A Beer-y Nice Day

Was it the good dark beer I drank at lunch that caused the glow I felt during and after our Alumni lunch in Mt. Vernon yesterday, or did the glow come from something else? Since I've felt this before after one of our lunches, even without beer, I think it must have been something else. I was pooped when I got home. It had been a day that began at 7:45 a.m. when I left for Jack's house and didn't end until I got home at 5:30, kind of like work hours, but so much more pleasurable. As I collapsed on the couch, watching tapes of the Olympics and eating toast with peanut butter and jam for dinner, I thought back over the day, trying to collect the memories in a place that I could get at them later. That's not always such an easy thing these days.

Lavonna Rubens Allen, Karen Archer and Jack Archer

We started out at Jack's, seven of us, drinking coffee and muffins, before splitting up into two cars to begin our journey. I got to ride in Jack's Humvee, a smooth-riding behemoth, with Lavonna and Joyia, while Ralph rode in Gary's car with Jim. We met inside the Kingston ferry and began a conversation that would last the rest of the day, the characters participating and the topics of the conversation changing as the day went by. I haven't talked and listened so much in a long time. I talked with Jim Peterson about cruising the Panama Canal, with Gary about beer and mentally disturbed siblings, with both about health and attitude. I rode with Gary and Jim to the Farm House Restaurant while Ralph switched seats with me in the Hummer, so he could direct Jack to our destination.

Lavonna, Joyia Mentor, Jack and Our Mail Guy on the Kingston ferry

At the restaurant the first person I saw was Jeanette Youngs Longstreth and then Bruce Johnson. I'd been thinking about Bruce lately because I always do when the Winter Olympics are on. I remember a party of teens at Bruce's house gathered to watch the 1960 Olympic Games on television. Bruce tells me it is still a tradition to have people over to watch the events. Then I saw Marilyn Richardson Lovlien and Greg--was it Greg that got his growth after we graduated or am I confusing him with someone else? I didn't get a chance to ask. At the table I talked to Mike Cooper who insisted on telling me what a rascal he was when we were kids in Tracyton. There was the Alumni Game we always play: Do you remember? We talked about Danny Coulter and the Sackmans and Toni Agnesani and Dick Witte and the Lent's pasture. Who lived where? Does anybody know where they are now? Mike also told me about his time in the service, his 3 months in Thailand where he was involved in building what he called The Freedom Road. He said he barely made it out of the service before Viet Nam became a place some of our classmates had to serve their time. Earlier Jim Peterson told me he'd barely escaped Viet Nam himself.

Greg Lovlein, Ralph and Mike Cooper

One of the frustrations of these lunches for me is that, if I want to have a nice long conversation with someone, it means there will be people I don’t get to talk to at all. At this lunch I missed talking to Greg and Marilyn and Bob Forbes and Florence Voltin. I did finally get to talk to Linc David, after several lunches where I saw him but missed a conversation. There is much more to know about Linc and his life, but this time he told me about two trips he’s taken to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. He said his wife road on the back of his Harley both times, but after the last one she said she wasn’t going to do it again. They’ll go again, but next time it will be in a motor home with the bike towed behind it. We all have to make some adjustments as we grow older, don’t we?

Jim Peterson, Linc David, Jeanette Youngs Longstreth, Randy Flowers, Marilyn and Greg Lovlein

Bruce Johnson’s wife, Ellen, had left him off at the lunch to go swimming. While she was gone he told me she is a talented singer and wants to travel in the Smokey Mountains and the Crooked Road in Virginia and study their heritage music. Bruce was retiring the next day and wasn’t quite sure what he planned to do, but didn’t seem concerned about it. I had a short conversation with Randy Flowers about his retirement and his ambivalence about it. He has been retired for two years but hasn’t quite figured it out. Retirement when you are working looks like a golden time, the light at the end of the tunnel, nirvana. But it is a complex transition, more complicated for some than for others. It took me a full two years to realize that I couldn’t do every single thing on the list I’d been keeping for several years—things I didn’t have time to do when I was working. I found I had to cut some things out, or at least postpone them, in order to give my energy to some priorities. It’s an exciting time, but for some it can be a source of angst. I was used to having lots of people around to visit with or bounce ideas off of, and after retirement I missed that. I’ve had to create some regular social time with old friends in order to fill that void. And now we have these alumni lunches which are a wonderful form of connection. I guess it all depends on what we are searching for and if we are still searching. Another alumni friend asked me what I wanted to find, meaning or happiness? For me it is happiness. Writing, reading, gardening, taking photographs, meeting with friends, visiting my grandchildren, makes me happy.

Bruce and Ellen Johnson (Jeanette's Picture)

Randy Flowers (Jeanette's Picture)

At some of our lunches we have had “attendees by phone” and at this lunch we had three. Gary Rivers talked to us several times from Portland. He had hoped to come to the lunch but had to be a chauffeur for his daughter that day, so he called us while he was watching Olympic curling. I commented that it sounded a little boring and he assured me that since it was Women’s Curling it was not boring at all. We heard from Sally Burt Forcier, who was calling from her patio in Yuma, Arizona, sipping ice water in the 82 degree weather. Mike Traverso called, too. Hopefully, all of our callers will make it to our 50th reunion, only 2 years away.

Gary Parker and Jeanette Youngs Longstreth (Jeanette's Picture)

I titled this post A Beer-y Nice Day because the day started out with Gary Parker giving the seven of us beer from his Iron Horse Brewery. He had some new recipes he wanted us to try. At lunch the beer drinkers in the crowd tried the dark beer that the Farm House had on tap and as the party was breaking up Gary had his trunk open again and bestowed armloads of beer to eager takers. Later, when we were back at Jack’s house, I was lucky enough to be the beneficiary of some more of Jack’s own personally formulated and bottled Captain Jack’s Dark Ale. But the one glass of beer I had at the restaurant couldn’t explain the afterglow that I felt even days after our lunch. I’ll drink a toast in beer to many more days like this one.

New Security

Sorry faithful readers.  I have had to add word verification to the comments section of my blog.  For some reason an old post from 2006, about Nasal Irrigation, has attracted comment spammers and I've just deleted 7 comments from that one, so I've decided in order to cut down on maintenance I will add this new level of security.  I know it's a pain, but it seems necessary.

Brains and Science Fiction

Happy Mom on her 88th Birthday

Have just finished reading My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. I read this now because a young friend's husband had the same type of stroke recently and I wanted to understand how it happens and what Taylor's experience was. She was only 37 and for anyone in another field it must be terrifying, but she is a neuroanatomist, who studies brain function and so to her it was fascinating what was happening to her brain and how it recovered. As a scientist she studied carefully what she was losing and what was left (or right, actually). Her hemorrhagic stroke shut down the left side of her brain, leaving her with the right side, no word processing or mathematic or logical thinking processes, but a fantastic feeling of euphoria, oneness with the universe, bliss. She wanted to keep those feelings and knew that as her left brain functions started to come back that she would have to fight the negative emotions that left brains are so good at stirring up, to retain her feeling of well-being.





