Good morning!
When I was a child, we moved a lot. From the beginning I loved "houses," the arranging of them, the living in them, the imagining of the ones in books (and I had no frame of reference here so put all my girl-characters into houses where we lived or had lived previously), and I liked the idea of having "another house," so I had the second home idea way before the nouveaux riches of the late 1990's and 2000's!
When I was small, the "other house" could be that of my grandparents who always lived close enough for easy visits. In the last years, I have wanted another house in Iowa, or south Texas, or both. And would like a house in Colorado or the Sierras here in California. Not a big one; a cabin would do. In the meantime, I have moved from fairly spacious homes to a very small one that is holding--I finally came to realize-- all the accoutrements of these alternate houses in its cramped space. Not a comfortable way to live.
I've harped about my clothes and how I need to cut them down. But I don't do much about it aside from giving to charity a bag of clothes every week or so. Now, yesterday, talking to the doctor at Kaiser about my husband's condition, I realize (in the words, "You are not going anywhere right now, ") that this is IT. No mountain cabin, no little house or condo at a beach on Padre Island, no air-conditioned house with tree-shaded patio and swimming pool in south Texas, no pied-a-terre in the Bay Area--just here. Here on Fairway Court with a too-small house and a too-large yard ("You are not to be doing any yard work," said the doctor to Theodore ) and I must deal with it.
Nobody's coming to deal with my stuff. I must do it. I must start the Great Winnowing and make it happen, now. Antiques I have been cherishing "for the kids," really must be sold if I can sell them. Ditto all those sets of sterling. Yes, I have sets. My French stove (Thonet) must be sold . My giant piano should go and be replaced with a small one. Some of my too-many dressers should go. Dressers are out now, anyway, did you know? If you do your closets right, you do not need a dresser. And as for dishes--Lordy! Out, damned spots of beauty! Go!
Will any of this be accomplished? Yes, in time of course it will. And if not by me, who? And I will be left like my mother's mother, who lost her whole household goods in a big fire before I was born, with very little on this earth when I pass. I guess that is the best way to go. And my air castles (which I'll still be building on wakeful nights) can be furnished with the things that once I did own, on this earth. That'll be okay. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
My third son,Benjamin
Good noon!
Yesterday was the birthday of my third son. He is forty five years old and is still a pride and joy to me.
When he was born, I was in excellent health, and everyone said to me, "Oh, my third was the easiest birth I had. You'll have an easy time!"
The night before he came, my sister no. 4 was in town with us. My husband took us for a ride and pitched down Henry St. Hill at a rapid clip, braking hard at the bottom and tossing me about a bit. We had a beautiful twilight ride and rode out by UCSD, by those eucalyptus trees off Gilman Drive where several white owls rose up and took off just as we went by.
I often wondered what those owls portended, but they were definitely distinctive and beautiful as they flew into the opal colored air.
We went home and to bed, but at about 11:00 that night my water broke and I knew the baby was going to come. The first two had been quite fast, so I expected to see him pretty soon. We were cautioned by the hospital not to go until the pains were so and so apart. My sister had a taxi to the airport on schedule for that early morning, so could not baby sit the other boys. I called the baby sitter, Burchard, and as soon as she arrived we were off.
My gynecologist was vacationing in Silver City, CO, so they called his partner, who was occupied elsewhere but would come over when he could. Oh dear. Throughout the early morning things got worse. The nurse finally came in and said,"He's on his way." (Meaning, I am sure, that he'd finished with his other baby and at home having a shower and leisurely breakfast.) My pains were excruciating and the nurses were running around like chickens. One mean nurse kept coming over when I had a pain and it felt like she was pushing the baby back in. I finally begged her,
"PLEASE call another floor of the hospital and have any other MD come over and deliver this baby. And PLEASE stop pushing the baby back in. Just let him come." She replied, "I am not pushing him in; I am just widening your cervix." Sure, nurse. I'm dumb enough to buy that.
Finally the doctor hastened in, they put my legs in the position, he sat down, and out came baby. In just the time it took for me to write it. Widening my cervix, my aunt Fanny.
Anyway, recovery was sweet. They brought in my baby after a time, and he was beautiful. "Here is your leetle Preence," said the nurse as she brought him in. She said that everyone in the nursery was exclaiming at his beauty. He was unusually perfect for a newborn, I must say.
As time went by he became my right hand at home. The only bad thing he ever did was break off all the chimneys on my tiny chinaware English cottages, which I had left within the reach of him in his cage.
It was not really a cage; it was a small bed with a high rail and tall off the ground, and served as a playpen when I was in the kitchen within sight.
He could find anything in the house and knew where everything was, unlike his mama. Once I had to leave in a hurry and could not find my keys. "Keys," he said and went over to the dresser and found my keys where he'd undoubtedly stashed them some time before. This is when he was barely old enough to walk.
When he could hardly sit up and toddle about, I watched one day when he took up the three parts of a very complicated adult-level three dimensional puzzle, and as I stood amazed, he put it together once, took it apart, put it together again, and then again. All in silence and secret. He knew something the rest of us did not know.
When he was two and a half or so, at church, he followed his brother Alexander up the aisle when Alex was singing with the choristers. When the boys took their seats facing each other across the chancel, Benjamin stood in front of Alex, and smiled, pointing him out to all of us out there in the congregation. I hastily went up and removed him.
Since those days, there have been plenty of times when, in great need, we depended on his steady presence and his presence of mind. When his older brother, Gregory, was so ill, Ben was a mainstay for his dad and me. Thank God he was there.
Now he is a bachelor living on a hard-pan garden in Concord,CA, oh so far away. And we miss him. But I do have photographs and I do look at them and remember that little angel of long time gone. YAZZYBEL
Yesterday was the birthday of my third son. He is forty five years old and is still a pride and joy to me.
When he was born, I was in excellent health, and everyone said to me, "Oh, my third was the easiest birth I had. You'll have an easy time!"
The night before he came, my sister no. 4 was in town with us. My husband took us for a ride and pitched down Henry St. Hill at a rapid clip, braking hard at the bottom and tossing me about a bit. We had a beautiful twilight ride and rode out by UCSD, by those eucalyptus trees off Gilman Drive where several white owls rose up and took off just as we went by.
I often wondered what those owls portended, but they were definitely distinctive and beautiful as they flew into the opal colored air.
We went home and to bed, but at about 11:00 that night my water broke and I knew the baby was going to come. The first two had been quite fast, so I expected to see him pretty soon. We were cautioned by the hospital not to go until the pains were so and so apart. My sister had a taxi to the airport on schedule for that early morning, so could not baby sit the other boys. I called the baby sitter, Burchard, and as soon as she arrived we were off.
My gynecologist was vacationing in Silver City, CO, so they called his partner, who was occupied elsewhere but would come over when he could. Oh dear. Throughout the early morning things got worse. The nurse finally came in and said,"He's on his way." (Meaning, I am sure, that he'd finished with his other baby and at home having a shower and leisurely breakfast.) My pains were excruciating and the nurses were running around like chickens. One mean nurse kept coming over when I had a pain and it felt like she was pushing the baby back in. I finally begged her,
"PLEASE call another floor of the hospital and have any other MD come over and deliver this baby. And PLEASE stop pushing the baby back in. Just let him come." She replied, "I am not pushing him in; I am just widening your cervix." Sure, nurse. I'm dumb enough to buy that.
Finally the doctor hastened in, they put my legs in the position, he sat down, and out came baby. In just the time it took for me to write it. Widening my cervix, my aunt Fanny.
