Forty Years On

Today is our wedding anniversary. Forty years ago we were married in Anamosa, Iowa. Ernie’s brother was the celebrant. My friend from USC, Elizabeth, was our maid of honor/bridesmaid. She lives now in Berkeley, CA, and although we lost touch for a while, we are back corresponding and hope to see each other again soon. Our best man was Charles, who has gone down in family lore as the guy who accompanied us on our honeymoon. Charles has been dead for many years and we, our children and those of our friends who met him, still miss him.

We already had a big celebration two weeks ago, so we will mark this day by going out to dinner. All our children and grandchildren were home to mark the occasion and Ernie’s siblings and several nephews and nieces gathered here too. It was a wonderful reunion and there were more experiences to enter into the book of family lore. My own favorite was coming down one morning to find that Ernie’s sister, who was sleeping on the couch, had stuck notes on the casement window saying, “Do not open: bat inside.” Indeed there was. And then there will be the tale of how Ernie transported the bat across town in a cottage cheese container, so he could release him where he wouldn’t find our house again. So far he hasn’t.

There’s a lot of catching up to do, not least the laundry. I need get the photographs organized. The photo of our wedding which accompanies this post was taken by the only photographer in Anamosa. We had to reassemble at the church after the reception because he was unable to be at the church for the wedding. He had to photograph Hereford cows at the State Fair. That’s another piece of family lore.

1:31

That’s 1:31 p.m. and last Friday it was the time I began to feel a tad warm. Warm, mind you, after days of dripping with sweat before I had even got a pot of coffee brewed. Our last guests had left that morning and I reveled in the cool and quiet.

We had a house brimming with people for days (I will try to catch up on that later) and it had been uncomfortably hot for much of that time. The realization that the entire country was suffering from the heat wave made it a little more tolerable. The last book I read before everyone arrived made me feel like a real sissy when I complained about the heat. I heartily recommend Men of Salt by Michael Benanav for those of you who enjoy the exploits of travelers in wild and wooly places. Bananav and his guide Walid made the trip by camel from Timbuktu to Taoudenni in Mali. They were joined at times by an assortment of colorful characters and they returned part of the way with a caravan of nomads who still regularly make the journey to the mines at Taoudenni and return with huge slabs of salt, the White Gold of the Sahara. In truth, it could have been a boring book. Most days followed the same pattern: up at 3:00 a.m., drink tea, jump on a camel and ride for eighteen hours, with a stop or two for sand-encrusted rice and the occasional meal of unmentionable goat parts (the word rancid appears frequently). But Benanav intersperses the narrative with interesting accounts of the history of the area and the Saharan salt trade, and with anecdotes about the lives and customs of the nomads. Scorching heat and sand are his constant companions. It is a well written book and it chronicles a way of life that will not last much longer.

They're At It Again

When we last met ”Keith”, he was busy with his product placement and attempting to interest us in the visceral world of sausage casings. He must have been checking sales orders, because he has clearly decided that flesh and offal are a lost cause as far as this family is concerned. Adopting an obscure cognitive model, he has now theorized that we are more likely to buy up-scale female athletic clothing. You know, a kind of G.I. Jane meets Heidi Klum line of garments. Wrong again, Keith. Did you miss the first week of Marketing 101? The other day a catalog arrived from Title Nine. Cute name, bad idea. Anyone who knows me understands I am unlikely to be scaling the North face of the Eiger anytime soon, and I am not one of those women who goes to the supermarket looking like she’s just come from a vigorous workout.

Nice try, Keith. Can’t wait to see what comes next.

What a Difference a Dust Jacket Makes

What attracted me to this book at the library? It certainly wasn’t the title. “The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl!” No thanks, not interested. Was it the notes inside the front cover?:

But one day Rosemary’s life changed forever. At a cafe where she had gone to escape from a party her father insisted she attend with him, she met Richard Burton, the dashingly handsome Welsh actor who was then the toast of the London stage. She had seen him in Under Milkwood some months before. She was an adolescent schoolgirl. He was twenty nine.

At this point is was pretty obvious where the book was headed and I still wasn’t too interested. No, what drew me to the book was the dust jacket, with the sepia photo of earnest schoolgirls and even more earnest teachers lined up and squinting into the sun. School photo day was a big occasion in my youth and the photo brought back vivid memories.