Of course, she wanted what her left brain could give her--language, organization skill, common sense, memory--what she didn't want was the looping of fear thought or judgmental thought or worry or anger that the left side of the brain can bring. She wanted to remain, as much as possible, in the here and now. She actually has been able to do this to a large extent and at the end of her book tries to help the rest of us, who haven't experienced her dramatic route to enlightenment, with some techniques to shut down those emotions that we may want to acknowledge, but not encourage.






What really struck me, though, was Taylor's description of someone who is right brain prominent. It sounded so much like my mother! I am often frustrated with my mother's apparent lack of common sense or organizational skills; I am like the left brain censuring the right brain. My Mom, however, lives in a happy world. She doesn't judge, she sees life positively, she is trusting, enthusiastic, grateful for her health, she has childlike curiosity. She doesn't dwell on her age or think about death, either hers or the deaths of her husband, son and friends. She is sad for a short time and then she is done being sad. She is rarely angry. Part of this is that her memory is failing--and memory is a function of our left brain. It could be said that as she gets older and her left brain becomes less active, her right brain, which has always been stronger, is stronger still. And though this manifests itself in losing her purse, or forgetting appointments, or not remembering what I told her 30 minutes before or not being able to find her way to church, the result is also that she is a very happy and contented person. When she broke her shoulder and cracked her kneecap a year or so ago, she often asked me what had happened to her shoulder, how had she fallen, had she really been in a nursing home for 6 days. As she healed she would even forget that anything had happened at all. I think this forgetting helped her heal and to regain the use of her arm more thoroughly than the doctor had ever expected. She didn't fret or moan about her pain, she viewed the physical therapy as a social event, and for the most part she simply forgot that she had been injured. Her right brain, full of happiness, dominates, and it is restorative.






My mother has not always been this way, although, being an artist and singer she was always more right than left brained. She used to get angry, yell, rail at her husband and children, bemoan the responsibilities of being a woman in charge of a home. She was often frustrated by a husband who was egotistical and controlling. It is only in these latter years, as she slowly loses some of her faculties, that she has come to this state of peaceful happiness. I will try to remember that losing one's memory may not be all bad. It may be the bliss we are looking for.





And on to something completely different: science fiction Academy Award nominated movies. Last weekend we went to see Avatar, in the actual movie theater, a very unusual event for us. It was in 3-D, with new, improved 3-D glasses, plastic instead of paper, not irritating as the old ones were and the 3-D really did pop off the screen. But what I loved about this movie was the beauty and color of it. James Cameron created a gorgeous world with beautiful creatures who had a deep and lovely connection to their world. We earthlings were ugly and aggresive of course, but in the end there was a satisfying conclusion. You will think of what the U.S. did to the American Indians. All I could say when we left the theater was WOW. And I'm still saying WOW.





The very next day we watched District 9, another earthlings versus aliens movie. The contrast in the two movies was extraordinary. Where Avatar was dazzling in it's beauty and high tech, District 9 was ugly in the extreme. The aliens looked like bugs rather than gods, they clicked rather than speaking, they lived in a dirty slum. The violence was more graphic, these aliens had arrived here on earth rather than the aliens in Avatar whose planet was discovered by us. But in both stories the earthlings were the aggressors and oppresors--roles I would not put past us.
In both movies we earthlings are redeemed by one of two "good" people, who see what is happening and try to change the course of events. And in this case, you will be reminded of Apartheid. Man's inhumanity to man is translated into our inhumanity to aliens.

See both movies--it is interesting to see how two different writers and directors deal with a similar subject.

Writing Assignment

#1

I got a book today called The Daily Writer, with subjects or areas of writing concentration to do every day of the year. Today’s task is to write about the senses and the first thing I encountered after reading the prompt was my onions.

I chopped onions for a White Chili. I chopped them small and while the knife sliced through the apple-crisp bulb the smell was overpowering, a smell I’ve always thought was like underarm odor--thank goodness perspiration doesn’t usually make your eyes water or make you want to leave the room (unless it’s a teenage boy’s). I also noted the stiff papery outer covering of the onion--so substantial that a person could probably use it to write on if paper was scarce but onions were plentiful.

Now the onions are in the hot pan, with olive oil and garlic, sizzling and turning transparent and the smell has transformed into something appealing, rather than appalling. And when I add the coriander, the cloves, the oregano and the cumin the smell becomes exotic as a spice bizarre.

#2

I am processing oregano. This oregano began in my garden, growing to stems of 2 to 3 feet. “Cut it when it flowers”, my Greek mother-in-law advises, “it will be stronger then”. I cut it and hang it in bunches in the garage, up high where it won’t get in the way. I dry it for all the months since summer and then I climb a ladder to get one of the bunches down, bring it in the house and strip the leaves and flowers off the stems. I spend 2 days stripping for one bunch. I watch the season premier of Lost, including the catch-up hour, while doing this. My fingers get tired and a little sore from breaking the flowers off the ends of the stems--they don’t strip off the stems easily like the leaves do. I am doing this in our bedroom because that’s where I’ve recorded the program and the whole room smells like an Italian kitchen by the time I’m done. Will we dream of Italy tonight?

Now I am taking the next step, grinding the herb that I’ve stripped from the stem. I tried putting it in the food processor but it was so light that it merely whirled around and around, it didn’t chop or break down at all. The oregano was mocking me, saying, So you think there’s going to be a shortcut? Get over it. So I’m doing it the way I’ve done it before, with mortar and pestle. I have a big brass mortar and pestle that we scoured the Plaka for in Greece on one of our trips. My half-Greek husband wanted one like his Yaya had and we finally found one in one of the little shops that looked like all the other little shops, filled with alabaster owls and marble Greek god statues and many-colored sets of worry beads. It is a heavy piece of manual equipment and could be used as a weapon in a pinch. Each piece has such heft that if dropped on a foot or finger there would be damage to the appendage, not the brass. The weight of it does a lot of the work for me.

At the rate of about 1/2 cup of leaves and flowers at a time, I pound and grind, up and down, round and round, until I have a much broken down result that more resembles what comes in a jar. The aroma is heady, I dream of spaghetti while pounding, a spicy bubbling red sauce flavored with this fresh, garden-grown, hand ground herb. My hand gets tired with all this pounding and round and round motion and so I have to rest after 5 or 6 batches, do something more hand soothing, but still I can smell the results of my work all over the house. Later I will pour out the ground product on a cookie sheet and pick out any tiny stems that are left, reminding me of the days when my husband used to pick out the stems of another popular herb of the day, preparing it for smoking. I think I could get high on the smell of my oregano as it moves from garden to kitchen to stew pot. Sometimes I wonder if all this effort is worth it, the result of one big bunch of stems will barely be 1 1/2 cups of the herb, but when I bring the jar from the shelf and dump a tablespoon of it’s green and fragrant contents into my Sunday vegetable soup, or into the white chili or the burritos or whatever recipe cries out for it, I’m glad for time I took.