Anyway, recovery was sweet. They brought in my baby after a time, and he was beautiful. "Here is your leetle Preence," said the nurse as she brought him in. She said that everyone in the nursery was exclaiming at his beauty. He was unusually perfect for a newborn, I must say.
As time went by he became my right hand at home. The only bad thing he ever did was break off all the chimneys on my tiny chinaware English cottages, which I had left within the reach of him in his cage.
It was not really a cage; it was a small bed with a high rail and tall off the ground, and served as a playpen when I was in the kitchen within sight.
He could find anything in the house and knew where everything was, unlike his mama. Once I had to leave in a hurry and could not find my keys. "Keys," he said and went over to the dresser and found my keys where he'd undoubtedly stashed them some time before. This is when he was barely old enough to walk.
When he could hardly sit up and toddle about, I watched one day when he took up the three parts of a very complicated adult-level three dimensional puzzle, and as I stood amazed, he put it together once, took it apart, put it together again, and then again. All in silence and secret. He knew something the rest of us did not know.
When he was two and a half or so, at church, he followed his brother Alexander up the aisle when Alex was singing with the choristers. When the boys took their seats facing each other across the chancel, Benjamin stood in front of Alex, and smiled, pointing him out to all of us out there in the congregation. I hastily went up and removed him.
Since those days, there have been plenty of times when, in great need, we depended on his steady presence and his presence of mind. When his older brother, Gregory, was so ill, Ben was a mainstay for his dad and me. Thank God he was there.
Now he is a bachelor living on a hard-pan garden in Concord,CA, oh so far away. And we miss him. But I do have photographs and I do look at them and remember that little angel of long time gone. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Hail, Period
Bon jour!
Here we are on a strange new planet, (with a strange new typeface, I see)...
And we are not going on any trip. My dear husband presented himself as pretty sick yesterday evening, so after much denial and wrestling I got him to go to the ER at Scripps here in Chula Vista where we remained until 11:30 pm, receiving assurances that he was indeed pretty ill and that we were not to go on any trip. He got a huge antibiotic shot and a prescription for more.
So, we are not to go. That's what I get for being gloomy yesterday. Reminder to self: Lighten up.
Back, then, to The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. Since writing my blog yesterday I have visited some websites about that fascinating picture, and have no review to make. David Denby of the New Yorker, said it all on March 08, 2010 in his review.
One thing he did not say, to my recollection, is the contribution that music makes to a film. The composer, Alexandre Desplay, has scored a number of other important pictures. His remarks about his choices of instrumentation and other facets of the piece are very interesting. He used three flutes as the ghostly voice. There is no real ghost in the movie, of course (spoiler?), but it is certainly eerie. The real events displayed (espionage, rendition, torture, government control), while not depicted onscreen , are the really harrowing ghosts of our time. Desplay's music perfectly depicts, supports, creates, carries,the fright and tension carried by the ghost writer as he flounders his way into a terrible international secret. Superficial folk like myself will enjoy seeing some of the major political figures of our recent past convincingly reproduced onscreen. I know that Mr Polanski is reputed a sleazebag of the worst order. I hate all his goings-on. But he has a mind, an imagination, and lots of determination to have made this "American" movie in a northern European location. I really thought this was an interesting film. YAZZYBEL
Here we are on a strange new planet, (with a strange new typeface, I see)...
And we are not going on any trip. My dear husband presented himself as pretty sick yesterday evening, so after much denial and wrestling I got him to go to the ER at Scripps here in Chula Vista where we remained until 11:30 pm, receiving assurances that he was indeed pretty ill and that we were not to go on any trip. He got a huge antibiotic shot and a prescription for more.
So, we are not to go. That's what I get for being gloomy yesterday. Reminder to self: Lighten up.
Back, then, to The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. Since writing my blog yesterday I have visited some websites about that fascinating picture, and have no review to make. David Denby of the New Yorker, said it all on March 08, 2010 in his review.
One thing he did not say, to my recollection, is the contribution that music makes to a film. The composer, Alexandre Desplay, has scored a number of other important pictures. His remarks about his choices of instrumentation and other facets of the piece are very interesting. He used three flutes as the ghostly voice. There is no real ghost in the movie, of course (spoiler?), but it is certainly eerie. The real events displayed (espionage, rendition, torture, government control), while not depicted onscreen , are the really harrowing ghosts of our time. Desplay's music perfectly depicts, supports, creates, carries,the fright and tension carried by the ghost writer as he flounders his way into a terrible international secret. Superficial folk like myself will enjoy seeing some of the major political figures of our recent past convincingly reproduced onscreen. I know that Mr Polanski is reputed a sleazebag of the worst order. I hate all his goings-on. But he has a mind, an imagination, and lots of determination to have made this "American" movie in a northern European location. I really thought this was an interesting film. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Hail and Farewell
Good morning!
We are leaving tomorrow for yet another automobile jaunt, this time towards the mountains, through the mountains and over towards Iowa.
There in Iowa we hope to see our grandchildren. They are off to camps, to work, to school...but we hope for a glimpse of each this summer on what may be our last car trip over there.
I often think of our grandchildren and wonder what we are to them. In most ways, they will perceive us as ghosts to whom they are granted a glimpse every year, via our endeavors, before their reality closes down and school begins and their lives go on without us. I guess that is OK.
I think a lot now about the mechanics of families, the value of presence and co-habiting, the significance of an absent parent and how the absent one continues on down the years with almost as much strength (though negative strength) as the ones who are there. None of the grandkids will ever consciously miss the time they did not spend with us, I guess. But the holes will remain and endure into their next generation. I know that because I and my sisters 2 and 3 all married men who lost a father or mother at an early age. Absence is a black hole of unfulfilled presence. Men or women who remarry hoping to fill it for themselves or their children are, in my opinion, valiant. They are affirming life if nothing else.
Absent grandparents could only have been missed by people who had grandparents. The values of knowing their grandparents are literally incalculable by kids who have not known theirs. I myself had two sets of living grandparents, one set of whom we were not permitted to know intimately, one set of whom we knew very well. When I was in my later forties or early fifties, those missing grandparents obtruded themselves into my consciousness with a shock. A trip off the narrow path of my life, a different job, new friends, and particularly one new friend jolted my un-lived life and my unknown grandparents into reality for me. A whole new part of myself began to develop. For that is the reality of a missing parent or grandparent...a part of one's inner self that never gets a chance to grow and produce. Because one doesn't miss what one has not known. Interesting.
Well, this is off the track of the farewell note. I hasten to tell my panting readers that I'll be posting whenever I can. I wanted to do a review of the film, The Ghost Writer, by Roman Polanski, but unless I can come on tonight and throw it in, it will have to wait. Hasta la vista, readers, and love from YAZZYBEL
We are leaving tomorrow for yet another automobile jaunt, this time towards the mountains, through the mountains and over towards Iowa.
There in Iowa we hope to see our grandchildren. They are off to camps, to work, to school...but we hope for a glimpse of each this summer on what may be our last car trip over there.
I often think of our grandchildren and wonder what we are to them. In most ways, they will perceive us as ghosts to whom they are granted a glimpse every year, via our endeavors, before their reality closes down and school begins and their lives go on without us. I guess that is OK.
