T19:53:00.000-08:00

There were three birthdays in the last four days. First came our daughter-in-law Marcie in Maryland. I am a great admirer of Marcie's organizational skills and she puts them to good use in her life as the mother of four small children and a supervisor in a Social Work agency charged with protecting children in DC.

Next came grandson Charlie, who celebrated his 8th birthday. His siblings and his Detroit cousins and the respective parents came over for brunch on Sunday. There was chocolate cake and ice cream and Charlie was delighted with his gifts. His knowledge of the family tree of all the bionicles is most impressive!

Today Liesl turned 6. She's the proud sister of three younger brothers and can more than hold her own. Unlike the schools her Detroit cousins attend, her school in Rockville has all day kindergarten, so this year she started school in real earnest.

Happy Birthday to all three of them. Just one more to go in February.

ECSOGA

2008-02-14T07:58:00.000-08:00

I am an old girl. Specifically a dues-paying member of the Enfield County School Old Girls’ Association. I recently received the latest edition of the newsletter with the un-welcome, if not entirely unexpected, news that the association is likely to fold up its tents in 2009. As is often the case with organizations run by volunteers, too few valiant leaders have been struggling to steer the organizations, too few old girls are interested. One of the joint chairs, Harriett Nailon, stated it eloquently: “the structure, ethos, organisation and activities of ECSOGA are not attractive to those aged under 55.”

As a member (significantly) over the age of 55, I shall be sad. I’ll still have memories, fading slightly every year, but there will no longer be a structure for keeping track of some of my fellow pupils. In actuality, not many of my contemporaries have made their present circumstances know to the association as it presently exists. That is one of the reasons why I was so happy to spend time with my friend Ruth on my visit to England this Christmas. We patched together some of the old days from our joint—and sometimes differing–memories. To further quote Harriett as she defined our era:

Memories of Houses, a spirit of (sometimes fierce) competitiveness, the annual Carol Service in St. Andrew’s church, echoes of World War II and the Cold War, impassioned debates about CND, listening to Radio Luxembourg, hitch-hiking, the terror of unmarried motherhood, how difficult it was for some of us to keep our stocking seams straight, the motto—ONWARD EVER— so (frankly) Victorian and confident, our taste for formality and decorum learned at a school where hats or berets were compulsory for two terms of the year, where some pupils (not students) chose to wear white gloves with their blazers in summer, where rules included walking along corridors in single file and silence, where pupils stood up when a mistress entered the room, where each and every day started with the whole school assembling for prayers, a hymn and a reading of a religious (generally Biblical) , philosophical or moral nature and where Jerusalem and The National Anthem were known by heart and proudly sung at regular intervals.

I have picked up a few English readers of a certain age, and all of this will sound—perhaps annoyingly—familiar to them. It evokes memories for me, some of which I must capture before they fade into the dim mist of forgetfulness.

Here’s a photo of the school prefects of 1957-58. That’s me scowling second from the right, second row from the bottom. We were members of VI B Arts or Science (junior prefects?) and VI A Arts or Science (senior prefects?) By the time we reached the Sixth form, gym slips had given way to skirts and blouses, and one student (Anne Robbins, what became of you?) is wearing the “school dress”, which wasn’t too popular as it couldn’t be washed. Notice our ties and our prefects’ badges and the white ankle socks I mentioned in the last post. The white sashes worn by some are the coveted “white girdles” awarded each term to the students who had shown exemplary conduct, outstanding neatness of dress and, I suppose, obnoxious brown-nosing. I was awarded one at some point, but obviously not at the time of this photo.

That’s Ruth, sitting one place removed from me, and next to her are the two magnificent women who ran the school. Next to Ruth is the Deputy Head, Miss F. Sharp, who was a strong disciplinarian and my outstanding and beloved Latin and Greek teacher. She knew her stuff! To her right is Miss M. C. Sharp (no relation), the Headmistress for all my time at the school.

If my grandchildren read this, I suspect they will laugh their heads off. But I want to preserve for them my memories of another time and another place. Onward Ever!

Ah, bitter chill it was!

2008-02-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

"The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:"

Keats’ poem, St. Agnes’ Eve, was on our “O” level syllabus, and I was never fond of it (though it made a lot more sense than that Basil pot poem.) I wasn’t impressed by Keats’ description of cold. I was used to it. We all were.

