Month: March 2011

Mornin’

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I take my time picking out an address book because I keep it for a very long time. Counting the one I’m using now, my lifetime total stacks up to three.  

But my book is getting worn.  I see the spine is separating from the cover. Some of the tabs are dog-eared; QR is missing all together. ‘Course XYZ is still as stiff as when the book was new. No matter. There is only one address stored there; blank pages from XYZ migrated to denser neighborhoods years ago.

Despite its declining condition it never disappoints. It is not so small that adding an address is a chore. It is not so large that taking it along is a hardship. The botanical print on the front is timeless and modest. The binding is still sturdy.

Open the book and memories swarm like starlings coming in to roost for the night. They jostle, flit, and flutter before huddling companionably against the chill.  And I am reminded of the steady march of time.

Take a Look

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This is the last day for a spectacular quilt exhibition sponsored by the American Folk Art Museum in New York. It is a private collection of 650 red and white quilts, no two alike. What sets this exhibition apart, however, is the inventive display.

Grounded by a small circle of chairs each draped with a quilt the collection spirals upward into a vast industrial space. The thoughtful installation showcases the quilts in a manner that would surely please their creators.

If this leaves you wanting more, visit the International Quilt Study Center and Museum online. Located in Lincoln, Nebraska the museum specializes in quilt restoration and has an extensive data base of quilt collections.

Doubting Stevie

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I am not a fan of Dancing with the Stars. I just never was into it. But when I heard George Lopez slam Kirstie Alley comparing her to a dancing pig, I kinda, pardon the expression,   bristled.

Annd then — I thought, that is absolutely uncalled for. Who is this Lopez anyway?

And here was the slippery slope, I thought — how incredibly snarky, will Ally be able to muster through? Well,  just you never mind. Ally’s tweet to Lopez, “I want ur kidney dude” is destined to be a poster child put-down. 

Moral of the story: Don’t ever doubt that women who play with sharks know what they are doing. Second moral: It’s just show biz.

Asparagus Stalk-er

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I have a new and unlikely hero. Euell Gibbons.

Gibbons was a naturalist and writer who did tv commercials in the seventies; typically he stood in a roadside ditch waving a cattail as he talked about living off the land. I thought he was a fruit cake wacko.

But the other day, I read an account of a 6 day camping trip he took with John McPhee one fall in Pennsylvania. Called The Forager, the story is part of Secret Ingredients, a collection of stories, mostly funny, from the New Yorker magazine on all things gastronomic.  

The two set out with a canoe, sleeping bags, nested pots and a Coleman stove. They did not carry any food supplies with them intending to gather all of their meals from the countryside. After the first few days, they agreed they would introduce, a meal at a time, certain staples such as salt and cooking oil picked up en route.

Euell Gibbons ate what he foraged because he liked it not because he was a survivalist. Left to his own devices he’d make liberal use of butter, eggs and spices.  

Along with describing the 16 meals they share, McPhee includes Gibbon’s wry observations about all manner of things and interesting details about his fully lived life. The fortunate reader gets to vicariously feast on dandelion roots, oyster mushrooms,  persimmons and catnip tea.  

Gibbons was 64 when he died in ’75. If he was alive today I bet he’d have a huge following with Tweets such as:  

Not suffering like the early Christians. 

Mushroom? Toadstool? Learn the good ones or die.

Toss out the crops. Eat the weeds.

I never was a hay burner.  

March is Tough

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It is March Madness. It snowed, KU didn’t have a good day and Denver, the sweet yellow lab, got busted. I could have launched my campaign to clean a little area each day but …. I didn’t.

I did rummage through the shelf alcove next to the refrigerator where I store all printed materials related to anything mechanical. (Funny how you repeat the habits of your family, my mother always stuffed everything like that in a certain kitchen drawer.)

It was a memory lane sort of task, where is the pizza stone, the espresso foamer, the clay pot that roasted chicken and carrots? 

Oh, here are the directions for my Superfast Waterproof Pocket Thermometer! Great, I need it now. 

I made pork tenderloin with an onion pan sauce, roasted parsleyed potatoes, and carrots with tarragon and white wine. It turned out to be a good day.

Play it again, boys

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BMI is the performing rights organization in charge of collecting royalties for US songwriters. They put together a list of the top 100 played songs on American radio and television up to 1999.

Get this, the number one song on the list has been played 8 million times. If you started playing it right now, it would take over 45 years to reach 8 million.

Could you stand to listen to this for that long?

BTW, do you want to find new music that sounds like stuff you like? Visit music-map, type in Righteous Brothers and a visual word map will appear showing music groups similar to them.  The closer the groups are, the greater the likelihood if you love one you’ll love the other. This sixties pop group is right next to the Righteous Brothers. 

Cutesy

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Ok, there is Etsy, where you can buy all kinds of handmade and vintage stuff which led to Heartsy where you can get discount vouchers for stuff from Etsy and then there is Regretsy where Etsy products of questionable value are lampooned without mercy and without censorship.

Itsy and bitsy are still up for grabs if you don’t count the itsy bitsy spider song.

Goodbye Liz

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It seems to me the world is a little less glamorous today without Elizabeth Taylor. Which is a little odd since we had pretty much of a non relationship. My notion of her is formed by the Public Eye which was unable to turn its gaze whenever she showed up.  

So through the years I sorta watched her movie career unfold, gossiped about her choice of men, at times marveled at her spot-on indifference to snipers, and envied her drop-dead beauty.

It’s just too bad that a death often prompts the finest tributes to a life.  And so we hear that she was the first and probably the last of the great movie stars. She was a breathtaking beauty, an activist, a philanthropist, a humanitarian, a businesswoman, a stalwart friend, a comedienne and a protective nurturing mother.

No question about it. Her life seems gloriously lived and I’m sure she would have loved to hear today’s chatter about her.  

Personally, I liked hearing that she and Debbie Reynolds were still friends in spite of that Eddy Fisher thing.  And I liked learning that she had a mutation that caused her to have double rows of eyelashes. And I liked knowing that she was surrounded by her family at the end.

Hold the Hill

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When I was growing up my father would declare on certain spring mornings, “It’s time to Muck this place out.” He had spent quite a bit of time in the military where I think he first learned to love that call to cleaning action.  

What would follow is a purge of out-grown clothes, bits and parts of over-used toys and the general flotsam and jetsam created by a family of 5 kids and 2 adults.  

Nothing would do except to tackle a room with a three-step exercise: pile everything in the center of the room, study it, decide its fate. It was one of three Keep, Toss or Giveaway; the Decide Later option I see organizers of today use was not a choice. 

I think about this as I am  shifting things on my desk to claim a working surface.  Muck out, I say to myself. The first thing I pick up is a snow globe with a kitchen aid mixer in it. I shake it a few times and see that the snow drifts as faithfully as ever. I see from the sticker on the bottom that it cost $3.99 from my favorite salvage store. 

Does it deserve prime desk real estate?  Well, it’s witty. It doesn’t leak, it reflects light nicely, it even has solid wood base.  I put it back. No muck for the mixer this spring.