I think a lot now about the mechanics of families, the value of presence and co-habiting, the significance of an absent parent and how the absent one continues on down the years with almost as much strength (though negative strength) as the ones who are there. None of the grandkids will ever consciously miss the time they did not spend with us, I guess. But the holes will remain and endure into their next generation. I know that because I and my sisters 2 and 3 all married men who lost a father or mother at an early age. Absence is a black hole of unfulfilled presence. Men or women who remarry hoping to fill it for themselves or their children are, in my opinion, valiant. They are affirming life if nothing else.
Absent grandparents could only have been missed by people who had grandparents. The values of knowing their grandparents are literally incalculable by kids who have not known theirs. I myself had two sets of living grandparents, one set of whom we were not permitted to know intimately, one set of whom we knew very well. When I was in my later forties or early fifties, those missing grandparents obtruded themselves into my consciousness with a shock. A trip off the narrow path of my life, a different job, new friends, and particularly one new friend jolted my un-lived life and my unknown grandparents into reality for me. A whole new part of myself began to develop. For that is the reality of a missing parent or grandparent...a part of one's inner self that never gets a chance to grow and produce. Because one doesn't miss what one has not known. Interesting.
Well, this is off the track of the farewell note. I hasten to tell my panting readers that I'll be posting whenever I can. I wanted to do a review of the film, The Ghost Writer, by Roman Polanski, but unless I can come on tonight and throw it in, it will have to wait. Hasta la vista, readers, and love from YAZZYBEL
Monday, July 25, 2011
Moody Monday
Good morning!
I made it.
I have to write something because we are going to Costco or somewhere to waste a lot of money. But perhaps we won't. We are traveling again soon so I hope we don't buy any jereboams of food.
I have been thinking of Laredo the last couple of days. It's funny, that romantic border town comes into mind every now and then, and lingers for a while...then it evenesces back into childhood memory.
Did I ever write about the Mercy Hospital in Laredo? I visited there a few times in the year we lived in Laredo, or on trips. The hospital was a rectangle of a few stories (two?) that was in the midst of downtown Laredo. It was owned by the Sisters of Mercy, who ran a tight ship there at the hospital.
The hospital was surrounded by a plaza full of large leafy trees full of little birds (who were probably full of little germs), and at twilight their twittering was something to hear as they finished up their housekeeping for the day, and settled down to their sleep . All the windows of the hospital were wide open, there being no A/c of course. The life of the trees and the life of the hospital were one in regularity and peace.After the hustle and bustle of the border and downtown Laredo, this place was an island of quiet and tranquility and music.
There is a place on the web where you can read the comments of the locals, now in 2011, as they remark on the Old Hospital which is now thought to be haunted. If it is, I am sure that some of the ghosts at least are very small and that they fly around looking for their nests before they settle down for the night. YAZZYBEL
I made it.
I have to write something because we are going to Costco or somewhere to waste a lot of money. But perhaps we won't. We are traveling again soon so I hope we don't buy any jereboams of food.
I have been thinking of Laredo the last couple of days. It's funny, that romantic border town comes into mind every now and then, and lingers for a while...then it evenesces back into childhood memory.
Did I ever write about the Mercy Hospital in Laredo? I visited there a few times in the year we lived in Laredo, or on trips. The hospital was a rectangle of a few stories (two?) that was in the midst of downtown Laredo. It was owned by the Sisters of Mercy, who ran a tight ship there at the hospital.
The hospital was surrounded by a plaza full of large leafy trees full of little birds (who were probably full of little germs), and at twilight their twittering was something to hear as they finished up their housekeeping for the day, and settled down to their sleep . All the windows of the hospital were wide open, there being no A/c of course. The life of the trees and the life of the hospital were one in regularity and peace.After the hustle and bustle of the border and downtown Laredo, this place was an island of quiet and tranquility and music.
There is a place on the web where you can read the comments of the locals, now in 2011, as they remark on the Old Hospital which is now thought to be haunted. If it is, I am sure that some of the ghosts at least are very small and that they fly around looking for their nests before they settle down for the night. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday and more Negative Comments about The Witch
Good afternoon.
It's one of those quiet Sunday afternoons in San Diego area, with an overcast sky that pulses white against your eyes, no real shade and no rain. I finished reading The Witch of Hebron by James Howard Kunstler two days ago.
There's so much good writing in that book that I hate to be carping about a huge error made by the author. There are about three or four long complete descriptions of male masturbatory activity in that rather short novel. They are as trite and disgusting as cheap pornography. Why did Mr Kunstler bother? Why, WHY does he think that kind of stuff fits into a piece of writing meant to be read by the general public and purporting to be an elegaic vision of our emininent and mutual apocalyptic future? Is he trying to say that when the lights go out, men will still be masturbating? Duh. Who knew? More important, who asked? The best I can say of those exposes is that at least he left the women alone and stuck to what he knows about.
Some of his characters are fully wrought and interesting. The most fully wrought is the bad young man Billy Bones; you feel as if you got a pretty complete picture of him. Jasper, the runaway boy, pretty good. Brother Jobe, a well imagined and truly fascinating character--a true American type.The best are the three average guys who are, together, probably a picture of the author himself, parcelled out into thirds. So he know's what he's like (at his best.) The women--well, they're odd. The Witch herself is interesting. All of these women seem to be like something conjured up on a cold night by some lonely man. The mother/teacher types are rapidly run through and rejected into their dull roles, but the Witch is really kind of good. I think she's been prepped up for a bigger role later on in this saga. Interesting.
Both the Witch and Brother Jobe seem to possess magical powers, and to influence the outcome of the story by their dabblings. I liked that, as I like magical things in nature (where I do believe they exist) and I felt that that line of thinking added to the interest of the book.
If number of words given to a sub-topic is any hint, I think the next book by Mr Kunstler will be The Union Grove Cookbook. Never have I read so many menus and recipes and mouth-watering descriptions of meals in one somber tome as in this one. I was wondering how they come up with so many cakes, pies and cookies until I realized that (1) there are all those maple trees, (2) the honey bees may make it into the near future, and (3) most of the populace will have died of the Mexican flu and there won't be so many people around to eat too many sweets. So there will be cakes for all, I am happy to say.
Off topic, it reminds me of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, a novel from the 40's with a similar futuristic thrust, where all are starving but the cook keeps coming up with coconut cakes. Not honey cakes nor maple cakes, but coconut cakes...interesting. I gather that both these gentlemen do their writing on lonely nights when they need their midnight snacks.
Mr Kunstler is a good painter, but he's not a good novelist, yet. His descriptive writing is okay, some of his narrative was surprising and good. A long description of an appendectomy performed by the runaway boy, a doctor's son with good powers of observation and memory, reminded me of Thomas Costain. Anybody remember him? He was a doctor turned historical novel writer. Every novel he wrote contained at least one operation described at great length with painstaking detail. We should hang onto the book in case we have to do the same thing, a little later into The Long Emergency. YAZZYBEL
It's one of those quiet Sunday afternoons in San Diego area, with an overcast sky that pulses white against your eyes, no real shade and no rain. I finished reading The Witch of Hebron by James Howard Kunstler two days ago.
There's so much good writing in that book that I hate to be carping about a huge error made by the author. There are about three or four long complete descriptions of male masturbatory activity in that rather short novel. They are as trite and disgusting as cheap pornography. Why did Mr Kunstler bother? Why, WHY does he think that kind of stuff fits into a piece of writing meant to be read by the general public and purporting to be an elegaic vision of our emininent and mutual apocalyptic future? Is he trying to say that when the lights go out, men will still be masturbating? Duh. Who knew? More important, who asked? The best I can say of those exposes is that at least he left the women alone and stuck to what he knows about.