It isn’t outside cold that I remember in post-war England. It was the cold inside. Our house, like that of most if not all my friends, had no central heating. We made use of one small coal-burning fireplace, which had to be cleaned out and relit in the morning. I really don’t think it threw out much heat, but it felt cozy if you sat right by it and ran the risk of the ensuing chilblains. The fireplace was in our dining room, where we spent most of our time and I seem to remember an electric fire in the unused fireplace in the “front room.” Our bedrooms were always chilly, but a hot water bottle helped warm up the sheets. There were no flannel sheets or pajamas, which would have helped. I used to put my underwear in bed with me, so that I could jump into it in the morning. We had vests and liberty bodices, which we topped with jumpers and wooly cardigans, but we didn’t have much comfort for our nether regions. We wore skirts, which ruled out long johns, and I don’t think warm tights had been invented. White cotton ankle socks were our uniform, in and out of school.

I had a small electric fire in my room so I could do my homework there in the evenings and I also have vivid memories of lying beneath the warm water in the bath and dreading the moment when I would have to get out and dry myself in the chilly bathroom.

But that cold pales into comparison with a day like today in Michigan. It is cold. Frigid.

The photo on the left shows the azalea in front of the house as it will look in at the end of April. The photo on the right shows how the poor thing looks today, with its leaves curled up to combat the icy temperatures.

So how did I spend the day? In part reading about a woman who, at the age of 63, walked from one end of the Gobi Desert to the other, accompanied by her husband and while she was still suffering from the effects of a car accident. In the currrent chapter the temperature is 116° and the camel just rolled over on their water jugs and split them wide open.

Who invented the weather anyway?

Back to the Window

2008-02-07T20:37:00.001-08:00

Remember my waiting window? This is the view from it last night as I ... waited. The snow was coming down thick and fast, Ernie (phone message as he left Elizabeth's "I’ll be back in fifty minutes”) had stayed too long across town and the hands of the clock were almost through their second rotation. The view was certainly pretty enough. Maybe you can get an idea, even though I haven’t quite got the hang of the setting on my new camera thoughtfully identified with the icon of a snowman and designated “shoot whitish scene brightly”. An hour and three quarters after his phone call, he pulled into the drive.

And I edited out the wallpaper because I still haven’t replaced it.

Blow Out those Candles

2008-02-06T15:26:00.000-08:00

It was an honor to be mentioned in Ben Burn’s column in last week’s Grosse Pointe News. Ben is a distinguished local writer, editor and journalism professor, and he noted that I live in the Park where I write “heartwarming copy about life and times in that fair city.” So enough of perjury and rhetorical devices for the time-being and let me catch up on a few birthdays I glossed over while I was without camera. I like to mark these milestones in my grandchildren’s lives.

October 28 was a real milestone. Emmanuel was my first grandchild to reach double digits. I couldn’t take a photo when we saw him in Virginia or when he was here for Thanksgiving, but here is one of his entire All-Star soccer team. That’s him on the upper right. He was the only player to score a goal in the semi-final or the final of the All-Star Championship, but a penalty by the other side meant the end of their first-place trophy hopes. The second-place trophy looks pretty impressive.

Evelyn got half-way to double digits last November 1 and her sister Caroline was four this January 3. I took this picture of the two of them when we went to Canton on Tuesday so Elizabeth could go for a check-up. They are great friends and we see them here with ballet outfits, hair ribbons and matching crackers. They are ganging up against their brothers in the hope that the new addition will be a new sister. Evelyn (right) is a cat lover and officially in charge of Faygo, while Caroline (left) has a duck fetish and this week’s photo (right) shows that while other people build snow-men, her family have mastered the art of the snow-duck. Good work, Jeff!

I did manage to scan a photo of Nathaniel when his birthday rolled around in December. Al followed tradition and took him off to have his haircut as soon as he turned one—much to Gody’s dismay.

That left Eleanor who shared her fourth birthday this year with the Super Bowl. To avoid any conflict of interest, Kate and Ron celebrated on the day before and we joined the family for dinner. Eleanor has the whole business figured out, from blowing out the candles to opening gifts. She still loves her “babies,” but she is now the proud owner of her own bionicle.

More birthdays coming up this month, so be prepared. It will be heart-warming!

Give this Guy an "A."