#3

I don’t suppose itching is a sense, really, although maybe the sense of touch is involved. I have an itchy head. Over the years I have struggled with seborrhea, which I guess is just a fancy word for dandruff. Sometimes it is located only at the nape of my neck under the hairline, but sometimes, like now, it is all over my head. And it itches. And I scratch it. And the flakes are big and they fall all over my shirt--dare not wear black or dark colors--and I am ashamed to say that I not only scratch that itch, I pick at it and pull away pieces of skin. There is something horribly satisfying about this. Scratching doesn’t really relieve the itch as it might if you had an itchy place on your back. It is more likely to make the itch worse, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying it. I try, try, try to stop myself, even yelling STOP IT! to myself. I am trying to put something else in my hand, like a set of worry beads I have. The other day I noted that even with the worry beads in my hand, my arm still moved to my head and my fingers, though they were wrapped in the beads, still managed to scratch and pick. I grabbed my arm like Dr. Strangelove, and held it down, but later it went right back up there.

It must be kind of like biting your fingernails, which I’ve never done. They are right there, and so tempting. They’re portable--they travel with you. It’s not a habit like drinking where you have to be somewhere where there’s booze, you have to have a bottle, a glass. Your fingernails and your head go with you wherever you go. You can bite or scratch in the car, in the bathroom, in bed, at the post office, at the mall--anywhere.

That little pile of dandruff on the wooden end of the couch is somehow satisfying, but it stares at me and taunts me and says, “You idiot woman! What are you doing? See how you can’t stop? Don’t you have any control?” And I answer, “I’m trying but no, I don’t have any control!” The only thing that remotely works is to have something in both hands, like my ITouch. I have to grasp it in my left hand while my right hand works on a word puzzle or a Falling Gems screen. But I can’t do that all day.

I’m using the proper shampoo, washing my hair with it every day, working on the “build-up” as the bottle calls it, so I’m doing the right thing in that sense, but I long for sunshine, which is the best cure of all. And it’s only February, the sunshine months are still far away. I look out my window at the gray, the damp, the steady rain and I scratch and pick. There may be more blog posts as a result of this lack of control, because I have to use both hands to type. The silver lining.

If my old friend, Jim Morgan, was still alive, he would be disgusted at my writing about this, but hey, full disclosure is what I’m all about.

Quick Bits

Did you know that the word Hobo is a shortening of Homeward Bound? Then I think that means we are all Hobos in this life, especially those of a certain age, those of us who are enjoying getting to know our old classmates again. Going home to our roots, appreciating where we came from, remembering our youth and thinking about all that has ensued over the years, good and bad.

************

From USA Today's Tuesday paper:

Study: Beer may have a bone benefit

"Beer may help keep bones strong because it's a rich source of dietary silicon, which contributes to bone mineral density, researchers report.....beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon. Wheat contains less silicon than barley because it is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element". Dang! I knew beer was good for me!

*******************

My Mom celebrates her 88th birthday on Friday, along with Abe Lincoln. Mom's cousin, Ellen Hope and Mom nicknamed each other Abe, because of Lincoln and Mom sharing the same birthday. My Mom has had 3 nicknames: Lu (short for Lucretia), Chickie (Mom made this one up, too) and Abe. She is quite sure she will be around for 90 and beyond--I'm sure she will, too. Happy Birthday, Mom.

**************

It's American Idol time again, just barely begun if you don't count the silly auditions, which I don't. Will there be some clear wow performers right away, or will we whittle away singer after singer until we end up with 10 "good enoughs"? Only time will tell. I love the journey. I always wonder, if we'd had an American Idol show when I was in high school, would I have had the guts to audition? It would have been the early 60s--they'd have been looking for a new Barbara Streisand, Annette Funicello or Bobby Darrin, maybe--we'd have been singing standards or songs from musicals. Who would the judges have been? It's fun to think about.

If Thou Tastest a Crust of Bread.....

It is with great pleasure that I realize my eldest daughter has become an imaginative cook. In her blog on Janurary 17th she described a stormy Sunday on which she made cream of tomato soup and "artisan" bread for warmth and comfort. I was so inspired by her descriptions of the yummies and the accompanying pictures that I vowed to make the soup and bread the following Sunday.

The recipes looked simple enough, no fancy ingredients required and the name of the bread, Almost No-Knead Bread, promised a quick and satisfying result. I was not disappointed, especially with the bread and so I'm going to share my own photos and the bread recipe here. Feel free to copy and try it yourself. I must give credit not only to daughter, Erin, but also to America's Test Kitchen which produces some of the best recipes for everything from chocolate cake to chicken in a pot. Their recipes are sometimes complicated but they always result in the best food you've ever tasted. Here is the bread recipe:

3 Cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp rapid-rise yeast

1 1/2 tsp table salt

3/4 Cup, plus 2 TBSP water at room temperature

1/4 Cup plus 2 TBSP mild-flavored lager (I used Corona beer because that's what was in the frig)

1 TBSP white vinegar

(The only exotic ingredient here is the beer, but in our household there is always beer, so it wasn't a problem for me.)

If you have made bread before you know that you generally have to melt butter in milk and make sure the milk isn't too hot when you add it to the yeast. In this recipe you just need mildly warm water and you're good.

So the directions are (I have tweaked them to suit myself):

1. Stir flour, yeast and salt together in a large bowl. Add the warm water, beer and vinegar. With a spatula or wooden spoon mix wet ingredients into dry, scraping up flour from bottom of bowl until a shaggy ball forms. It truly will be shaggy and ugly looking and you'll think, ewww, this can't be right, but it is. Just make sure you've gotten all the flour in--I picked it up and squished it around in my hands for a little bit. Now the EASY PART. Cover the lump of dough in the bowl with plastic wrap and LET IT SIT overnight (from 8 to 18 hours!) on your counter.

2. The next day lay a large sheet of parchment paper if you have it or tin foil , which is what I had, in a 10 inch skillet and spray with nonstick cooking spray--I think you could use oil instead--Put dough on lightly floured surface and knead 10 to 15 times (this is such a small amount of kneading that you'll think this is wrong, too, but it works). Shape the dough into a ball and put seam-side down into the paper or foil in the skillet--spray surface of dough with non-stick spray or rub a little oil on it. Let rise until double. (My kitchen on Sunday morning was cold so I heated the oven to 200 degrees, turned it off and put the pan in the oven, leaving the door open. This rising should take about 2 hours.