Some of his characters are fully wrought and interesting. The most fully wrought is the bad young man Billy Bones; you feel as if you got a pretty complete picture of him. Jasper, the runaway boy, pretty good. Brother Jobe, a well imagined and truly fascinating character--a true American type.The best are the three average guys who are, together, probably a picture of the author himself, parcelled out into thirds. So he know's what he's like (at his best.) The women--well, they're odd. The Witch herself is interesting. All of these women seem to be like something conjured up on a cold night by some lonely man. The mother/teacher types are rapidly run through and rejected into their dull roles, but the Witch is really kind of good. I think she's been prepped up for a bigger role later on in this saga. Interesting.
Both the Witch and Brother Jobe seem to possess magical powers, and to influence the outcome of the story by their dabblings. I liked that, as I like magical things in nature (where I do believe they exist) and I felt that that line of thinking added to the interest of the book.
If number of words given to a sub-topic is any hint, I think the next book by Mr Kunstler will be The Union Grove Cookbook. Never have I read so many menus and recipes and mouth-watering descriptions of meals in one somber tome as in this one. I was wondering how they come up with so many cakes, pies and cookies until I realized that (1) there are all those maple trees, (2) the honey bees may make it into the near future, and (3) most of the populace will have died of the Mexican flu and there won't be so many people around to eat too many sweets. So there will be cakes for all, I am happy to say.
Off topic, it reminds me of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, a novel from the 40's with a similar futuristic thrust, where all are starving but the cook keeps coming up with coconut cakes. Not honey cakes nor maple cakes, but coconut cakes...interesting. I gather that both these gentlemen do their writing on lonely nights when they need their midnight snacks.
Mr Kunstler is a good painter, but he's not a good novelist, yet. His descriptive writing is okay, some of his narrative was surprising and good. A long description of an appendectomy performed by the runaway boy, a doctor's son with good powers of observation and memory, reminded me of Thomas Costain. Anybody remember him? He was a doctor turned historical novel writer. Every novel he wrote contained at least one operation described at great length with painstaking detail. We should hang onto the book in case we have to do the same thing, a little later into The Long Emergency. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, July 23, 2011
July 23
Good evening!
This is a hard one to write. It's my eldest son's birthday. He is fifty-one years old, or will be at some time between nine o clock and ten thirty tonight. I believe he was born just before ten but I could be wrong. I was too busy to look at the clock. My husband was there beside us, swathed and garbed. I remember looking up at a pair of such KIND eyes..it was a shock to realize that they were my husband's.
After my baby was born, they took him away and did a lot of cleaning up. Then I was stowed away into a room at the Alameda County Hospital (could that possibly be correct?) and after a time, a nurse came into the twilit room with a little bundle and laid it down beside me. My baby and I had a nice little love-fest of communing for a time, before the nurse came to take him away "so you can get your sleep." I did not feel that was necessary, but I trusted the hospital to care for him till morning.
After a few days, Alexander and I went home with Theodore to our rented digs on Arch Street in Berkeley. That house is still there, and I have driven by to see it within the last few years. Benjamin took me. I had a great pediatrician, Dr Grossman,who was as new at doctoring as I was at mothering, but together we made a success of my breastfeeding my skinny little baby and he was plump and rosy in no time. It is harder to realize that it's fifty one years since Dr Grossman started his practice than to believe that Alexander is fifty one years old.
Motherhood is still my greatest accomplishment, though I was not very good at it. But it brought me so much happiness that I'd never be able to tell it all. I will never forget the absolutely exhalted feeling I had after Alexander was born. I was very very happy. YAZZYBEL
This is a hard one to write. It's my eldest son's birthday. He is fifty-one years old, or will be at some time between nine o clock and ten thirty tonight. I believe he was born just before ten but I could be wrong. I was too busy to look at the clock. My husband was there beside us, swathed and garbed. I remember looking up at a pair of such KIND eyes..it was a shock to realize that they were my husband's.
After my baby was born, they took him away and did a lot of cleaning up. Then I was stowed away into a room at the Alameda County Hospital (could that possibly be correct?) and after a time, a nurse came into the twilit room with a little bundle and laid it down beside me. My baby and I had a nice little love-fest of communing for a time, before the nurse came to take him away "so you can get your sleep." I did not feel that was necessary, but I trusted the hospital to care for him till morning.
After a few days, Alexander and I went home with Theodore to our rented digs on Arch Street in Berkeley. That house is still there, and I have driven by to see it within the last few years. Benjamin took me. I had a great pediatrician, Dr Grossman,who was as new at doctoring as I was at mothering, but together we made a success of my breastfeeding my skinny little baby and he was plump and rosy in no time. It is harder to realize that it's fifty one years since Dr Grossman started his practice than to believe that Alexander is fifty one years old.
Motherhood is still my greatest accomplishment, though I was not very good at it. But it brought me so much happiness that I'd never be able to tell it all. I will never forget the absolutely exhalted feeling I had after Alexander was born. I was very very happy. YAZZYBEL
Last night's blog (July 22)
Good morning. This is my blog for yesterday, July 22. I was too often distracted to ever get it done. Night came, and I went to bed finally.
This blog was meant to be entitled, "Not a review of The Witch of Hebron."
James Howard Kunstler is a fairly well known figure in the USA, due to his having established himself as an urban critic and assessor of our recent culture. I respect him for those things and could not agree more with him. I too loathe and fear those giant figures in baby pants, backwards caps, piercings, and tattoos. Why on earth are they out there on the streets? We need nothing more to symbolize and illustrate our nation's plunge into cultural darkness, unless it were the tattooed, pierced, skeleton-thin or muffin-topped females of the species. I am with you, Mr Kunstler.
Jim Kunstler hails from a lake shore just north of Saratoga Springs, NY. Strangely enough for this little Tex-Mex border denizen, I am fairly familiar with the area thanks to my sister no.3's having dutifully followed her husband home to his roots some 40-odd years ago. Over these years we have all visited northern NY state many times, and have come to love it. And we have had opportunity on our own, though not as acutely as those living there, to observe the diresome changes in the cityscape of Saratoga Springs and the wonderful network of small cities and villages in a hundred mile radius of where Kunstler writes about.
This is all to say that, when I read Kunstler's latest effort, The Witch of Hebron, I was quite familiar with all the little places he mentions and all the rivers and scenery and woods and autumnal haunts he writes about. I was sorry to see that poor old Glens Falls, a small city of some distinction when my sister moved there long ago, is reduced to an abandoned wasteland in the future.
That is because Mr Kunstler is writing about a fictional future set in his home environs. His whole basis for his latest writings is on the premise of "The Long Emergency," his name for the period that is coming when the oil plays out for good. The oil hasn't played out yet, here in 2011, or so they say, --but the Long Emergency is already upon us, in my opinion. The Long Emergency, The Prequel, if you will.
The Witch of Hebron is the second of a series of novels that Mr Kunstler is writing, set in his neighborhood, in some time in the future. In his world, everything has crashed down and we (the few survivors of us) are doing the best we can with what is left to us. Trouble is, it's hard to encompass his sweeping vision within the framework of a small novel. He should have gone for something the size of War and Peace for each of these works (the first was A World Made by Hand) instead of trying to make a best seller of it.
