St. George and the Very Small Dinosaur

St. George slew the dragon; Calvary St. George's seems to slay birds.



This is the second bird I've seen there, feet up alongside the steps. The first one was tiny; this one was bigger, almost pigeon-sized. I originally saw the bird on Friday, but when it was still there on Saturday, I stopped. My daughter was with me; instead of being grossed out by the dead bird, or bewildered by my photography, she was concerned that the flies weren't leaving it in peace.

Poor thing. And what is it about that church that keeps killing the birds?

Vasistas

I know. Aimless archaeology. I discovered this scrap of paper when I was emptying out my mother's desk, in preparation for its removal to my house.

Before last month, I'd never heard of a transom being called anything but a transom, but Marinka's husband claimed that it was called a "vasistas" in French. And not that I'm trying to side with Marinka's husband or anything, but apparently one Neal Hitzig had heard this too and wrote to the New York Times about it ... eighteen years ago. Neal does call it "apocryphal" (and Neal's letter is footnote #5 in the wikipedia article which one of Marinka's commenters cited). Anyway, my mother saw fit to rip it out of the paper. She liked words. She also liked ripping things out of the newspaper. She kept everything. I just didn't expect to be reminded of Marinka while I was cleaning out my mother's desk. Go figure.

The desk, a beautiful Eastlake rolltop desk, with burled insets, and a glass-fronted bookcase on top, had been in my father's family. Family lore, if my memory serves, had it stored in the attic of my grandparent's garage/barn, from where it had to be lowered by block and tackle. Tucked in one of its little drawers is a scrap of paper ripped out of some magazine, lord knows when, with a picture of the desk's twin and notes as to its provenance. I'm looking forward to the its appearance in my living room. The desk, that is. The scraps of paper...? Big sigh. I think the rest of my summer is going to be an immersion in aimless archaeology. And shredding.

The Last Day of Third Grade

Finally! Today's the last day of school for my girl. The end of third grade isn't actually a graduation, but her grandmother gave her the mortarboard deely boppers, so of course she had to wear them to school. Goofball.

This time of year, there's always a lot of blather about commencement speeches and what messages they send and "everyone is wonderful" (except for the guy at the high school graduation who went viral with the "you are not special" speech. The speaker at my own college graduation - on a beautiful June day 30 years ago - was Maya Angelou. I can't find her address online - but it riffed on her poem "Phenomenal Women".

I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

All anyone remembers about it is the phenomenal part - we are indeed phenomenal, each and every one of us (and you too). Be yourself, be phenomenal. Oddly enough though, when you actually read the poem, it's kind of all about her looks - she's not pretty, yet men are drawn to her, based on some inner light. She's not phenomenal for the things she does, the words she speaks, the life she leads:

It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.

Yes, joy in the feet is a wonderful thing but that's not all there is.

Last month, the commencement address at my alma mater was by Melissa Harris-Perry - Tulane University professor of political science, author, Nation columnist, MSNBC host, and "nerdland" icon.

Her charge to the graduates was far more provocative - and, dare I say, useful - than most:

Be ignorant.
Be silent.
Be thick.

Be ignorant - you do not know everything, and nor should you be expected to.
Be silent - because there are times when one must listen, and thinking before speaking is always a good idea.
Be thick - commitment and sturdiness will stand you in good stead, and besides "Thin women look great in bikinis. Thick women look terrific in history books."

My girl is finding her way, starting to assess her peers, navigating the rocky social straits, losing herself in books, and I'm sure she'll turn out to be a phenomenal woman. But I'm going to add silent, ignorant and thick to the agenda.

Pink Suede Shoes

She intrigues me. I don't know who she is, I've never seen her on my train before.

She's wearing a fitted sleeveless dress, brownish beige, slightly textured. It's well cut, and makes me think of my mother's Anne Fogarty and Claire McCardell dresses - what one wore in the fifties. Her shoes are pink suede, with a high curvy heel and a little knotted ankle strap - they look a like a cross between character shoes and Fluevogs. And she's shepherding a bright orange folding Dahon. I can't imagine riding a bicycle in those shoes, but then, I'm not her.

Later, once she's settled in on the train, she takes a stainless steel tiffin box out of her snakeskin bag. Once breakfast is over - what she ate, I couldn't tell - she settles in with her knitting, an indeterminate object in pink wool.

Stylish. Environmentally correct. Crafty.

Does she live in my town? My town is so full of bankers and lawyers and people who wear suits to work. The mostly male commuters mostly drive to the train station. Who is she? Why did I find her so fascinating?