3. About 30 minutes before baking, put your oven rack at the lowest level so that you can get a big soup kettle in the oven, complete with lid. Heat the oven to 500 degrees with the kettle in the oven. While heating the kettle lightly flour the top of the dough and with a good, sharp knife make a 6 inch long, 1/2 inch deep slit along the top of the dough. Carefully remove the kettle from the oven and remove the lid. Pick up the dough by lifting the paper or foil overhang and lower it into the pot. Be careful of that hot kettle! Reduce oven temperature to 425 degrees and bake, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove lid and continue to bake until loaf is deep brown, 20 or 30 minutes more. Tap with your knuckles--if it sounds hollow it's done. Carefully pull the paper or foil up to remove the bread and cool it on a wire rack.

I think you could use tin foil to cover the pot if your pot has a plastic handle. I'd say this recipe is pretty forgiving--doesn't make much difference what you do as long as you can get it to rise--make sure you have fresh yeast. The bread ends up being really crusty on the outside and nicely soft, but hearty, on the inside. It's a finer bread than you'd think with only a minute or two of kneading and it makes wonderful toast. Don't forget the Adam's Peanut Butter!

Thanks to my daughter this bread is going into my recipe notebook and I'll make it often. I think I might try putting some wheat flour in next time, but watch out for wheat flour--a dough hardly ever rises as high when wheat flour is added. If you try this, report back. I'd like to hear if you like it as much as we do.

Beer, Orphanage and Eeyore

Gary Parker with a bottle of Brass Ass Brown Ale

We had another successful lunch on Thursday at All Star Lanes in Silverdale. At least 20 alumni of the CK Class of '62 showed up this time and as always, there were a couple of new faces sprinkled in with the regulars, as we have come to think of ourselves. Gerry Simonson and her husband came and so did Roger Cole, who recently lost his wife. It was great to see that he wanted to be with us. If we keep adding classmates at 2 or 3 a month, by the time we hit that Golden Anniversary of our high school graduation we will have gathered so many that we will have to rent a big hall to squeeze us all in. Hopefully, coming to these lunches will take away any apprehension people might feel about attending the full blown reunion. We've seen each other in our skivvies, with our gray hair and wrinkles and weight gain. There shouldn't be any fear left. That's what I'm hoping anyway.

I talked to Gary Parker a good bit this time. He had very kindly brought along some of his beer from the Iron Horse Brewery, that he and his son own in Ellensberg. I was the lucky recipient of two bottles and muy husband and I tried the Loco Imperial Red ale last night and it was a very interesting beer. I don't usually pick up on the subleties of beer, but this one had a citrus and sweet flowery taste to it. Gary had explained a little about beer recipes and hops and barleys to me but now I want to know where this flavor came from. Next time. If you want to try Gary's beers you have two choices. You can go up to Central Market in Poulsbo and find his Irish Death beer or you can visit the brewery at 1000 Prospect St. in Ellensberg or you can read about them at his website at www.ironhorsebrewery.com. Reading about them is not nearly as good as drinking them. I really want to try the Cozy Sweater one of these days. Gary calls himself the "not so silent partner" and it's really fun to talk to him about beer. You can tell he loves it.

The "orphanage" part of the title to this blog refers to the orphanage in Romania that Rupert Walworth and his Romanian wife are building. Rupert explained that his wife was already putting money away for this orphanage when he met her--he'd hired her to clean his house and later found out she was sending a lot of her money back to her native country for the orphanage. He said they were both "faith-based" people and started dating. One thing led to another and now they go to Romania at least once a year, continuing to work on the orphanage.

And then there's the Eeyore reference. We all know Eeyore don't we? The slow-talking, somewhat depressed donkey friend of Winnie the Pooh? When I spotted Roger Cole, the first thing I noticed about him, after his sweet smile that is unchanged from high school days, was the Eeyores embroidered on his coat and baseball cap. I asked him why he was sprinkled with Eeyores and he replied that his kids have always thought he sounded like Eeyore--he said he's always been a slow talker--and so they've loaded him up with Eeyores. Eeyore has always been my favorite of the Pooh characters--"Oh, bother".

I didn't get a chance to speak with Gerry Simonson--that will have to wait for next time, too. Those lunches, though they often last for 3 hours, are never long enough to talk to everyone, or even to hug everyone. So keep coming back guys, so I can find out about you. And be sure to ask Barbara Jarolim about her trips to China. We'll try to get Gary to bring some more of his great beer, too.

Surprising

Robert Mondavi Winery
Originally uploaded by Song Bird

You never know who is going to see your photos on Flickr. It's fun and sometimes a little scary. I got an email from Schmap Guides to Napa Valley, who are short listing this picture for their 2010 guide. I had to give my permission, of course, but am glad to. I also had one of my Scotland pictures used as a cover for a newsletter for a local SCA group. Very flattering and a way to use one or two of the hundreds of pictures I take.

Shallowland

This?

Or this?

I've been reading a lot lately about pop culture and it's rise in the past decade. There is particular interest in the fame of the non-famous--those that have no talent except for the ability to get publicity and fans and paparazzi followings. Also noted is the increase in ticket sales at the cineplex down the street and the popularity of vampire novels, TV shows and movies.

Is it any wonder? It doesn't seem a mystery to me that all this is happening in the decade of the Early Two-Thousands, as I'm going to call it, there being no other good alternative. Do we know history? Does anyone remember the incredible popularity of movies in the Thirties and Forties? People were going to see Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jimmie Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, James Stewart in movies about gangsters, or "screwball" comedies, war movies or Busby Berkeley musicals that were famous for their kaleidoscopic dance numbers featuring hundreds, and showgirls stepping slowly down gigantic staircases with headdresses the size of Rhode Island. Why? Because people were so down in the dumps, perhaps unemployed, maybe having lost lots of money in the stock market, there was a World War going on, sons and husbands were dying--they needed escape. If there had been television then I'd bet there would have been some kind of reality TV to sooth the masses.

And that's exactly what's happening now. Take your pick. Would you rather watch what's new with Paris Hilton or watch replays of 9/11? How about Jessica Simpson or clips of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and the count of the dead? Is there a question about watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians or the details of latest suicide bombing? Do you want to go see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (the biggest movie grosses ever) or watch the nightly news and hear about the stock market crooks and their bonuses? How about John and Kate Plus Eight or H1N1? Or Housewives of New York versus the politics in Washington DC?

On a smaller, less national, less frantic scale is my grandson, who fathered triplets by accident this past year, who works two jobs and would rather, by god, play Modern Warfare 2 than think about how he is going to pay the child support which is now required of him. Or me--who plays Bejewled Blitz in order to squash the thoughts of greatgrandchild triplets I may never know and other family worries nagging to get in. The big world has gotten so messed up in the last decade, life so uncertain, flying so dangerous, food possibly infected with fatal germs, a cough in the room maybe a precursor of a pandemic, a job a lifeboat rather than a way to make money and a career, wars that have gone on for years, no one you know unaffected by some of this and your small world, your personal world, has it's own unique horrors--there is a yearning to escape. Yes, maybe playing a video game, or Tweeting, or burying yourself in Farmland is a form of turning off and turning your back on "real" life, but how much can any of us take without succumbing to some brain deadening behavior? In the sixties we didn't have all this stuff to distract us, so we smoked marijuana--how different is that from what is happening now? Not very, I'd say.