2008-02-03T18:23:00.000-08:00

Couldn't get the HTML to work in the comments section, maestrocc, so here's your answer. Praeteritio. And thanks to Chris Renaud, the original list, in one form or another, made it to various Classics Departments. See here, here, here and here.

Royalties?

Peccavi

2008-02-02T19:40:00.000-08:00

When we returned from Chicago, we found Detroit enmeshed in a mayoral scandal. The Free Press, in a piece of investigative journalism reminiscent of Woodward and Bernstein, had unearthed text messages between the mayor and his chief-of-staff indicating that the testimony Mayor Kilpatrick had given at a trial last year was less than truthful and that the two of them were indeed engaged in extra-marital hi-jinks . Apparently hizzonner had been absent the day they covered perjury in Law School.

Now I am not going to give a homily here. Enough stones have been cast and the windows of my glasshouse are thin. So I am not going to write about the fact that the mayor’s select memory on the stand cost the city of Detroit $9,000,000 plus some considerable lawyers’ fees. I am not going to write about the firing of decent public servants who were doing their jobs with honesty and integrity, presumably with the acquiescence of the mayor’s stable of bodyguards. I am not going to discuss the fact that the “other woman” has resigned from her position as chief-of-staff and, since she is currently in Law School, will presumably never be allowed to practice law if the Wayne County prosecutor lines up her ducks. I am not going to mention that the mayor went “into seclusion” and got together a group of writers (from a Hollywood picket line?) who wrote a speech which was a masterpiece of obfuscation. I’m not going to mention the obvious parallels to another politician which came to mind as the mayor of Detroit sat there clutching his wife’s forgiving hand.

I am going to talk about language. Semantics. Word choice. Here are two extracts from the mayor’s address to the citizens of Detroit:

I ask you not to have helicopters flying around our home. I ask you to leave them alone. I am the mayor. I made the mistake. I am accountable.
I told my sons this past weekend that when you make a mistake you learn from it. You get up. You dust yourself off and you keep moving forward.

See that word that crept in there? Mistake. Somehow a mistake doesn’t call for atonement or remorse, compensation or forgiveness. Forget about the nine million dollars or the ruined lives. Mistakes are harmless little things, aren’t they?

I might not have labored the point had I not listened the very next day to an interview on NPR between Jack Lessenbury and Rep. Paul Condino. I missed the beginning of the broadcast and when I tracked it down, it appears that it dates back to 2006 and I didn’t follow up to see the outcome of the legislation that Rep. Condino was proposing. I am not opposed, under certain circumstances, to offererring clemency to a prisoner who committed murder as a juvenile. But in his analysis, which you can hear in the audio story, Mr. Lessenbury (who I think is a fine journalist) supports the legislation by saying it isn’t right for someone to be imprisoned for life for a mistake he committed as a juvenile. Murder as a mistake? If I were on the parole board I would want to hear an applicant admit to a crime, express sorrow and remorse, and prove he was ready to live an exemplary life, not take refuge in the word “mistake.” Same goes for the mayor.

And the title of this post? Let’s introduce a little levity here. It seems like the perfect time to tell my favorite classical anecdote. Anyone who remembers their Latin will tell you that “peccavi” is the Latin for “I have sinned.” Here’s the story, adapted from a letter to The New York Times:

The 1840's was a time of British expansion in India. There were those in Britain who doubted the wisdom of too rapid an advance, and in particular, the capture of the province of Sind, which was thought likely to lead to an overextension of lines of communication. (Sir Charles) Napier was therefore under express orders not to capture the territory. Once he discovered, however, how little resistance there was, he took the province with ease. He telegraphed back to headquarters a marvellous double entendre—Peccavi.

Enough of history, ethics and rhetoric for tonight.

What's in a Name?

2008-02-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

I got back from England, posted a couple of entries—and took off again. This time to Chicago for an Ament mini-reunion. Ernie got together with his brother and two sisters at Mary Ann’s house in Glen Ellyn. The door is always open and the welcome mat is always out. It was cold and dreary, so for the most part we stayed in and ate wonderful food and enjoyed the company of our nephews and our niece and their families who came to visit.