His work is fascinating, to say the least. In literary quality it is highly uneven. Mr Kunstler is a wonderful painter, and not strangely, his lyrical descriptive writing is the best of his wordcraft. In narrative, he is learning. Learning. He has some wonderful ideas. And some real clunkers.
I have no more space nor time to go into the details at this post. But I will. In another blog posted soon. Today is my eldest son's birthday and I have other writing to do. YAZZYBEL
This blog was meant to be entitled, "Not a review of The Witch of Hebron."
James Howard Kunstler is a fairly well known figure in the USA, due to his having established himself as an urban critic and assessor of our recent culture. I respect him for those things and could not agree more with him. I too loathe and fear those giant figures in baby pants, backwards caps, piercings, and tattoos. Why on earth are they out there on the streets? We need nothing more to symbolize and illustrate our nation's plunge into cultural darkness, unless it were the tattooed, pierced, skeleton-thin or muffin-topped females of the species. I am with you, Mr Kunstler.
Jim Kunstler hails from a lake shore just north of Saratoga Springs, NY. Strangely enough for this little Tex-Mex border denizen, I am fairly familiar with the area thanks to my sister no.3's having dutifully followed her husband home to his roots some 40-odd years ago. Over these years we have all visited northern NY state many times, and have come to love it. And we have had opportunity on our own, though not as acutely as those living there, to observe the diresome changes in the cityscape of Saratoga Springs and the wonderful network of small cities and villages in a hundred mile radius of where Kunstler writes about.
This is all to say that, when I read Kunstler's latest effort, The Witch of Hebron, I was quite familiar with all the little places he mentions and all the rivers and scenery and woods and autumnal haunts he writes about. I was sorry to see that poor old Glens Falls, a small city of some distinction when my sister moved there long ago, is reduced to an abandoned wasteland in the future.
That is because Mr Kunstler is writing about a fictional future set in his home environs. His whole basis for his latest writings is on the premise of "The Long Emergency," his name for the period that is coming when the oil plays out for good. The oil hasn't played out yet, here in 2011, or so they say, --but the Long Emergency is already upon us, in my opinion. The Long Emergency, The Prequel, if you will.
The Witch of Hebron is the second of a series of novels that Mr Kunstler is writing, set in his neighborhood, in some time in the future. In his world, everything has crashed down and we (the few survivors of us) are doing the best we can with what is left to us. Trouble is, it's hard to encompass his sweeping vision within the framework of a small novel. He should have gone for something the size of War and Peace for each of these works (the first was A World Made by Hand) instead of trying to make a best seller of it.
His work is fascinating, to say the least. In literary quality it is highly uneven. Mr Kunstler is a wonderful painter, and not strangely, his lyrical descriptive writing is the best of his wordcraft. In narrative, he is learning. Learning. He has some wonderful ideas. And some real clunkers.
I have no more space nor time to go into the details at this post. But I will. In another blog posted soon. Today is my eldest son's birthday and I have other writing to do. YAZZYBEL
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Clothes, and Colors, and the BCP
Good noon!
I was going to write a lot earlier and say, Surprise!, but got off the track and now I am here to write sketchily before I go down to a nap.
Back to clothes. I have a number of jackets hanging outside on the trelliswork of the patio. It's a good thing, as Martha would say, for our closets get all stuffy with used shoes, clothes, and all kinds of things that need airing out.
Jackets are the staple of variety in my wardrobe. Can we HAVE a staple of variety? I mean, that 's how most I vary my appearance over the week. Dull pants and top, good looking jacket. I have three tweed jackets for winter/spring/summer/fall. One is Ralph Lauren, an olive plaid. One is someone? in an olive tweed with little off-white flecks in it that give it a lighter more multi-seasonal quality. And a beige and white herringbone that somehow never gets chosen. Oh, yes, I am waiting to lose ten pounds. It would look better then.
Then there are the summer jackets: white denim with lace and a brown overlaid printing and it is great; red cotton 750 dollars bought at Dillard's in a trample it up sale for about fifty...and I never wear it, dont know why; white linen, black linen, white cotton, black cotton, white rainjacket material, --and too many others to mention.
Quite a few of the last, I have bought at the thrift store. I refrain from advertising this about because once you show people a great bargain you got at the thrift store, they tend to say, EVERY time they see you, "What a great outfit! Did you get it at a thrift store?" This last is usually said in a very piercing voice. At least, it pierces me. So I never confess a second time that I got something at a thrift store, no matter what a great bargain it turned out to be.
As to colors, I love the off-colors, as I said. For years I wore in the summer a jacket of thin elegant raisin-colored linen. This jacket went with everything. Alas, one year I got into a clearing-out mode and gave it away. Oh, I still regret that jacket, perfect boyfriend cut, perfect color for day or night or with any outfit.But things come and go. At any time I could scoop up the jackets hanging on the line and just say,"I've had it with these old clothes! I am giving them away!" The Am-Vets are coming on Monday and I have to clear out a bunch of stuff to make it worth their while stopping, don't I?
Anyway, back to colors...hue is color, and a shade is that color darkened with black, and a tint is that color lightened with white. So you can never have a shade of pink, my dears. It's a tint of pink, or baby blue, or lemon yellow. That is all I know of art--well, not true. When I was a child up at six a.m. alone in the living room and experimenting with my wonderful Prang paintbox, I discovered that a beautiful brown could be made with black, red and yellow. There, I do know something that I learned on my own. Do not forget it; someday you may need that tip.
The BCP up there in the title is because I have been grieving the downfall of our country. You haven't noticed, my dears? The more fools you, then. It is gone, all that wealth and ease we used to know, and I do not know how we will get them back, given that we have let our industry, our brains and our sense go with them. So I will close with one of my favorite prayers, and look for it as you will, you will not find it in your today's prayer book.
O LORD our Governor, whose glory is in all the world; We commend this nation to they merciful care, that being guided by thy Providence, we may dwell secure in they peace. Grant to THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and to all in Authority, wisdom and strength to do thy will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness, and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in thy fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with three and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen. YAZZYBEL
I was going to write a lot earlier and say, Surprise!, but got off the track and now I am here to write sketchily before I go down to a nap.
Back to clothes. I have a number of jackets hanging outside on the trelliswork of the patio. It's a good thing, as Martha would say, for our closets get all stuffy with used shoes, clothes, and all kinds of things that need airing out.
Jackets are the staple of variety in my wardrobe. Can we HAVE a staple of variety? I mean, that 's how most I vary my appearance over the week. Dull pants and top, good looking jacket. I have three tweed jackets for winter/spring/summer/fall. One is Ralph Lauren, an olive plaid. One is someone? in an olive tweed with little off-white flecks in it that give it a lighter more multi-seasonal quality. And a beige and white herringbone that somehow never gets chosen. Oh, yes, I am waiting to lose ten pounds. It would look better then.
Then there are the summer jackets: white denim with lace and a brown overlaid printing and it is great; red cotton 750 dollars bought at Dillard's in a trample it up sale for about fifty...and I never wear it, dont know why; white linen, black linen, white cotton, black cotton, white rainjacket material, --and too many others to mention.
Quite a few of the last, I have bought at the thrift store. I refrain from advertising this about because once you show people a great bargain you got at the thrift store, they tend to say, EVERY time they see you, "What a great outfit! Did you get it at a thrift store?" This last is usually said in a very piercing voice. At least, it pierces me. So I never confess a second time that I got something at a thrift store, no matter what a great bargain it turned out to be.