Now we have a guy from Yemen who was just barely prevented, partially due to his own mess-up, from blowing up an airplane and shortly we will be going through security lines in airports in flapping hospital gowns from now on (thanks to Maureen Dowd for that visual). There was talk on the Sunday news programs, which I still watch though I'm warning myself against them, that there might have to be "pre-emptive measures" taken against Yemen. Remember "pre-emption in Afghanistan? I'm so fatigued from it all, so weary of the Healthcare Reform that isn't, of Joe Leiberman, of David Gates, of Governor Gregoire, of H1N1, of Swiss banks, of making a big deal about Michelle Obama's arms, and on and on, that I can't wait to watch the new seasons of The Bachelor and American Idol and bury myself up to my neck in shallow, trivial, unimportant mass culture. Want to go see Avatar anyone?

Party Dress?

Overheard at a Seattle mall:

Shopper: Do you have any holiday party dresses?

Sales Clerk: No, but Hallmark has Santa hats.

Okay, so now you know. If you can't find a suitably festive party dress for New Year's Eve, Hallmark has Santa hats......Happy New Year!

Christmas Eves

My Mom at the piano many years ago

My daughter, Erin, goofing around with her flute

Brother Dan

Brother Stanley

Son, Christopher and grandson, Nick, about 22 years ago

Me and my Dad singing together

Everything evolves and that includes Christmas traditions. I was thinking about this coming Christmas Eve, only 3 days from now, planning the dinner, making sure all the gifts were wrapped, putting up a few more decorations to make the house look nice. Our tradition now is small, reflecting the size of our immediate family now--at least those that are here in the area. It's just my Mom, my brother, Stanley, my husband and me. Christmas Eve is a nice dinner and a movie. This year's dinner will be baked ham and the movie will be The Christmas Story, the one in which the kid shoots himself in the eye with his new bee bee-gun and the turkey ends up on the floor. It's not as sentimental as some, but it will be fun. We used to play games but Mom can't remember the rules anymore, so now we rely on a movie to add a little spice to the evening.

It's a far cry from the big crowd of relatives that used to stuff themselves into my Grandma and Grandpa Ammon's little front room down on Charleston Street. Aunts, uncles, cousins, eating Grandma's tarts and fudge with raisins, drinking Aunt Carol's punch out of her Depression Glass cups, lining up on the sofa for pictures, laughing, singing while Grandma and Aunt Carol and my mother played carols on the big upright piano. We all looked forward to the evening and I'll never forget the year I had Strep Throat and couldn't go. I sent my husband and my little girls, anyway but it wasn't the best Christmas for me. Those raucous, festive gatherings ended when my Grandpa died and my Grandma sickened and ended up in a rest home.

The next evolution in the Christmas Eve tradition became a gathering at my mother's house. But it was Grandma Ammons who had kept the family together and after she was gone my Aunt Beth and her children celebrated at their home and my Aunt Carol was only an infrequent participant at my Mom's house. For several years we'd gather for chips and dip, Christmas cookies and punch, to which Mom always added ice cream or sherbet. Dad made eggnogs for the ladies and stronger drinks for the men. Mom played carols on the piano and sometimes we'd sing along. But it just wasn't Grandma Ammon's house and we all felt we'd lost something. Then my Mom had an idea that we were resistant to at first. She wanted us to entertain each other with a Musicale. We were all asked to prepare a song to sing, or play and to perform it on Christmas Eve. This seemed a little hokey and contrived, but we wanted to make Mom happy, so we complied.

I think we started this new tradition in the mid-eighties. My mom would always play something on the piano and since she could play by ear she would do her renditions of White Christmas or The Christmas Song or Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and carols, too. She would sing and Dad and she would sing together. Mom had and still has, a clear, beautiful soprano voice and Dad had a nice baritone. He liked to sing a carol like Silent Night more than the popular Christmas tunes. I tried to sing something unusual, searching my big Christmas songbook for a couple of months before and rehearsing for weeks. It wasn't always easy to get my kids involved, but when Christopher learned to play the clarinet and the guitar he joined in. Erin was married and living in Seattle when we started doing the musicales but later she joined us with her flute and her husband, Kent, who played the piano. My brothers were always enthusiastic participants. Both performed music in their everyday lives--Dan was a sometime street performer and a choir director, Stanley played in a band--so their contributions were often hard rock or jazz. None of us will forget the year Dan took it into his head to teach us all the structure of a blues tune. We almost decided the musicales were dead after that! He went on for the longest time, talking about lines A and B and how they repeated in a predictable sequence , leaving us all yawning and restless. It was less entertainment than lecture.

But most of the musicales were as they had been intended by my Mom--we entertained each other with interesting performances and there was more of a point to the celebration, not just chit chat and snacking, though there was plenty of that, too. One year, sad over the end of my marriage, I couldn't bring myself to sing, but I'd been taking Tai Chi classes and my performance was a demonstration of what I'd learned, more like a dance than an exercise.

My Dad died in 2001 and though the Christmas Eve get-togethers moved to my house that year and thereafter, we put together our musicale--my brother and I sang a duet, my other brother played his guitar and Mom played and sang carols. We tried it again the next year, playing Balderdash afterwards, bending over with laughter, but the following Easter my brother, Dan, died and when it came time to decide what to do at Christmas our tradition evolved again. The era of the musicale was gone. The food changed to a full dinner, we played games for a couple of years and then, as I said before, Mom couldn't remember the rules, so we moved on to showing movies. I miss the big family gatherings of my younger years, and the musicales of my later years, but life changes and we change how we celebrate along with it. The thing is to keep celebrating.

My husband brought home the December 22 page from his Stupid Things People Say calendar today and it seems apropos:

"Look now for glad and golden

Hours come swiftly on the wing

O rest beside the weary toad and

Hear the Angels sing."

These are lyrics for "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear," as printed in a brochure for a Redmond, Washington church. I am sad about that weary toad. He must have had an awful lot of shopping to do.

Rock Throwing and Writing

This one of Ali makes me think of E.T. on Halloween

Zuzu in her "eating" hairdo

Our little Pilgrim Turkey

The other part of my Best Laid Plans Triangulation Trip was to leave Norfolk and go to Hudson, Wisconsin via St. Louis. This was accomplished with only a one hour delay in St. Louis while we changed planes. At least we didn't have to sit on the tarmac for 4 hours. And since we had some confusion in St. Louis, Orbitz, who was sending alerts to my son, got it a little wrong causing him to be about a half hour late picking me up. But after those little kerfuffles, all went well and I had a splendid time with my two youngest granddaughters and their Mom and Dad.