There was lots of spirited discussion, much of it about politics. Remember, I promised I wouldn’t discuss politics except in a theoretical way, but I feel a general comment is in order. Perhaps this point has been analyzed somewhere else and I missed it. I suspect someone or other will produce a dissertation in the near future with the title “Nomenclature of the Democratic candidates and its effect on the voting patterns of the uncommitted.” For the most part—and I know this is a generalization—people in normal conversations tend to refer to the candidates as “Hillary”, “Obama” and “John Edwards”. Well, until “John Edwards” dropped out. Is it demeaning to call a candidate by her first name? Were there campaign posters for "Harry " or "Franklin?"

When I got back from Chicago, I spent some time catching up with my favorite bloggers and with the news from England. Here the BBC reports on the South Carolina primary. After an introductory paragraph in which all three major candidates are identified by their first and last names, the playing field is leveled and they are subsequently referred to as Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards. This is no insult. In England a GP is “Dr. Smith”, while a surgeon is “Mr. Smith”. There is a reference to “Former President Bill Clinton”, but his wife has no more of a special title than my mother had.

But look what Mrs. Thatcher delivered.

Requiem for a Tree

2008-01-22T06:19:00.001-08:00

It has been over two years since I told you about the ash tree in front of our house. Eventually it was marked with the yellow spot of doom and we have made several calls to the city arborist (that’s the tree guy, but in Grosse Pointe we call him the arborist) to inquire about the patient’s fate. Last week when the weather turned warm along came a crew. They were obviously the branch experts and when they had removed the limbs, they departed. A few days later the trunk and stump guys arrived, and we now have a hole where once stood our valiant ash.

Look at the poor old thing. Knobby and gnarled, listing and bent, gamely awaiting nature’s next onslaught.

Er, the tree.

That Was the Christmas that Was

2008-01-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

There is a classic question in job interviews: the interviewer looks steadily at the interviewee and asks, “What would you say is your biggest weakness?” The applicant gulps and quickly rummages around to think of a venial foible he can spin into a strength which he can claim helped him break the company quota for selling widgets. I don’t think there is much chance that I will ever again be in the hot seat, but it is clear to me what I would proffer as my greatest weakness: it’s a need to do justice to a project and my consequent failure to do anything. Anyone who has read this journal in the past will mutter, “There she goes again. It’s the Raspberry Syndrome.” They would be right. And I am running out of time. If I don’t say something about my wonderful Christmas in England, I won’t say anything. I’ll never write here again.

Let me just repeat, it was wonderful and I hope to flesh out these notes later. The trip started badly: fog in Amsterdam and the cancellation of most of the flights to Northern Europe, but we were ticketed on a flight to Birmingham a few hours later. I don’t mind sitting around airports people-watching and I had a big, fat Sudoku book to keep me amused (thanks, Chris.) We eventually accomplished the last leg—minus Ernie’s suitcase, which happily was driven to our door the next evening. After that, it was all up-hill. Needless to say the very best part of all was spending so much time with my brother and his wife, with my niece, Karen and her husband Peter and with my nephew Steven. What stands out?

Steven’s son, Reece (see photo of the week). What a charmer, a Lego whiz and a computer expert!
Food. Brenda is a great cook and we sat down to meal after meal of wonderful stuff, crowned, of course, by Christmas dinner.
Christmas carols at Ely Cathedral. I had really wanted to attend the service of Lessons and Carols at King’s College, but it would have required a minimum of six hours waiting in line, so we settled for Ely Cathedral which was impressive and had just the right amount of medieval cold seeping up from the floor.
Waitrose. I know, I hate super markets, but it is fun to wander around the aisles of one in a different country and see all the different foods they sell.
The Welney Wetland Center with the wind howling across the Fens and the swans and geese arriving to spend the winter in relative comfort.
The BBC coverage of the death of Benazir Bhutto. No one does the news like the BBC.
Brian’s recordings of various TV series and making the acquaintance of Fred Dibnah.
The day spent with an old friend of Brian’s and his wife and hearing stories of Saudi Arabia and Morris Dancing.
Three wonderful hours spent in the company of an old friend who dropped by to reminisce on her way to Norwich.
Brian and Brenda’s photos of Australia and Karen and Peter’s photos of Machu Picchu.

Well, at least I have set pen to paper, so to speak. It was lovely time, different from my early Christmases with Brian, different from my recent Christmases with my own family. There are photos here.

Did I get the job?

Happy Christmas

2007-12-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

Amen with a T will resume in 2008.

