I mentioned in a previous post that the big tree at the front of our lawn is my nemesis. During a brief but violent storm Friday night, the tree lost several large limbs, which blocked the road. We were able to clear the road, and Tim and I spent a couple of hours today cutting and bagging the debris. It looks rather tame and harmless, neatly bagged and ready for pickup. I've seen houses with a dozen or more of these bags by the roadside; this is not a particularly large amount.
Nevertheless, a couple hours in the 90+ degree heat, stooping and picking up tree debris, is a good summer workout - I got a double workout today, since I did an hour of laps in the pool this morning.
And now I'm thinking - good grief, am I actually grumbling about having a home and a lawn and a tree and a gym membership and good health for swimming and yardwork? And a helpful son to shoulder the biggest part of the job?
Took another group to dinner tonight. Good food, good wine, good conversation. But service was VERY slow, which means I left too late to make the 9:10 train. Had to hang around waiting for the 10:10.
How bored do you have to be to take a picture of your feet?
Aaaaaaaaargh. Long day, ready for bed. Grateful for the good dinner, good company, etc. But REALLY ready for bed.
Thomas Jefferson proposed dividing the American Midwest into 10 states with Greek and Latin names: Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonesus, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Polypotamia, Pelisipia, and Washington.
“While we may see the reasons for these names, we may be thankful that they did not prevail,” wrote Curtis Manning Geer in The Louisiana Purchase (1904). “Ohio is better than Pelisipia, and Wisconsin to be preferred to Assenisipia.”
As a former resident of southern Illinois, which is known as Little Egypt and features the city of Cairo, I find it interesting that Jefferson would have called that area of the country Polypotamia.
Emily Dickinson's description of her eyes has always intrigued me, and I always remember it when I see a few drops of sherry or brandy left in a glass.
The glass in the photo below is one of the "old everyday things" that I have been tagging. I have two of these, and one of my oldest memories is of looking at these two little glasses in my mother's china cabinet. The story as I remember it is that these little glasses are one of the few mementoes of Germany that my great-grandparents brought with them when they emigrated to the United States. Imagine having not much more than two fragile glasses to remember your past by!
Much of the gilt has worn off; we still use them occasionally.
And whenever I look into them and see a few drops left, I think of Emily Dickinson and her eyes. Is this the color she was thinking of?
I never watched this series when it was originally broadcast, in the seventies. I started college in the fall of 1970, and didn't watch television for many years after that - which seems a little strange, since I watched lots of TV throughout childhood and adolescence. I'm not a TV snob, either - I admit to liking lots of shows. But it wasn't convenient to watch in college, and then somehow we never bought a television until several years into our married life - I think we got our first one, a little black and white thing, in 1977. So for a good part of a decade I was out of the TV loop.
Anyway, that is all background for why I had never seen this famous series until recently. I have to say that I am enjoying it immensely, not least because I strongly identify with the Downstairs crowd. My mother was a cook and my father a gardener for wealthy people in Lake Forest, Illinois for many years before I was born. They were known as a "hired couple." They were dairy farmers in Michigan when I was born, but a year later my father was working in a factory in Illinois, and my mother was very soon after that taking in laundry. She worked as a cleaning woman for various families most of my life, and so did I. And sometimes we both worked private parties, serving food and drinks to the guests much the way Rose and Hudson carry the trays around the rooms in the series.
We had friends who were the housekeeper and caretaker at the Adlai Stevenson estate, and I can tell you that the gossip of servants in the series is much like the gossip of the servants on that estate.
Anyway -- enjoying the series, with all its melodrama, immensely.
Yesterday we had BLTs and corn on the cob for dinner. It was so good we had the same thing again tonight, but this time I tried a variation: instead of lettuce in the BLT, I used baby spinach leaves and lots of fresh basil leaves from the garden.
I highly recommend this. We may have the same dinner again tomorrow.
Maybe other people can resist taking those adorable little pots of jam and jelly and honey that you get in a basket in some restaurants, but not me. It's all I can do to resist washing the jars and keeping them after I've enjoyed the tasty contents - sometimes I fear that I am not too far away from becoming one of those hoarders you hear about - my shameful stash will be lots and lots of cute, useless little jars.