My favorite memories of this trip are going to be the walks that Ali and I took down to the river. The weather was extraordinarily mild and so Ali and I went outside almost every day. I was getting a little tired of playing hide and seek and Freeze Tag (where I was always the one who got frozen--Ali's rules)and so I suggested we take a walk one day. The first day we walked up the sidewalk and I learned that my 4 year old granddaughter was well acquainted with all the neighbors and their dogs, introducing me to each one by name. We played pretend games on the walk and I got to see a little more of the neighborhood. The next time we went out I suggested we turn the other direction and go down the sidewalk towards the house that gets lit up with Christmas lights even before Thanksgiving. I guess it is a gift shop of some kind and I was curious how it looked close-up. Little did I know that down that way lay a much more interesting site--the river.

Ali remembered it from a walk with her Daddy and she made a beeline for it--it was hard for me to slow her down. She is in love with bodies of water into which she can throw rocks and this was her goal. There were few rocks along the side of the road and she was willing to pry up pieces of blacktop if it would mean she could throw them in the river, but I wouldn't let her. We found some small rocks even though I wouldn't let her go into people's yards to get more and we saw a school bus and trucks and cars and without exception the drivers and passengers waved at us. The Midwest is a friendly place. Ali threw her rocks and we headed back. The next day we repeated this walk, both Ali and Grandma enjoying the adventure of it--in fact, Ali called these walks "adventures"--and this time she started picking up rocks long before we could see the river. I asked her if she was getting prepared. She didn't know what getting prepared meant but when I explained that here were rocks that she could save for throwing later, she understood the concept and both of our pockets were full by the time we got to the throwing place. It occurs to me that if the weather had been more normal there would have been ice on the river and throwing the rocks onto ice wouldn't have been nearly as much fun for her.

There were other fun times, games, coloring, playing word-find, original "aminal" rescue stories, seeing Ali's pre-school, the zoo, seeing New Moon with Irene, but the walks were my favorite. The enthusiasm of a 4 year old on a mission is contagious.

************************************************************

Incidentally, for some who have been waiting with me to see what GreenPrints had to say about the piece I sent them, I got my letter yesterday and here is what it said:

"Christine,

'Blue Hydrangea': Good! Tender. Well-expressed. And I really like the connection at the end between the plant's potential and the potential for your relationship with your brother.

But...I get a lot of great stories and I'm not sure this one would get in. It's on the fence, so to speak. If it's all right with you, I'll hold onto it. If it's going to get in, I'll let you know and pay you $100. Hope that's all right. Sorry to be so wishy washy!

Best and Thanks, Pat" (editor)

So there you have it--the note was hand written, which means a lot to me and it's not a "You suck" letter and there's still some hope. But more waiting.....

Thanks for waiting with me!

Ali's World

I got a phone call from my granddaughter, Alison, last week. She wanted to tell "rescue" stories and play games over the phone, which I love to do with her. At one point she said, "Why don't you and Grandma Margy come for Christmas?" I had just visited her before Thanksgiving, in Wisconsin, and so my reply was, "I'm sorry, honey, I don't have enough money to fly back there again so soon."

"But Grandma, you have a LOT of coins in your purse!"

"I would need lots of dollars to buy a plane ticket", I replied.

"It's Christmas, Grandma, you can BUY money!"

Best Laid Plans....

Returning the Aggravation Pump

Grocery Bag Boots

Dominoes by Candlelight
Erin and Kat

There were so many things we were going to do--go to my daughter's knitting circle, visit a jewelry class, take walks, have my grandsons for dinner. But I flew into Norfolk on the night of November 11th just ahead of a Nor'easter and the remnants of hurricane Ida colliding right over the city. We knew we were in for a bumpy ride (I kept thinking of Bette Davis's famous line in All About Eve) and were pleasantly surprised that most of the way East from Dallas we encountered only slight turbulence. But the last half hour, as we approached Virginia, we started to rock and roll. I was sitting on the aisle but the fellow by the window was keeping watch and said the rain was heavy. At one point he asked an attendant if it was stormy in Norfolk--she said yes and that we "had an alternate". He explained to me that if we couldn't land in Norfolk we had another place to go. So there was the possibility of not landing there--I didn't want to think about that or the ramifications. I just hung on and tried to stay calm. The landing, in Norfolk after all, was bumpy but not as bad as you might expect with 50 mph winds whipping all around us. As we heaved a sigh of relief the guy at the window said, "That was a good pilot. He landed on both wheels at the same time!"

My daughter, Erin, was there waving at me as I headed to get my baggage. Outside it was extremely stormy, the water beginning to come up over the roads. I remembered how low Norfolk was, sea level, meaning that high tides could flood a lot of the area. We got home before it got too bad. I had a little snack of cheese and crackers, Top Chef and then it was off to bed with the wind howling through the trees, oddly fun to listen to as I drifted off to sleep. The next morning the news was all about flooding and road, school and business closures. We decided to stay put as most streets around Erin's house were flooded.

Inspired by a recent post I made about baking cookies, Erin got out her recipe for Big Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cookies, one of my all time favorites and in an hour we had gigantic, wonderful, choclatey cookies. This would be one of the last times the oven was functioning. That afternoon Kent prepared a Chicken in a Pot, stuck it into the oven and while waiting for it to do it's thing we watched television and talked. But about 1 hour into the chicken's roasting the lights began to blink out, blink on, blink out and back on. This occurred about 5 times until finally we were left totally in the dark, our chickeny meal a broken promise. That night we dined on cheese, crackers and apples again, and those wonderful cookies. While sitting in the dark, Kent and Erin's young friend, Kat, came to visit, against their better judgement, but young people do what they want. We decided to play dominoes by candlelight rather than sitting around bemoaning our chickenless fate. A neighbor, whose wife was stranded somewhere else, came over offering Baba Ganoush and good, red wine. We passed on the Ganoush, but not the wine and he amused us with jokes as we continued to play. Kat ended up spending the night, at our insistance.

The next day there were still no lights and the rain was still pounding and Kent decided to check the basement for flooding. Indeed, there was a lot of water in the basement and there was no electricity to run his tiny pump. There were also no boots for his feet, so the ever resourceful Kent got himself some garbage bags and some tape and fashioned boots and attacked the flooding. During the day it was discovered that the power outages were widespread but not necessarily in consecutive houses due to ancient power grids. The neighbors behind us had power and were willing to share, so a long cord was run from their house and attached to Kent's pump. There was optimism at first but the little pump could not do the job. That is when the Search for a Bigger Pump began. Since we were getting cabin fever and wanted a hot meal we piled into the truck and accompanied Kent to Home Depot, Lowe's and Costco looking for a pump. The evidence showed that there had been many searchers before us--others had discovered earlier than Kent that their basements were swimming pools. We stood in front of empty shelves with our mouths agape. At least we got a hot lunch that day. At home Kent changed his leaky garbage bag boots for waste paper basket boots and kept bailing.