Christmas Pud

2007-12-15T17:24:00.000-08:00

There are a few pieces of paper I brought across the Atlantic and have filed and re-filed over the years. Some I will introduce you to later, but there are one or two I need to mention today. Both are recipes. While I was in college, I stayed with my friend Sylvia in Lincolnshire. (I will always remember Sylvia for two things: her recording of Four Freshman and 5 Trombones which rang out through the basement of Lindsell Hall during our first year at Bedford and her proud association with Scunthorpe). While staying with Sylvia I tasted a sweet bread which is preserved in my recipe file as “Sylv’s mum’s plum bread.” It was delicious. Needless to say, I have never made it, but my preservation of the recipe is a contribution to fine dining.

In my last post I mentioned Christmas pudding. My son-in-law Ron has tried his hand at this piece of English tradition. I, alas, have not. But I cherish my mother’s recipe, which I have preserved, written in her own hand. This is a war-time or certainly pre-war recipe and it calls for brandy or rum butter as opposed to our traditional custard. I like to think of her, in our little kitchen, mixing up a batch of this recipe. I am sure the Christmas pudding we will eat this Christmas will be a little more sophisticated, but both cooks prepared this recipe with love. And for your listening pleasure, go here and click on Listen Now.

A Child’s Christmas in England

2007-12-13T18:20:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas Dave Lane, who is married to Ernie's niece, Bridget, invited the family to submit their memories of Christmases past for inclusion into a publication. I don't know how many submissions there were, but this is the text of what I wrote, together with some of the photos.

I wish I could tell you all that my Christmases when I was a child were like something out of Dickens. They weren’t. Remember Scrooge and the goose? We never had goose. It was always a turkey, and what a treat that was. Remember, I was born in the first year of the war and food rationing lasted through my childhood. We always had enough to eat, but it wasn’t fancy. We pulled out all the stops at Christmas. Our main meal was around one p.m. I remember that my maternal grandmother (Nana-round-the-corner) joined us. I think I have a vague memory of us going to her house for Christmas dinner when my grandfather (Garby-round-the-corner) was still alive. I don’t think my paternal grandparents (Nana and Garby-down-the-Lock) were ever with us. We wouldn’t have left them on their own, so I suppose they celebrated with some other family members. The piece-de-resistance was the turkey. In fact, I can’t remember what else we had, though it must have included brussel sprouts. (And any of you who haven’t given brussel sprouts a try have missed a real treat.) No Christmas dinner was complete without Christmas pudding. This rich, almost cake-like, concoction is made of currants, raisin, butter, spices and a minimum of flour. The mixture was put into a buttered bowl, covered with greaseproof paper and a pudding cloth and steamed for hours and hours. So rich are Christmas puddings that they are traditionally made several weeks before Christmas in double quantities so that one can be saved for next year. No brandy butter for us. It was always thick custard. Hardly had we digested this meal than it was time for Christmas tea. In our household this was traditionally stalks of celery with bread and butter (don’t ask, I have no idea why except that in post-war England celery was a treat), followed by canned fruit and evaporated milk, jello (called jelly in England) and trifle. This was topped off by mince pies and Christmas cake. The latter was also made weeks before Christmas and was a fruitcake stuffed with currants, sultanas and raisins. There was a layer of marzipan and the icing was a hard, royal icing. Funny, after all these years I have just remembered a rather worse-for-wear robin that we always had decorating the top of the cake.

Christmas crackers were a traditional part of Christmas tea. They were designed to be pulled apart with a sharp “crack” and there was always a paper hat and some other goodies inside.

Not only was there lots of food at Christmas, we also had drinks. I don’t think my parents bought alcohol during the year, but on Christmas day we always had Dubonnet and Sweet Vermouth.

Another food I remember when I think of Christmas is crystallized fruit. Some of my father’s relatives immigrated to Australia earlier in the century and Aunt Hetty and her family always sent us a big box of this dried and sugary fruit. I wasn’t fond of it (except for the pears) but it was a kind thought at a time when candy was rationed.