As to colors, I love the off-colors, as I said. For years I wore in the summer a jacket of thin elegant raisin-colored linen. This jacket went with everything. Alas, one year I got into a clearing-out mode and gave it away. Oh, I still regret that jacket, perfect boyfriend cut, perfect color for day or night or with any outfit.But things come and go. At any time I could scoop up the jackets hanging on the line and just say,"I've had it with these old clothes! I am giving them away!" The Am-Vets are coming on Monday and I have to clear out a bunch of stuff to make it worth their while stopping, don't I?
Anyway, back to colors...hue is color, and a shade is that color darkened with black, and a tint is that color lightened with white. So you can never have a shade of pink, my dears. It's a tint of pink, or baby blue, or lemon yellow. That is all I know of art--well, not true. When I was a child up at six a.m. alone in the living room and experimenting with my wonderful Prang paintbox, I discovered that a beautiful brown could be made with black, red and yellow. There, I do know something that I learned on my own. Do not forget it; someday you may need that tip.
The BCP up there in the title is because I have been grieving the downfall of our country. You haven't noticed, my dears? The more fools you, then. It is gone, all that wealth and ease we used to know, and I do not know how we will get them back, given that we have let our industry, our brains and our sense go with them. So I will close with one of my favorite prayers, and look for it as you will, you will not find it in your today's prayer book.
O LORD our Governor, whose glory is in all the world; We commend this nation to they merciful care, that being guided by thy Providence, we may dwell secure in they peace. Grant to THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and to all in Authority, wisdom and strength to do thy will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness, and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in thy fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with three and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Clothes, clothes, clothes!
Good noon!
Patricia has come, we have played the piano and had lunch, and the noontime hour is still not over, so good noon!!
I have been sorting clothes out so I think I'll write about them. Clothes are items of endless fascination for most women, I guess, and a lot of men too. The idea of adorning ourselves seems to be part of our hard-wiring for sure. I saw a documentary about abused chimpanzees living their broken lives out on a rescue island somewhere under the care of some kind people. Somebody gave one of the girl chimps a string of blue beads, and she took one look and put it over her head to wear it around her neck. Talk about hard-wiring! Can't get much harder than that!!!
I have been reading about all the projects people are indulging in recently, slanted toward consuming less, owning less, using less, lessening one's footprint on the earth. One popular plan consists of winnowing one's wardrobe down to a few essential pieces and getting rid of the rest. Of course, the sane woman will only get rid of it as far as a storage box or two, for she's not going to last long on just four or five garments, my friends... not in a world of crazy excess like ours.
I have been winnowing, myself, and am unable to winnow down to any respectable sized wardrobe at all. I blame part of this on our climate. It's mid-July, shorts weather, and I am sitting here in shorts freezing my tailfeathers off. That means that all the lighter jackets that I should have put away in June are coming in handy to keep me warm above when I am frozen below. Here in the San Diego area, where there are no seasons to speak of, it is impossible to pack away non-seasonal stuff for any length of time at all. So one keeps it all on hand, the warm with the cool, the summery with the wintry, in case of need.
Let's talk about the perfect summer wardrobe. I like shorts, tops, pants at my age. The pants are decent and good looking. The shorts--well, unfairly, their decency depends on how good-looking one's legs are. Mine are not too horrible for 82 year old legs (not an oxymoron! Stop laughing!)..so I do wear shorts but mostly around house and garden and sometimes to the supermarket. But if your legs are long, slim and tan, there's no better outfit for anywhere in summer than shorts and top.
Colors are important. The best looking combo is white pants, black top. Men and women wear this, both, and it looks great on everyone. Then you can also wear black pants, white top, which also looks okay but doesn't approach white pants, black top. If the pants are shorts, and sunglasses are applied to the head, you're perfect.
Then, there are the neutrals. So many wonderful subtle colors appear all the time. A wonderful shorts/top combo is tan shorts (not chino colored, but a real tan), and top of any one of these: dark slatey gray, dark or medium gray-green, or black. Really good looking. I have about four tees in gray-green alone. Some are lighter and some are darker, some grayer and some greener. They are all good. The dark slatey gray is a kind of blue and a recent discovery as companion to tan shorts. Looks great!
Forego blue jeans in summer. There are too many other colors and styles to wear. When you go to church, it's easy to make up a church outfit in any of the colors above. Add a great straw hat and you're good to go. In the evening, black and black are always good, and you can use some lightweight but large and vulgar beads to carry the color part of it. At church and in the dressy places you'd go in evening, you can if you must put on p.a.n.t.y.h.o.s.e, but if your legs are at all tan I'd skip 'em. Nobody likes them and they look peculiar. I have searched and searched for a good leg makeup but have not found it yet. The natural tan skin look is what you want. After all, it's summer!!
So many words and we have not gotten beyone shorts-pants-tops, and we have not gotten as much into colors as I wanted to both today and yesterday, when I was talking about the subtle colors of Dusty Millers. I think I'll continue on this theme tomorrow too. YAZZYBEL
Patricia has come, we have played the piano and had lunch, and the noontime hour is still not over, so good noon!!
I have been sorting clothes out so I think I'll write about them. Clothes are items of endless fascination for most women, I guess, and a lot of men too. The idea of adorning ourselves seems to be part of our hard-wiring for sure. I saw a documentary about abused chimpanzees living their broken lives out on a rescue island somewhere under the care of some kind people. Somebody gave one of the girl chimps a string of blue beads, and she took one look and put it over her head to wear it around her neck. Talk about hard-wiring! Can't get much harder than that!!!
I have been reading about all the projects people are indulging in recently, slanted toward consuming less, owning less, using less, lessening one's footprint on the earth. One popular plan consists of winnowing one's wardrobe down to a few essential pieces and getting rid of the rest. Of course, the sane woman will only get rid of it as far as a storage box or two, for she's not going to last long on just four or five garments, my friends... not in a world of crazy excess like ours.
I have been winnowing, myself, and am unable to winnow down to any respectable sized wardrobe at all. I blame part of this on our climate. It's mid-July, shorts weather, and I am sitting here in shorts freezing my tailfeathers off. That means that all the lighter jackets that I should have put away in June are coming in handy to keep me warm above when I am frozen below. Here in the San Diego area, where there are no seasons to speak of, it is impossible to pack away non-seasonal stuff for any length of time at all. So one keeps it all on hand, the warm with the cool, the summery with the wintry, in case of need.
Let's talk about the perfect summer wardrobe. I like shorts, tops, pants at my age. The pants are decent and good looking. The shorts--well, unfairly, their decency depends on how good-looking one's legs are. Mine are not too horrible for 82 year old legs (not an oxymoron! Stop laughing!)..so I do wear shorts but mostly around house and garden and sometimes to the supermarket. But if your legs are long, slim and tan, there's no better outfit for anywhere in summer than shorts and top.
Colors are important. The best looking combo is white pants, black top. Men and women wear this, both, and it looks great on everyone. Then you can also wear black pants, white top, which also looks okay but doesn't approach white pants, black top. If the pants are shorts, and sunglasses are applied to the head, you're perfect.
Then, there are the neutrals. So many wonderful subtle colors appear all the time. A wonderful shorts/top combo is tan shorts (not chino colored, but a real tan), and top of any one of these: dark slatey gray, dark or medium gray-green, or black. Really good looking. I have about four tees in gray-green alone. Some are lighter and some are darker, some grayer and some greener. They are all good. The dark slatey gray is a kind of blue and a recent discovery as companion to tan shorts. Looks great!