We ate dinner, cheese, crackers, apples and cookies in the dark again that night, but there were no dominoes--Kent had to go back to bailing. Erin and I amused ourselves with crossword puzzles and her knitting and talk, while her two doggies, Tasha and Maggie snuggled up to us for warmth. The lights stayed off.

The next morning the lights were still off and Kent, Erin and I got in the truck to go to the gym to take showers and to try Home Depot and Lowe's again, hoping more stock had come in. It hadn't. The last stop was Harbor Freight and lo, there was a pump, a gas operated one that wouldn't require electricity. A miracle! We celebrated by having a fabulous lunch at an Indian restaurant and then went home to put the pump to work. A long piece of plastic pipe had to be attached to the pump to move the water out of the basement, but for some reason known only to plastic pipe makers the darned thing was flat. Erin and I spent the next couple of hours making it round--we stood on it, we heated it and stood on it, we stuck a baseball bat and a rolling pin into the ends, we stood on it somemore. We got it more round than flat, put the fittings on the ends and presented it to our supervisor, Kent. But by this time Kent was finding that the Miracle Pump was turning out to be the Aggravation Pump, leaking gas and refusing to start. It was deemed a failure.

But just then, at 5 in the afternoon, the lights came back on, so all was not darkness anymore. The rain had stopped during the day, there was little wind, we heated up sandwiches left over from a hot lunch a couple of days before, Kent went off to his rehearsal of Brave New World and Erin and I settled down to some good old TV watching, which seemed luxurious at this point.

The next two days, my last, were more what I had expected--visits to Barnes and Noble, portions of which were taped off because they were too wet, President's Park and Yorktown. The weather was warm and beautiful, the leaves were gorgeous. We did have an odd meal in Yorktown at a place called The Rivah Cafe'. The name should have tipped us off. Rivah', Southern for river. Erin ordered something called The Hot Brown--it was hot alright, but not brown--open-faced turkey on white bread with a Parmesan Sauce on top and topped with bacon and deep friend onion slivers. It was about as good as it sounds, which was that it wasn't. Later we learned it was invented by The Brown Hotel in Kentucky but at the time it just seemed weird. My lunch was slightly better but with an odd touch--a piece of Virginia ham stuck under my prawns. We walked up the street to a Ben and Jerry's to end the day on a positive and tastier note.

It surely was not the visit I had expected or that Erin had planned for me, but I left knowing that my daughter and her husband have a good marriage and that they work well together in a crisis. Some spouses would be getting tense with each other after 2 1/2 days of no electricity and a flooded basement, but Erin and Kent were supportive of each other and demonstrative; if not cheerful, they were at least sympathetic and they communicated well. Kent's frustration level was high as he tried to dry out the basement, but he never took it out on Erin. Erin was trying to make things nice for her Mom but I never saw her lose her temper. Those observations made the trip worthwhile for me. Mom's love to see thier kids happy and content. They have had some challenges over the past year but with the kind of loving relationship they have there isn't much that they won't be able to endure.

This trip will stand out in my memory, much more than a conventional visit would have. It will be the Year of the Nor'easter and one day even Kent will be able to laugh about his waste paper basket boots.

Risky Business

Okay.....So.....I've sent out a piece to GreenPrints magazine to see if they will publish it. I had a goal on my New Year's Papers that we completed on January 1, that I would try to get something published this year and it's taken me until November, but at least I've sent something out. It wasn't so much a matter of putting anything off--it was more that I didn't know where I would send the kind of writing that I like to do. And then I found this little magazine in the oddest place. I had gotten a Garden Supply catalog and I ordered some plant staking stuff from them and in the invoice that came along with the stakes was an advertisement for GreenPrints: The Weeders Digest. I looked them up on the Internet and could see that they were a publication for gardeners, by gardeners, but the stories weren't about how much fertilizer to put on your garden or how to get rid of aphids. One of the sample articles was called The No-Grow Azaleas, about a person who kept waiting for the azaleas to grow bigger only to realize that they were a dwarf variety.

That sounded like a publication that I might be able to write at least one story for, so I bought a subscription and while waiting for my first issue I started a piece about a hydrangea I have, that I bought for my brother's memorial service 6 years ago. The thing about the hydrangea is that it was very flowery at first, when it was in the pot, but has only produced one (very beautiful) flower since I planted it. In my story I compare the slowness of the plant's growth to the friendship my brother and I struggled to have. I was nearly finished with it when I got my first issue of GreenPrints. After reading it I was still convinced that I might have a chance, so I did the final polishing work on the story and sent it to them last weekend.

Now I wait. I don't really know why it's so important to me to get something published at this late date. I've dreamed of it for years, been in writer's groups, read Writer's Digest for a long time--I've written practically my whole life and have loved keeping a blog. I guess I've been thinking about what kind of regrets I might have on my death bed (which hopefully won't be for a long time, but you never know). I think I would regret if I never tried to do anything with my writing, if I wrote, put things in notebooks and none of it ever saw the light of day. I'm still looking for other places I can send things to, because now that I've sent one piece out I'm kind of hooked on the process. Blog writing is fun, but there's no risk to it, other than maybe putting an unpopular opinion out and upsetting a friend. I've never taken too many risks in my life, maybe now is the time. And how much of a risk is it, anyway? The only risk is that they'll say, "No, this isn't for us". Disappointing, but not life shattering.

So we'll see what happens. And I'll keep looking for other outlets and if you have any suggestions, let me know. You've been reading (I hope) the kind of writing that I like to do. And if you are a gardener, you might be interested in that little magazine. Here is the online address: www.greenprints.com

May I have this job please?

Can you imagine if your were the person opening the letters sent with applications for a job with your company and you received this?

"At school he is a student of advertising, on the streets of Chicago he is a student of culture and memes. This is Advertising, finding that elusive why. Charles understands the nuances of culture, the relativity of trends, the impact of memes. He is all of us, he is the Cultural Chameleon."

I looked up "memes" and I'm going to let you look it up because I have a hard time understanding exactly what that is. Great thing to put in a cover letter for a job application, isn't it? This was an actual cover letter sent by a job applicant to a Chicago advertising agency.

Recipe for Happiness

This could be a picture of me--it's not, but the look on that little girl's face and her fistful of cookies, her delight in that huge glass jar filled with delicious cookies--I can relate!

It's funny where inspiration comes from. I was reading an issue of USA Today this morning and reading The Final Word, Craig Wilson's weekly column. The title was: "The formula for happiness: Cookies and milk." I started thinking about my life-long love of cookies.