A Manifesto About Strawberry Shortcake

There is only one kind of strawberry shortcake. It does not use lady fingers, it does not involve angel food cake. Cool Whip is verboten, sponge cake is all wrong. The strawberries must be local, the cream has to be freshly whipped, and the shortcake is a biscuit.

If you’re me, you have a hardcover edition of The James Beard Cookbook found at a used bookstore and bought because you had to own a copy since your mother always had one. And when your mother made strawberry shortcake, she made it James Beard’s way, which is to say, one enormous shortcake, cut into wedges at the table. Little individual ones, plated in the kitchen, are all well and good – providing that they’re made with biscuits and good berries and real whipped cream – but there is nothing more jaw-droppingly stupendous than an exuberant pile of whipped cream atop an enormous craggy biscuit with pink rivulets flowing off the macerated strawberries.

This is it. This is love. And this is how we celebrated Father's Day.



Strawberry Shortcake (adapted ever so gently from James Beard)

2 cups flour
2 ½ t. baking powder
1 t. salt
4 T. sugar
5 T. butter
¾ cup heavy cream
~2 T. softened butter

1 quart strawberries
2 T. sugar

1 ¼ cups heavy cream
2 T. powdered sugar
¼ t. vanilla extract (optional)

Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender, or two knives, or your fingers. Stir in just enough heavy cream to make a smooth, soft dough, not too sticky. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead gently for about a minute. Divide it into two portions, one a little bigger than the other. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the larger piece into a circle about 9” across and ½” thick. Gently transfer the disk to a greased cookie sheet. Spread the disk with soft butter. Roll the small piece of dough into a circle about 7” across and ½” thick, and transfer it to atop the first piece. Bake at 450° F for about 20 minutes, until nicely browned and baked through. Let cool.

While the shortcake is baking, clean the strawberries and cut them in half. Sprinkle with 2 T. sugar, stir gently, and set aside.

Just before serving, whip the cream with the powdered sugar and vanilla. Slip the shortcake onto a serving plate, and gently remove the top circle with a spatula. Cover the bottom with half of the strawberries and half the whipped cream. Replace the top circle, spread it with the remaining whipped cream and top with the remaining strawberries. Serve immediately.

Invention

I made a quilt for our new nephew, my brother's child, who arrived not too long ago with aplomb and no warning. The quilt was, therefore, hastily done, but I think it's nice. A vintage green and white striped pillowcase opened up to just the right size for the backing; the pieced front is a bunch of funky damask towels cut into 6" squares (so as to avoid the stains and holes) and pieced together. My daughter embroidered his name and the year on one of the squares, and I tied the whole thing together with a bit of blue embroidery thread.

Midway through, I realized that the iron was hot - not just temperature hot, but electrically hot. Yeah. I gingerly finished the necessary ironing, but that iron is toast. And then the sewing machine did that clunk clunk sputter thing and I finally dragged it off to a repair shop, where the old lady chastised me for using the wrong thread and the wrong kind of needle. Whatev. Just fix it, 'kay?

My head is full of projects like this. I have plastic storage boxes galore - this one full of old t-shirts, a complementary palate of darks and jewel tones, the next filled with scraps of felted wool, leftovers from a while ago project. I could make a patchwork quilt of the t-shirts, a patchwork blanket from the wool bits.

But that I had more time.

At least my sewing machine works again.

Patterns

Heaven is an empty house. The other members of the household left me home alone yesterday, for a couple of blissful hours, while the girlie went and tried out for the swim team. Other people might use the time to take a nap, or catch up on Desperate Housewives. I embraced the chance for a bit of time to putter around my cellar.

There was a box in a corner, a box of odds and ends that I'd brought home from my mother's house a month or more ago. I emptied it, and put away the odd bits of fabric and paper, a jar full of paper fasteners, a small bone crochet hook. I was about to take the box upstairs, for the recycling bin, when I noticed that it wasn't just a plain white box that 10 reams of copier paper had come in. No, she'd decorated the side of the box, with a collage of paint chips, purples and teals and blues. A bit of matte board, cut to a small rectangle, labeled it "Patterns".

These are the things that rend the heart. This, this box, is a microcosm of her time, her sensibility. Someone else would have scribbled "patterns" with a black Sharpie. Who else would have used the paint chips for découpage?

Now I have a 9" x 17" piece of corrugated cardboard, propped up against the wall by my desk. I can't keep everything. Where do I stop?

Or, where do I start?

Swamped

Busy, busy, busy - June is some month. I'll be back one day.

In the meantime, see if you can identify the common thread in these here photos.