We are back home, and can report that the trip to Stowe and the trip back to Pennsylvania were both very, very pleasant. No traffic to speak of, gorgeous scenery -- and we listened to Hunger Games, which we both liked a lot.
Around noon we said good-bye Stoweflake Resort.
But we stopped off at the Ben and Jerry's factory soon after that.
We visited the Flavor Graveyard.
Here are a few of the tombstones in the graveyard.
And below is the outside of the factory. We did not have time to take the tour, which is a shame because I love factory tours. I have toured wineries, breweries, a potato chip factory, a cheese factory, a glass-blowing studio - loved them all.
Another favorite sight - hay bales. When I was a kid participating in the annual hay-baling tasks in Michigan, on my relatives' farms (I say participating rather than helping, because I was too young to be of much help), the bales were smaller and shaped like bricks. We used them like bricks, to build forts and playhouses in the barns, too. But I like these big round ones, too.
Oh, and at a rest stop in New York's Hudson Valley, we stopped at a McDonald's with an impressive sculpture inspired by local farming activity in the middle of the restaurant. I really like it when McDonald's have surprising decor. No one ever thinks of fast food franchises as having personality, and their food is certainly uniform, but it does remind you that someone involved (the franchise owner?) could be a local person hiring local people who are proud of their community.
We were home before 10:00 pm (which is very good time for us, because we stopped a LOT), and I will be in the office early tomorrow to meet with the chair of Acute Care. All in all, a great little trip.
So what have I been doing in Vermont? In the mornings, work - but very pleasant work, I must say.
In the afternoon, I visited a store that sells rugs, among other things.
I learned a little bit about how people operate hot air balloons.
It involves several people holding the open part while hot air blows into the balloon from a fan. It seems surprisingly simple. I ate delicious pizza baked in a wood-fired oven.
I saw the von Trapp family lodge.
And saw a green-edged petunia at the von Trapp restaurant.
Walked along a stream.
And had a Tequila Sunrise (my first) before dinner. Allowed someone to persuade me to get on the dance floor for the Electric Slide. (I was very bad at this, but it didn't matter.)
Leaving bright and early this morning for the state with the second smallest population in the US (the state with the smallest population is Wyoming, which is another place I would love to visit). It's the 14th state, and the state that lost the highest percentage of its population in the Civil War.
I'll be staying here, and working part of the time - but the work is fun, and interesting. The kind of work that hardly deserves the name work, but I'm very happy to be paid for it!
(By the way, the post title is the state motto. It's OK, but it sure is dull. Nothing like neighboring New Hampshire's Live Free or Die.)
I finished Barchester Towers, the second book of the Barchester Chronicles, last week.
It was immediately obvious to me that Trollope had much more fun writing this book than any of the previous four novels – or at least he was in a more playful mood. I think this may have been because this novel’s predecessor, The Warden, was his first popular success – in fact, his first novel to receive any notice at all. It was also the first one to earn any money, and this was always of great importance to Trollope, as it is to most of us.
I won’t recount the plot, or extol the wonderful variety of characters. Mrs. Proudie, Signora Vesey Neroni (mother of the last of the Neros), Archdeacon Grantly, Bertie Stanhope – these marvelous characters have been adequately praised by wiser readers and better readers than me. It was pure pleasure to spend time with them again. I’ll just note how well Trollope captures the complexity of his characters – not a one, not even Mrs. Proudie, is a simple black-and-white study or a crude caricature of one idea.
I will note two things that struck me during this reading. One, I regret to say, is Trollope’s crude and unthinking anti-Semitism. Very sad and very bad, but there it is. The second thing that struck me is how much the novel reminded me of modern sitcoms -- in two ways. One is that a great mainstay of modern sitcoms is the situation where people are talking about different things, but without realizing it. The second likeness is Trollope’s continual intrusion into the story with authorial reassurances or information, much the way sitcoms like Modern Family and The Office “break the fourth wall” by having characters address the audience directly. In The Office this was originally explained by the entirely ridiculous idea that some sort of documentary is being made – although no documentary maker in the world could capture the confidences characters make, and the pretense of there being some sort of documentary filming seems to have been abandoned quite early. Modern Family never made an effort to explain why the characters address the audience directly every so often. But it works, and it’s very funny.