I am sure I loved cookies from the time I could dissolve them between my gums, but I don't actually remember eating cookies until I was old enough to make them. I started making them young. I used to watch a cooking segment of a local, King 5 show, paying close attention and being in awe of Bea Donovan, when I was a mere 12 years old. Bea was very organized, lining up her ingredients in tiny dishes, dumping the contents of each in a big bowl in the order called for in the recipe: flour, baking soda, cinnamon, oatmeal, chocolate chips, nuts, raisins. It all was so carefully done and it appealed to me tremendously. My Mom wasn't the greatest cook, didn't really care about baking, so I took over. I became the cookie maker and for a long time I measured out each ingredient into bowls and put them all on a cookie sheet, dumping each one into the bowl just like Bea Donovan. I began to collect recipes, then, too.

From the beginning I had opinions about cookies. I recall telling my mother that her friend Gerry's cookies weren't as good as they could be because she didn't sift the flour. I had watched her bake some cookies one day and noted her exclusion of this very important step. I also insisted on the best ingredients, the Toll House Chocolate Chips, the Quaker rolled oats, the better cinnamon, the nuts that had to be chopped, the freshest raisins. I baked cookies all the way through junior high and high school so when I married and started having children the habit was already formed. I baked cookies once a week. They never lasted longer than that, anyway. By the time I had my two daughters my recipe box was filled with a wonderful variety of cookies: Snickerdoodles, Oatmeal Raisin from the Quaker box, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Ginger Cookies, Frosted Kalua Cookies, Spritz, Sugar Cookies, Shortbread, Russian Teacakes, Frosted Nutmeg Logs, Grandma Butler's Date Bars, Grandma Ammon's Tarts, Aunt Carol's Roll and Ball Cookie Starter, Carolyn's Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies, Cocoa and Bourbon Balls, Peanut Butter Cookies. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. Somehow I managed to keep my figure in those days, even though I was probably eating six cookies a day, if not more. It must have been the energy involved with raising kids and keeping house that allowed me to munch at will without becoming a blimp.

In about 1979 I bought my husband Maida Heatter's Cooky Book, because he was interested in cooking and had started making cookies, too. This cook book put the exotic into our cookie jar. Now we were making Big Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cookies (with chocolate glaze!), Chocolate Mint Sticks, Pinwheels, Oatmeal Snickerdoodles. When we divorced I insisted that I get copies of those pages in the book before I would let him take custody of it. In 1993 I met my Greek man and with him came more cookie recipes: Melomakarona (honey macaroons), Brandy Balls, Snow Balls. I have a recipe notebook now, in addition to the recipe index box, with all the cookie recipes I've cut out of the newspaper, out of magazines, from labels on packages, been given by friends. I certainly have enough for my own cookbook.

I love the results of making cookies, but I also love the making of them. I love to cream the sugar and the butter, adding the eggs and vanilla, the taste of it at that point. Then measuring and sifting the dry ingredients into the creamy mixture in the bowl and finally chopping the nuts and adding the raisins, chocolate chips or whatever extra added yumminess is called for in the recipe. I like dropped cookies best as that allows me to lick my fingers often and I don't let a drop of the dough go to waste, using a spatula to get the very last bits from the bowl, which are mostly consumed by me. What can be said of the aroma of cookies baking, except that it is one of the top ten most wonderful smells in the world? At the end they are all lined up on the counter on paper towels, cooling, filling the kitchen with their great smell.

I don't make cookies as often anymore because now there are no longer any kids to chase to keep me svelte--all those cookies go directly to my hips as they pass so deliciously over my taste buds. I make cookies to take to potlucks or to family gatherings or to send to my kids at Christmas and I make them once a month for my husband because he likes to have a "little something" after dinner. I am glad he requests them because if he didn't I don't know how I would come up with excuses to bake them.

There is a new baker in the family now. I was so thrilled the last time my granddaughter, Alison, came to visit me. She was drawing at the table and suddenly looked up at me and said, "Grandma, can we bake something?" Who am I to say no? I immediately got out the old recipe file and looked for one that would appeal to her. She required "cimmanon and vanilla" and since her Grandma likes oatmeal and chocolate chips and nuts, we made Oatmeal Chippers. I measured, she dumped ingredients into the bowl. Together we whipped up cookies made with love. We waited impatiently for them to bake and then we ate a whole bunch of them.

Panties Up the Flagpole

John Sleasman and Wayne Swenson

Chris Eddy Dosa and Blue Frosting Affect

Fred Just, Sandy Harkins, Terrie Baughman , Janet Dore' in the kitchen

Wayne with Captain Jack's Dark Ale

Randy Flowers

Jack Archer, our host

Sandy Harkins and Randy

Is there a better way to spend a couple of hours on a blustery, wet Fall day than with old classmates? I don't think so. Jack Archer and is wife were willing to host us this time, even though they thought they'd be grilling outside on their deck. The weather surprised all of us and we ended up inside, but they had lit candles and the lamps were glowing and I think they might even have had a fire going and the mood was cozy. We were all introduced to Mia, The Begging Dog, who we were not to feed. We are getting spoiled with these convivial home lunches--will we ever be satisfied with a restaurant again?

The topic of conversation that got most people's attention this time was "Who put the panties on the flagpole?" This came up after we'd been discussing some pranks that had been pulled in our senior year--the stink bomb in the hallway outside Mr. King's German classroom, among others. Jack piped up with, "There's just one mystery I want solved--who put those panties on the flag pole?" We thought John Sleasman would probably know--he was known to be a part of some shenanigans when we were in school, but he was clueless. Randy, who was a student leader back then, didn't know either. And even Dean, who said Mr. Huey would single him out to talk to when anything against school rules took place, because even if he didn't have anything to do with it himself, he would know who did--even Dean didn't know who'd done the flagpole trick. Legend has it that whoever did, greased the pole on the way down so nobody could get up there and take the panties down. I'm hoping somebody will read this who talked to somebody else, who knew somebody that was involved in this, because 47 years later it's time for these kinds of mysteries to be solved. Or is it more fun to guess?

Speaking of Randy, it was the first time in a long time many of us had seen him. He came down from the Bellingham area to be with us and I hope he'll consider coming again. He told us he is retired from teaching but volunteers at a grade school several times a week and is putting a daughter through college. Ralph, the Mail Guy, was with us via the phone, but he was resting in his Port Townsend house, getting ready for a trip to Israel and Jordan--incidentally, he had a pacemaker inserted on Monday of this week. Yes, folks, we all have our occasional age-related surprises.

The above pictures mention Jack's beer. We were talking about beer and wine and I mentioned that I love beer. Jack literally leaped up and asked if I wanted to taste his freshly brewed Dark Ale. He brought me a glass of a yummy, smooth beer with a taste that reminded me of apples. Soon I found out that this was Jack's private label, Captain Jack's Dark Ale, which he'd brewed over at Gallagher's in Edmonds. He had his own classy label and he gave us bottles to take home. I have heard that Gary Parker owns a brewery in Eastern Washington and that his beer can be bought at Central Market in Poulsbo. I will try to get more solid facts and share it here another time. It never fails to amaze me what we find out about each other when we attend these lunches.

Don't know when the next one will be, but I hope I see you there. Maybe you'll know who put those panties on the flag pole.