'

Most creative answer gets a prize. Maybe. It's at the whim of the management.

Road Trip

The girl and I, we're going on a road trip. My college reunion is this weekend, and while I wouldn't take her out of school for a trip to Disney, a trip to a college campus, even at eight, seems like an appropriate excuse for an absence. It's educational! It's aspirational! It's a day and a half out of school a few weeks before the end of third grade!

She's beside herself. She's been talking about it for weeks, she packed on Sunday, and she's handing me lists and instructions at every turn.

Here, Mommy, this is what you do when you pick me up at school:

Right. Like I've never picked her up early. Like I wouldn't wait for her.

And here, Mommy, this is what I packed:

Um, what about underpants? And a toothbrush? Or shoes? I should note that the "two time wasters" are not the DSi XL and the 3DS - no, the time wasters are a handheld clicker and a sliding number puzzle - essential road trip supplies. Also, she packed another bag with about six books, a stuffed animal, Julie, and lord only knows what else - it weighs a ton.

Oh, and Mommy, I need some more songs on my iPod:

Despite the admonition of Not One More! Not One Less!, I did add one more: I included the Beach Boys singing California Girls. I can't wait for her to cue it up and sputter this isn't Katy Perry.

Wordless Wednesday: Asparagus

The Lamest Post in the History of Forever

Allow me to complain. I don't do it all that often. But considering that we just had a three day weekend, I feel robbed.

Saturday got taken up by a work-related memorial service, in the city - one of those events at which one's attendance feels mandatory rather than heart-felt. She was a lovely woman, and important to our organization in many ways over a long period of time, but I barely knew her, and would rather have been almost anywhere else at 11:00 on Saturday morning.

Sunday, we went for a bike ride, en famille. At what should have been the mid-point, I fell off my bike. I wasn't even riding! I'd stopped, waiting for my people, and in the process of dismounting, I caught my leg on the rear tire and went down, smash, on my tuchus. I swear, I thought I'd broken my coccyx, so much so that my husband took me to the ER where they shot me up with morphine and x-rayed me. Luckily it's not broken, but as the nice doctor pointed out, that means two weeks of pain instead of six weeks. Joy. I spent the rest of the weekend doped up on Percocet, reading and napping.

I did stagger out to the Memorial Day parade, briefly, and managed to miss two of the three dignitaries as they went by. I did wave frantically at the Secretary of State; I don't think she saw me though.

The worst bit about this damned injury is that on Thursday I have to get in the car and drive for four hours. I think I'll take my husband's car, because his isn't a stick shift, but still - not exactly looking forward to it.

Maybe it won't be so bad; I did make it to work today.

Okay. I'm not going to complain anymore.

Oh, except that this inability to move is going to interfere with my Couch to 5K training - of which I'd only gotten through the first week.

Argh.

No more lame posts. I promise.

(Maybe.)

Wedding Chicken

The bits and bobs surfacing as we clean out our mother's house are mindboggling in their breadth. Just last weekend, I brought home a copper asparagus pot and my junior high school jumpsuit. We found the box of clock bits that Moky had glommed onto when a neighbor's house was emptied - it wasn't that Moky was going to fix any clocks, she just didn't want the gears and springs going in a dumpster. Some crazy karma thing made me take the clock bits home, but I promptly located a clockmaker in my county who came and picked them up - they've moved on to a place where they may actually be of use. [And the guy gave us a Kit Kat Clock in return, even though I specifically said I didn't want any money.]

Up in my bedroom, hanging off the pier glass, were the crown of thyme and bouquet of lavender that had been my floral adornment for my wedding. They were dried out, scentless and shedding - because they were nearly 17 years old - but I popped them in a plastic bag. You can't just throw away your wedding bouquet, can you?

Happily, my husband was planning to grill some chicken for dinner. Happily, he agreed that the right send off for the thyme and lavender was as grill seasoning. Happily, the chicken was delicious, and the thyme and lavender actually came through with some flavor lo these 17 years later.

Me, I ate my wedding bouquet. You?

Cultural Icon

Back in the day, junior high school that is, we had to wear gym suits - at least the girls did. I'd forgotten all about my gym suit, until - of course - it turned up in a box at my mother's house. Of course, I brought it home for the girlie.



She put it right on, and I'll be damned but the thing fits her perfectly which just doesn't make any sense given that she's in third grade and I wore it in seventh, eighth and ninth grades. Great mysteries of life. She then threatened to wear it to school; I dissuaded her. [She also pointed out that it doesn't really fit her; it's got boob darts and she's got no boobs.]