Our Christmas decorations were mostly paper chains hung from the picture rails, and in spite of Prince Albert, we never had a tree. Most people didn’t. So there were no gifts under the tree. We didn’t have stockings, either. The custom was to hang a pillowcase on the end of the bed, and Father Christmas came during the night and left our presents. They were never lavish. Brian and I both got bikes at some point, but obviously not in our pillowcases, and for the most part the presents from our parents and grand parents and one aunt were modest. I almost always received books, and I can admit now that I was so often disappointed. I wanted something more exciting. But I came to love those books and many of them have found their way across the Atlantic. Last year I gave my grandson Patrick my copy of A Christmas Carol. I’d treasured it for nearly sixty years.

Seems to me that there was snow in A Christmas Carol. At least there was in the Muppet version. I don’t remember snow in the London suburbs at Christmas. In fact it rarely snowed ever, and then only lightly (early emergence of global warming?) It could be cold. As we grew older we were taken up to London to see the Christmas lights on Oxford Street and Regents street. Last year I wrote a post which included a photo taken of me on Christmas Eve in London with Garby-down-the-Lock.

I remember spending a lot of time in the Woolworth’s in Waltham Cross picking out gifts. I can still see the bird brooch with blue and white stones that I bought one year for my grandmother.

Strangely, I do not remember any changes in our Christmas celebrations when Brian and I became teenagers. I do recall that when I was at university I worked for a couple of years for the Post Office, delivering Christmas cards. I have a hazy memory of coming home one day chilled to the bone and sinking into a tub of hot water.

What a great idea it was to collect these accounts. It brought back so many happy memories of Christmas in England. And guess what? For the first time in forty-four years, that's where I will be spending Christmas this year.

Piccolo Ernie

2007-12-10T14:52:00.001-08:00

I am happy and honored to share my birthday with Nathaniel, the youngest of Al and Gody’s four boys. Today he is one year old. He was here at Thanksgiving when he was already running around, flashing his lovely smile and gazing out of those big brown eyes. So, who does he look like? He somewhat resembles his brother Emmanuel at the same age, but the general consensus is that he looks a lot like his grandfather Ernie. Not surprising that his Detroit family, who has at their disposal all the family photos, should think so, but Gody told us that when Nate spent three weeks in Italy in June, all his Italian family was calling him “piccolo Ernie.” I will make sure they see this photo of Ernie, clinging adoringly to his dad over three quarters of a century ago, and I think they will agree that they got it right.

The Gift of the Three Wise Women

2007-12-08T19:05:00.000-08:00

Three women came to my house today bearing precious gifts of their time, creativity and energy—and lunch. My daughters were bringing me an early birthday present: their combined efforts to dress the house in some Christmas finery. It really doesn’t make sense. I have all the time in the world, a modicum of creativity and memories of a time when I could move mountains, but I do seem to need a push to get me going. There are too many things undone around here. I have lost my sense of proportion—I found myself the other day energetically working away at a sewing project, carefully calculating 45° angles and seaming triangles and had to tell myself that so much effort was hardly worth spending the morning in frustration. The project was in response to my granddaughter Evelyn’s request for a Christmas stocking for her cat, Faygo. Meanwhile larger and more important projects are ignored.

A delicious lunch (wild mushroom soup, accompanied by a still-warm loaf of Ron’s tasty bread, salad and a hazelnut cake with poached pears and ice cream) was followed by more work and soon door and window frames and mantels were wreathed in green picked out with scarlet berries.

Recently Ronni Bennett wrote a post about gifts suitable for the elders on a person’s Christmas list. There were wonderful suggestions and I wish I’d though to comment and include the gift I received today. I have my new camera, but I am taking working with it slowly. I hope I can post photos of the lovely work done by these three loving Magi.

Things Scandinavian

2007-12-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

Today we pay homage to Shield Sheafson and his descendents and to the Geats and the Swedes.

Firstly for their modern books. I have written previously about some of the Scandinavian literature I have enjoyed reading. Since then I have discovered Åsa Larsson, read a mystery set in Iceland (is that considered Scandinavia?) and been bowled over by another Henning Mankell book, Depths , which proves that you can live alone on an island eating only fish.*

Next we come to Beowulf. We got babysitters and went out to see the movie the day after Thanksgiving. I enjoyed it a lot, but I still don’t understand why it has been such a box-office success. Does everyone go to expand their knowledge of myth and watch the Great Mother do her thing, or are they just going to see Angelina Jolie? I wonder if she knew what she was getting in to? Can’t you just see Bob Newhart pitching the part to her?—

"Yes, Angelina, there are a lot of muscular men in the movie. Well, no, the translation actually calls her “a tarn-hag.” No, it’s more like “a swamp-thing from hell”. No bikini, Angelina, but you will get to raise your head out of the water. Several times—whenever there is a new king and you need a new son. No, not a cute little baby like Shiloh, Angelina, more like . . . well, let me send you the script."