Forego blue jeans in summer. There are too many other colors and styles to wear. When you go to church, it's easy to make up a church outfit in any of the colors above. Add a great straw hat and you're good to go. In the evening, black and black are always good, and you can use some lightweight but large and vulgar beads to carry the color part of it. At church and in the dressy places you'd go in evening, you can if you must put on p.a.n.t.y.h.o.s.e, but if your legs are at all tan I'd skip 'em. Nobody likes them and they look peculiar. I have searched and searched for a good leg makeup but have not found it yet. The natural tan skin look is what you want. After all, it's summer!!
So many words and we have not gotten beyone shorts-pants-tops, and we have not gotten as much into colors as I wanted to both today and yesterday, when I was talking about the subtle colors of Dusty Millers. I think I'll continue on this theme tomorrow too. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Miller Madness
Good morning!
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I love Dusty Millers, those ordinary little old gray plants that you see at the nursery and do or do not buy, depending on what you want at the time. Today I decided to go out and trim them back. They turn into huge monsters at some point in their humble lives and more than reward you for putting them in. Ours have done their spring and summer duty, rewarding us with a huge area of bright yellow flowers for some months now. After the flowers die, their ghosts remain as dark brown versions of their former selves, and are quite striking on their own.
You can see them up there at the top, brown and sturdy, happy doing what they're doing. But today was the day. The old stalks had to go, so I was out right after breakfast with my snippers. taking those long stalks right down. It took a long time, to my 82 year old bones, to get all those many stems. At the end, I did leave three lone stalks that were just coming into bloom, the last roses of summer, left blooming alone, their lovely companions all faded and brown.
Dusty Miller plants are really a lovely color, the palest tint of green dusted with gray-white frosting. As the stalks age and the blooms begin to turn brown,the leaves themselves turn a lovely color of wood-ash white. I like all plants of "off" colors now, as much as I hated them when I was a child. They do yeoman service in a garden as they bring out contrasts that our lazy eyes might not otherwise see.
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I'll go out again in a week or so to take off those last blooms. The plant itself is in shock. "What happened?", all those stems and blossoms are saying as they stand in the trash bin in the yard. "Where did we go?" But in a little while, I'll fertilize those tidy plants of pale gray-green, and give them some water, and they'll sulkily take it in, then they'll nap a bit before showing us what they really can do, bursting forth into a riot of joy that will last for months. YAZZYBEL
You can see them up there at the top, brown and sturdy, happy doing what they're doing. But today was the day. The old stalks had to go, so I was out right after breakfast with my snippers. taking those long stalks right down. It took a long time, to my 82 year old bones, to get all those many stems. At the end, I did leave three lone stalks that were just coming into bloom, the last roses of summer, left blooming alone, their lovely companions all faded and brown.
Dusty Miller plants are really a lovely color, the palest tint of green dusted with gray-white frosting. As the stalks age and the blooms begin to turn brown,the leaves themselves turn a lovely color of wood-ash white. I like all plants of "off" colors now, as much as I hated them when I was a child. They do yeoman service in a garden as they bring out contrasts that our lazy eyes might not otherwise see.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Thanks, Benjamin, for the Bar of Soap
Good afternoon!
I am writing this blog to thank Ben for giving me a beautiful bar of soap. I keep forgetting to thank him in an email, so have decided to do it in my blog since I have to write something today anyway. Ben brought it in as we were leaving and mentioned that it was an overlooked item from Christmas. A nice surprise.
The scent of the soap is Wine and Black Olive. WOW. What an unusual combination (though, in Sonoma County, I daresay they had little else to choose from, LOL). I opened it right away when I got home because I was curious about what it could smell like. It smells very very nice--I'd say, like dry vine twigs and olive leaves, to be specific. A light elusive scent that I like very much. The color of the bar is cinnamon-stick brown, and that is nice too. You could give this bar of soap to a man without trepidation. I love men's scents anyway. Maybe because I have too many y chromosomes--or is it x? Or is it because it reminds me of a good-smelling guy? Whatever, I love the fragrance and the bar is sitting on my tub. Thank you, Benjamin.
We have been home for two weeks and I am ready to go again. Why hang around? I spoke to my grandson on the phone when he answered the other day. I thought I'd called the wrong number but he seemed to know who I was--oh, but his voice had changed to a deep resonant baritone. Always before I had confused his voice with one of his big sisters. Now, no doubt about it--he is a man. This fact has touched me deeply,and I want to see my grandkids. I do. I do want to. YAZZYBEL
I am writing this blog to thank Ben for giving me a beautiful bar of soap. I keep forgetting to thank him in an email, so have decided to do it in my blog since I have to write something today anyway. Ben brought it in as we were leaving and mentioned that it was an overlooked item from Christmas. A nice surprise.
The scent of the soap is Wine and Black Olive. WOW. What an unusual combination (though, in Sonoma County, I daresay they had little else to choose from, LOL). I opened it right away when I got home because I was curious about what it could smell like. It smells very very nice--I'd say, like dry vine twigs and olive leaves, to be specific. A light elusive scent that I like very much. The color of the bar is cinnamon-stick brown, and that is nice too. You could give this bar of soap to a man without trepidation. I love men's scents anyway. Maybe because I have too many y chromosomes--or is it x? Or is it because it reminds me of a good-smelling guy? Whatever, I love the fragrance and the bar is sitting on my tub. Thank you, Benjamin.
We have been home for two weeks and I am ready to go again. Why hang around? I spoke to my grandson on the phone when he answered the other day. I thought I'd called the wrong number but he seemed to know who I was--oh, but his voice had changed to a deep resonant baritone. Always before I had confused his voice with one of his big sisters. Now, no doubt about it--he is a man. This fact has touched me deeply,and I want to see my grandkids. I do. I do want to. YAZZYBEL
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Sunday Evening
Good evening!
Here we are at five:twelve p.m., having eaten all of our supper except the brownies with chocolate peanut butter ice cream which constitute our fattening dessert.
Yummo. The ice cream(Target's instore brand) by itself is only so so, but with a nice box-mix brownie, it is quite delicious.
Well, we went to see Moon Over Buffalo this afternoon. I guess I am obliged to give a review, so shall try my best to live up to expectations.I don't have a lot to say about it, so shall give some grades instead of discoursing learnedly about it all.
On a scale of five, five being the best:
Play=3, though it may be a four with polished performances.
Acting=3, some good, some not so good. I think I'll go one by one:
Charlotte 4 but way too loud.
George 4 but too tiny for the part and loud to boot
Mother in law 4.5 ( I am partial to the older generation.)
Daughter 3-, but very self-assured
Weatherman 3 but not right for the part
Paul 3 but not right for the part
Charlotte's lover 5
George's lover Eileen 3 at best
Best of play: thinking that daughter's beau was Frank Capra.
Funniest of play: daughter's beau comes in, in the Genl. Patton costume
Most positive: energy
Most negative: NOISE it is too loud for a tiny space ; every sound and every speech is about three times too loud. Screams are painful.
PRONOUNCEMENT: it will be better after a week and more professional after all the relatives and employees are not in attendance. (This is the first weekend.)_
Next play: Pride and Prejudice. Do I want to attend? Oh yes. YAZZYBEL
Here we are at five:twelve p.m., having eaten all of our supper except the brownies with chocolate peanut butter ice cream which constitute our fattening dessert.
Yummo. The ice cream(Target's instore brand) by itself is only so so, but with a nice box-mix brownie, it is quite delicious.