It looks a little like Rosie the Riveter's jumpsuit, it's made out of some unfaded perma-magic everlasting fabric, and my name is tidily embroidered in script - needlework by Moky.

Is there a gym suit museum somewhere?

Double Exposure

Remember that she learned to ride her bike? Here's evidence - complete with an inadvertent multiple exposure, which I like, it gives it motion.

Elected Office...Not.

So yesterday was the local school and library voting - budgets and board members. For some reason, no one ran for library board. As I was entering the high school gym to vote, I ran into the editor of the local paper, and I asked her why no one was running. She lit up and said "write yourself in". So I did.

This morning, I woke up to an email from said editor, subject line reading:

You and Bill Clinton got same number of votes!

Out of 62 write-in votes, I got two, Bill got two, and the winner got 34. So, I lost the race, but I'm totally tickled by the results.

My Mother In My Garden

I spent a good chunk of time in the garden on Sunday. I had flowers to pot up for the front steps, and plants gotten at the garden club sale to put in the ground. There was a bleeding heart that was eating a corner of the perennial bed, a bleeding heart so big it had collapsed of its own sheer exuberance (abetted by a heavy rain). Even though it was still kind of in full bloom, I heartlessly dug it up and divided it in half. Here's hoping it survives. I impaled myself trying to prune the flowering quince, getting intractable thorns stuck in both hands. By the time I was done, I was filthy and sore, and oh so very pleased with myself.

It's impossible for me to work in the garden without thinking of my mother. Hers was her joy. A chore, to be sure, but a joy. She was ever shuffling hosta; I do the same. Her plants are scattered through my yard - hosta, astilbe, sedum - and solomon's seal running up along the front steps.



The sign was hers, bought in France, brought home and mounted on a bit of plywood. It faded terribly, its white letters all chalked off a few years after she got it. But she loved it so, and so painstakingly repainted all the little letters. You can't tell from a distance, but up close? It bears her brushmarks. And I think that's a bit of her standard issue hosta in the lower right hand corner.



It amuses me no end to have her sign living in my own garden. Little children are particularly perplexed, because (as yet) none of them speak French. If you come visit, you're not allowed pick the mushrooms (we've only toadstools), but I might send you home with a piece of hosta.

Yes.

Poetry for mother's day? Written by your very own child?

Yes, I said, yes.

(Though, upon reflection, I hope she's not comparing me to the one of our cats whose name is Rainbow...)

Banking Shenanigans

About six weeks ago, we decided it was time to refinance the mortgage. We’re 8 years into a 30 year loan, and current interest rates are more than two points less than we’ve been paying. Refinancing is going to knock about 15% off of the monthly payment, and two plus years off the remainder of the loan. I’ve been going back and forth with the loan officer, coming up with odd little bits of information and various bank statements. Sometimes it’s seemed like dealing with Mo, Larry and Curly – the process of trying to get my employment verification to the person who asked for it took a week of attempted emails and aborted faxes before I just hand-delivered it to the guy at the branch. [True story: when we got our mortgage 8 years ago, the bank never even tried to verify either my employment or my husband’s.]

The other day, the loan officer told me they needed just two more things – yet another bank statement, and a letter from me about my self-employment income. Why yes, you noticed my schedule C, I do have a tiny amount of self-employment income – I get three nickels for running ads on my blog, once in a while I do a sponsored post, and I do a teeny bit of social media work for a local newspaper. I sent the bank the following letter:

In the past few years, as reflected on our tax returns for 2009-2010-2011, I have had a small amount of free-lance income – from sponsored posts and ads on my blog, as well as a smattering of consulting work. I expect to continue to receive such income, but I do not expect it to rise beyond its current level of just about immaterial.

This morning Times revealed that Chase – our bank, as it happens – lost two BILLION dollars trading. And they want me to explain my bubkis free-lancing? Methinks they’re barking up the wrong damned tree.

Wordless Wednesday: Zip Art

[Flaming Cactus at Astor Place, NYC]

Get Swabbed!

A friend - an acquaintance really - has a son with acute lymphocytic leukemia, a relapse, actually. So I did the only rational thing that I could think to do, and signed up as a marrow donor.

It was incredibly easy - you fill out the forms on-line, they send you a kit, you swab the inside of your cheeks, and mail the swabs back to them. If I'm a match, they'll either collect peripheral blood stem cells via a blood donation, or pull marrow out of the pelvic bone.

If they call me because I'm a match, I'll tell you all about it.

You too can register - go to getswabbed.org. It won't cost you anything, and you don't even need to leave your house.

Also, lest we forget, FUCK CANCER.