Trollope is more ponderous and more Victorian than contemporary sitcom writers, of course, but the convention still works. For example, “But let the gentle-hearted reader by under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope.” Or, he complains about the constraints of novel-writing: “And who can apportion out and dovetail his incidents, dialogues, characters, and descriptive morsels, so as to fit them all exactly into 439 pages, without either compressing them unnaturally, or extending them artificially at the end of his labour? Do I not know that I am at this moment in want of a dozen pages, and that I am sick with cudgeling my brains to find them?”
The 1982 BBC series is terrific - particularly Nigel Hawthorne as Archdeacon Grantly and Alan Rickman as Rev. Slope. In fact, I see them quite clearly now when I read the novel.
Perfect summer weather for more than 24 hours - slept last night quite comfortably without air conditioning (on the top floor of a split level!), stayed home all day working from home, going outside every so often to fuss over the tomatoes, and now looking forward to another night of wonderful cool temperatures. Not bad for the middle of July.
He is still very much into camping, kayaking, hiking, etc. I loved seeing the kids develop all kinds of interests, especially ones that we never had, like fishing.
Loved even more watching them develop interests we did have, like reading.
It's impossible, when raising kids, to really understand that you are living with a future adult. Impossible, but great.
Keeping his feet, a feeling in his gut,
Heart in his mouth, a slow bee in his bonnet,
Silently groaning under God knows what,
He wants to see if he can write a sonnet:
Nothing spectacular, just some decent verse,
Each phoneme brooded on, each syllable weighed,
The diction plain, the sentence fairly terse
(To please you, lovely reader, meter-made.)
And now he feels he’s in his element,
Baiting a hook and casting forth the line,
And through clear water sees a heaven-sent
Swift flash of silver rise into the air and shine.
Ah, let it go – go, dart back to the deep.
A lovely thing, but much too small to keep.
I was reminded again this morning, in the shower, of how amazingly little shampoo is needed to work up a nice lather.
Just a dab. OK, you might want to double that to half a teaspoon, but you don't need much. I tend to use more unless I consciously make an effort, just because a big amount glops out of the bottle so easily. I was astounded the first time I used a tiny little dab of shampoo and discovered that it is, indeed, quite adequate for the job.
The No. 1 sin, according to repair people and appliance experts, seems to be adding too much soap to washing machines or dishwashers.
“Nobody thinks they use too much soap,” said Vernon Schmidt, who has been a repairman for almost 35 years and is the author of a self-published book, “Appliance Handbook for Women: Simple Enough Even a Man Can Understand.” But apparently most of us are in denial.
Washing machines and dishwashers are made to use far less water now than older models and, therefore, need less soap. And detergents have also become increasingly concentrated. So a little goes a long way.
“Most people use 10 to 15 times the amount of soap they need, and they’re pouring money down the drain,” Mr. Schmidt said.
One-eighth to one-half of the recommended amount is usually adequate, according to the article.
It's been adequate for me.
I'm not going to save lots of money by using so much less shampoo and detergent, but every little bit helps, and I suppose using less is better for the environment, too.
I understand completely, though, if anyone afflicted with something as horrible as Smelly Hair Syndrome might want to use lots of shampoo.
Even in an ordinary suburban house, even with a tiny yard and only three trees, I still have to fight nature now and then. It's nothing compared to the terrific battle fought by farmers (I know, because of my many, many relatives who literally worked 14-hour days, seven days a week, 12 months a year, as dairy farmers) -- yet still, there are battles to be fought.
Poison ivy, for example.
I was content to let it wander up the tree in the back yard. I didn't pay much attention to it.
In fact, I thought it looked sort of pretty. Until I did some yard work, and developed several itchy, oozy patches of irritation. Then I realized that, even if you try to leave it alone, it may attack. And it might attack the children who play under that tree.