They sure did make it look cold and bleak. There was lots of merrymaking and feudal carryings-on. Gody, for whom English is a fourth language, was confused by the concept of a “meat-hall”. We explained about “mead” but we could certainly understand her problem as they all sat around eating huge chunks of roasted beast, with side dishes of roasted beast, garnished with—well, you get the idea.

Scandinavia’s third contribution to civilization is IKEA This store was founded in Sweden because it takes those muscular men to carry the goods. If you buy bookcases and wardrobes, as we did the other day, it’s comparatively easy to get the boxes on the carts, into the parking lot and into a van, but bringing them into the house is quite a different story. Of course, the instructions, which you find after you open the box, indicate it needs more than one smiling naked man to bear the weight. In our case it was Ernie and Lucy. Both fully clothed. Then we had to put them together. But that’s another entry.

*Editor’s note: Let’s just hope they didn’t look like those piscatorial monsters that appear in that cute commercial about the guy who didn’t know if he was a Swede or a Geat.

Finis

2007-11-30T06:55:00.000-08:00

Reinventing the wheel is a required qualification for running a university. Every five years or so a new administrator comes up with an idea which has been proposed—and roundly defeated—before.

And once in a while the proposal becomes policy.

More times than I care to remember there were rumors that the Greek and Latin Department, or Classics Department, depending on the era, was to be merged with some or all of the other language departments of the institution where Ernie toiled for so many years. Quel horreur! It was always in the interest of cost cutting, never based on a philosophical concept of teaching language, literature and culture. Petitions were signed, local dignitaries supported the cause and the danger was averted. There were various pairings—Near Eastern and Asian, German and Slavic—but it wasn’t until this year that the unthinkable happened. The budget crunch in the State of Michigan claimed more victims. The languages merged.

And so tonight we go to a party. Knowing the generous hostess as well as I do, I am confident it will not be a “last” blast, just a significant one.

And if you wonder if the demise of the Greek and Latin Department is a big loss, allow me to point out an article which appeared recently in our local rag.

Athens, Italy! Jack and Ernie, Ken and Katy and everyone who worked for you— we still need you.

The Times They Are A-changin': Hardware Stores

2007-11-27T20:22:00.000-08:00

I promise that I will stop this indulgent wallowing in the Remembrance of Things Past, at least for a little while, but we do need to address the topic of Hardware Stores. Or, at least, one hardware store.

When we moved to Grosse Pointe, over 40 years ago, Damman Hardware was situated somewhere around the spot which is now CVS. When Kresge’s moved from the corner of St. Clair and Kercheval, Dammans moved into the vacant building. I always had a soft spot for Dammans, because it appears that Archie Damman built our house back in 1929, but he lost it in the Depression. Over the years we frequented Dammans: it wasn’t quite the neighborhood hardware store with barrels of nails and screws, dusty tools and spare parts for long-extinct equipment, but it was staffed by elderly men in red vests who could be counted on to give us a tip about downspouts and washers or paint and wallpaper strippers. Eventually Jacobsons closed down their store for the home next door and Dammans annexed the site. The additional space meant they could add a few fancy odds and ends, but it was still the placed to go for the basics of home repair and remodeling.

A couple of years ago, everything changed. Dammans became Ace and the store was no longer staffed by knowledgeable elderly men, but by teenagers and corporate-looking employees muttering into their headphones. I was in the store a few weeks ago and saw a flurry of activity. There were display racks where the cookie sheets and casserole dishes had been, vignettes were being created, attractive plates were on display and silver twinkled. The hardware store took on a distinct museum quality. It is even fancier now with the Christmas wares on display, but I have yet to get my new camera, so you’ll have to do with the photos from a few weeks ago. I’m not altogether sorry about the makeover— we are so far from Somerset with its Crate and Barrel and Williams-Sonoma that I welcome this tempting merchandise. But if you look carefully at the mobile island with the butcher-block top in the last photo, you will see a price tag of $1,879. At a hardware store!

We’ve come a long way from barrels of nails.