The book itself turned out to be interesting on several levels. Rosemary Kingsland’s family gives new meaning to the word dysfunctional and she steers a wobbly course between a charming but often drunk womanizer of a father and a mother who was brought up by nuns in a convent in the Himalayas and couldn’t imagine how she would cope with four children in an austere post-war England. There is a fascinating and bloody glimpse of life at the end of the Raj, when the family was forced to flee the comforts of India for the precarious safety of England. There is a wonderful account of the horror expressed by Doris Day, who, on her way back from entertaining the troops, was forced to share a cabin with the author’s family. “These are the worst children I have ever met,” she is quoted as saying. “Six weeks at sea with them will kill me.”

For me the enjoyment came from the memories evoked by the music and general ambience of teenage life in the 50’s in England, even though I occasionally thought that her lists of pop favorites were derived from Google rather than actual recollection.

Of Richard Burton and the part he played in Rosemary Kingsland’s coming of age, the less said, the better. Neither protagonist emerges gracefully. When Burton finally learns that the teenager he is juggling with his wife and Claire Bloom is only fourteen, his first thoughts are of himself: ”I could get seven years in the clink if this ever comes out.”

There was much I wanted to check about this book. I discovered that the paperback edition had the kind of sleazy dust jacket which would have totally repelled me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the book had also been published under the name Hold Back the Night, this time with the dust jacket graced by an enormous profile of Richard Burton. One book, two titles, three dust jackets?

I don’t feel like sorting that lot out. I prefer to pull out my old photos (I’m the surly looking one, back row, third from the left) and wonder which of my earnest looking fellow prefects could have been living her own “secret life.”

4 rms river vu

You have to love the way Real Estate agents play fast and loose with the English language. I use the cumbersome phrase “Real Estate agent” rather than “Realtor”, because like the infamous “nuclear”, realtor is impossible to pronounce without the addition of an extra syllable. We all know by now that “priced for your decorating ideas” means they have knocked off some money to compensate for the 1970’s wallpaper and orange counters (I had some of those once), and that “charming antique touches throughout” means “Don’t even think of going to Sears for a new toilet seat. They have to be special ordered at an exorbitant cost or they won’t fit”.


I was somewhat floored by the flyer that was printed up, surely at considerable expense, and tucked into the Grosse Pointe News a while ago. I have already mentioned my dislike of the phrase gourmet kitchen. Here we have “granite kitchen”. I understand what they mean, but somehow granite kitchen is reminiscent of a cave in which Cro-Magnon Man roasted a lump of mastodon flesh. When we move on to architecture, the author of this flyer is on more shaky ground. What in the name of Frank Lloyd Wright is a “Victorian tudor?” Is “Victorian” an adjective, in which case why is it capitalized? What a schizophrenic house this must be. I might be tempted to check it out, but if there is one thing Real Estate agents are good at it is summing up possible buyers, and they would spot immediately that I do not have a spare $975,000.

Marmite

Marmite is an underappreciated delicacy. It is possible to buy it in the US, but I avoid doing so. Spread thickly on toast and butter, it is delicious and I can easily work my way through half a loaf at a sitting, but Dr. Goldsby doesn’t approve, so I limit myself to what I can eat while in England and to what I receive from visiting friends and family.

It looks (and in all honesty sort of tastes) like tar and it is definitely an acquired taste. Anyone who watched the Olympic Games in Australia will remember the commentators talking in disbelief about Vegemite, the Australian equivalent of Marmite.

This bottle, a very contemporary squeeze bottle, was brought over by my visiting brother and his wife. It is now empty. I was idly surfing so I could educate you all with a list of ingredients and I came across some fascinating sites here and here. If you get a chance, try some Marmite on toast. You just might like it.

The Bee Balm Boom of 2006

Last August 17 I addressed the Foxglove Glut of 2005. That was a phenomenon which fizzled out. Most of the foxglove rosettes which nestled under the winter covering of garden debris were gone by spring. I suspect that the virtual absence of snow deprived them of the moisture they needed to put on their usual brave show.

Those same weather conditions were obviously kind to monarda. There’s an abundance of it this year, most of it in totally unsuitable places. I have a big clump at the front of a bed in front of the bird bath, and I can’t bring myself to eradicate it. Besides, it fills the spot where I removed lilies last fall. That was a big mistake, because they are not tall enough to make any impression where I planted them. Back to the drawing board.