Today I sprayed the roots and the leaves I could reach with poison ivy killer.
They look pretty, don't they, glistening with liquid poison?
Over the years we have battled many species of natural enemy- we have chased out of our homes opposums, squirrels, birds, bats, snakes, ants, feral cats, cockroaches, mice, rats, carpenter bees, and skunks (we called in exterminators for the last three). These battles took place in six homes, in three states, over many years. (The cockroaches, by the way, were in Princeton, New Jersey, the one home where we least expected them.)
In most cases I was sorry to have to chase away these creatures which, after all, bore us no enmity. They were just being themselves.
And the poison ivy is just being itself. It means no more harm than the flowers I have planted, which I water and tend and lovingly nurture. Poor thing, to be sprayed with chemical poisons while enjoying the summer along with the rest of us.
I love this song, and this is one of my favorite versions of it.
Rufus Wainwright is one of my favorite contemporary musicians, and this makes me realize that I need to become more familiar with the rest of his talented family.
And this also reminds me that Stephen Foster is one of my favorite composers. Really. Such lovely melodies. And a sad, short life. Many tears, indeed.
It has been hot and muggy recently, and our neighbors have trimmed a very ordinary tree in such a way that it looks like a tropical tree, which suits the skies lately.
Summer 1981, when our kids had fun with an old box, a broom, and a pillow case in the front yard. Erin had lost both front teeth, and Chris was a very happy little toddler. Those were the days.
By the way, we bought the house belonging to this front yard for $17,500 and sold it about six years later for $34,000 - those were also the days of rapidly rising house prices!
Something new - this recipe was in the most recent issue of Vegetarian Times.
Watermelon on the grill:
And then on a bed of watercress, with crumbled feta cheese, mint leaves, and a dressing made of balsamic vinegar and agave nectar:
Scrumptious.
But also a good illustration of why even professionals find food photography difficult. The watermelon looked much better in real life. Since I'm an amateur . . . . eh, just take my word for it.
There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers & the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country.
This is the corner of my bedroom near my side of the bed.
This is a corner of the bathroom ceiling.
Here are the corners of one set of kitchen cabinets.
We are planning to try to sell this house about a year from now. I don't mind moving - I actually like moving - but I do want to remember some of the little bits and pieces and corners of this house in which I have lived for so many years.
I've read about (but have never actually read) blogs in which people keep track of what they eat every day, with photos. I've heard that, boring though they sound, some are actually rather interesting.
I tried to find some, but I couldn't find the kind I'm thinking of - a record kept by one person of what he or she eats. I found many other kinds of food blogs, but not that kind.
Why even think of such a thing? Because today was the first day of a 4-day weekend, with nothing special planned, and I have noticed that on days like this my eating habits become strange. And I thought that a record of what I ate today would make a weird entry in a daily eating food blog (if I were to have one, which I do not).
The day started out pretty ordinary, with strong coffee, two poached eggs, and one slice of toast.
Then I went to the store and bought, among other things, a cantaloupe. I cut it up when I returned home, planning to eat a little - and ended up eating the entire thing! It was so good! But after I had finished it, I thought - good Lord, I just ate an entire cantaloupe. And not a small one.
Later I planted a couple pots of white petunias in the front garden (forgot to mention that this was an absolutely gorgeous summer day). While planting the petunias I noticed a stray frond poking up through the soil that looked like a little carrot top, and remembered that we had planted carrot seeds in this spot last fall. It was a carrot! A little teeny carrot that somehow came up a year later!
It was delicious.
We had half a jar of Hot Red Pepper Jam left from our trip to New Hampshire, so I mixed it up with cream cheese to make a dip, and ate that with chips.
We had planned to have sandwiches for dinner - avocado, bacon, tomato, and lettuce sandwiches. But Neil has a cold and didn't feel like eating anything, and I didn't want to make the sandwich just for myself. So I had more chips, this time with chipotle salsa.
And I'm going to have butter pecan ice cream before going to bed.