Well, we went to see Moon Over Buffalo this afternoon. I guess I am obliged to give a review, so shall try my best to live up to expectations.I don't have a lot to say about it, so shall give some grades instead of discoursing learnedly about it all.
On a scale of five, five being the best:
Play=3, though it may be a four with polished performances.
Acting=3, some good, some not so good. I think I'll go one by one:
Charlotte 4 but way too loud.
George 4 but too tiny for the part and loud to boot
Mother in law 4.5 ( I am partial to the older generation.)
Daughter 3-, but very self-assured
Weatherman 3 but not right for the part
Paul 3 but not right for the part
Charlotte's lover 5
George's lover Eileen 3 at best
Best of play: thinking that daughter's beau was Frank Capra.
Funniest of play: daughter's beau comes in, in the Genl. Patton costume
Most positive: energy
Most negative: NOISE it is too loud for a tiny space ; every sound and every speech is about three times too loud. Screams are painful.
PRONOUNCEMENT: it will be better after a week and more professional after all the relatives and employees are not in attendance. (This is the first weekend.)_
Next play: Pride and Prejudice. Do I want to attend? Oh yes. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Shopping Saturday
Good afternoon--but just barely!
I am late getting on today--though late is becoming the new normal--- because Theo said he wanted to go to Target, to Von's (Safeway,) and to Walmart, and I had lists for all those places too. So off we went. First we went to Von's and got Safeway 2 tone cookies of the Oreo type...they are much better tasting than Nabisco's. Try them.
While we were maundering through Von's we went by the meat section and I saw a lovely package of good-looking sea bass--two good-looking fillets--for 2.90! Marked down because of date, but the date was still far ahead. I grabbed them.
When we went to Walmart, I concentrated on the produce section, and got limes, chiles, tomatoes, onions, and a big red pepper..and tortillas. Theo got food for the cats. Which reminds me to tell you that I have not seen Kitty Blanko for days, though Theo has. I am spelling Kitty Blanko's name that way because that is the way it is pronounced: to rhyme with Blanco, TX, not the color. I don't aim to lead my readers astray, here.
Then we went to Target where I sat in the car and read the Women's World, the only bargain magazine in the USA, while Theo went into the store in pursuit of bargain diet soda pop. Bad. But he loves it.
When we came home, I fried up my fish in butter, and doused it with limon mexicano and Heinz's cocktail sauce which is just yummy. On the taste scale, the fish came out as--delicious, what else!!
I am now going online to get tickets to Moon Over Buffalo, which is playing at our neighborhood little theater. It promises to be a riot. Friends Susan and Walter are coming too, and even Theo has consented to go. (He had a good time at The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, apparently.) It will be a far cry from Midnight in Paris, but I'll bet we laugh a lot more. YAZZYBEL
I am late getting on today--though late is becoming the new normal--- because Theo said he wanted to go to Target, to Von's (Safeway,) and to Walmart, and I had lists for all those places too. So off we went. First we went to Von's and got Safeway 2 tone cookies of the Oreo type...they are much better tasting than Nabisco's. Try them.
While we were maundering through Von's we went by the meat section and I saw a lovely package of good-looking sea bass--two good-looking fillets--for 2.90! Marked down because of date, but the date was still far ahead. I grabbed them.
When we went to Walmart, I concentrated on the produce section, and got limes, chiles, tomatoes, onions, and a big red pepper..and tortillas. Theo got food for the cats. Which reminds me to tell you that I have not seen Kitty Blanko for days, though Theo has. I am spelling Kitty Blanko's name that way because that is the way it is pronounced: to rhyme with Blanco, TX, not the color. I don't aim to lead my readers astray, here.
Then we went to Target where I sat in the car and read the Women's World, the only bargain magazine in the USA, while Theo went into the store in pursuit of bargain diet soda pop. Bad. But he loves it.
When we came home, I fried up my fish in butter, and doused it with limon mexicano and Heinz's cocktail sauce which is just yummy. On the taste scale, the fish came out as--delicious, what else!!
I am now going online to get tickets to Moon Over Buffalo, which is playing at our neighborhood little theater. It promises to be a riot. Friends Susan and Walter are coming too, and even Theo has consented to go. (He had a good time at The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, apparently.) It will be a far cry from Midnight in Paris, but I'll bet we laugh a lot more. YAZZYBEL
Friday, July 15, 2011
Midnight in Paris
Good evenin' !
This afternoon we went to the movies to see Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's latest attempt at directing a movie. Frankly, I loved the movie. Instead of being just a crabby family in-fighting scenario, it opened itself up and went into time travel. That was a surprise. The hero, a writer, gets to meet up with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and all sorts of other people from the twenties who were living it up in Paris after WW One. He fits right in with them, and they really like him. He has the idea that the twenties were the best time to be alive, and isn't happy in his century at all. He has a girlfriend and potential in-laws who show themselves to be so superficial that we're glad when they part company with him at the end of the movie. It was fun to see Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Man Ray, Luis Bunuel, and DALI ! And, in a double regression, Gauguin, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec...The best thing in the whole movie are the beautiful shots of Paris. Just lovely.
When I was in Europe, I was alone and I didn't go out at night. At all. The shades of evening saw me headed for my room to hunker down till morning came. I'd like to have seen midnight in Paris for sure.
I did see midnight in Venice, though. One night a storm came in, and a fierce wind blew open the shutters of the one large window of my little camara singola. A terrible stink blew in with it, a hideous and ancient smell of old sea edges and brackish mud and canals--and I knew that I really was in Venice , for sure, at last.
Midnight here in Chula Vista mostly passes my notice. I am glad for that. I have a strange sleep pattern and now in my old age midnight is the time when I 'm likely to be most deeply asleep. Around one-thirty or two I'll wake up and have a couple of hours of restlessness which I pass listening to gun-nut radio, happy real-estate-selling radio, or tales of big foots and aliens, --or, my favorite, the economy's-down- the-tubes radio. Strangely enough, these diresome programs keep me happily occupied until, toward morning, I'll turn over and snuggle down and snooze deeply till dawn. YAZZYBEL
This afternoon we went to the movies to see Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's latest attempt at directing a movie. Frankly, I loved the movie. Instead of being just a crabby family in-fighting scenario, it opened itself up and went into time travel. That was a surprise. The hero, a writer, gets to meet up with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and all sorts of other people from the twenties who were living it up in Paris after WW One. He fits right in with them, and they really like him. He has the idea that the twenties were the best time to be alive, and isn't happy in his century at all. He has a girlfriend and potential in-laws who show themselves to be so superficial that we're glad when they part company with him at the end of the movie. It was fun to see Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Man Ray, Luis Bunuel, and DALI ! And, in a double regression, Gauguin, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec...The best thing in the whole movie are the beautiful shots of Paris. Just lovely.
When I was in Europe, I was alone and I didn't go out at night. At all. The shades of evening saw me headed for my room to hunker down till morning came. I'd like to have seen midnight in Paris for sure.
I did see midnight in Venice, though. One night a storm came in, and a fierce wind blew open the shutters of the one large window of my little camara singola. A terrible stink blew in with it, a hideous and ancient smell of old sea edges and brackish mud and canals--and I knew that I really was in Venice , for sure, at last.
Midnight here in Chula Vista mostly passes my notice. I am glad for that. I have a strange sleep pattern and now in my old age midnight is the time when I 'm likely to be most deeply asleep. Around one-thirty or two I'll wake up and have a couple of hours of restlessness which I pass listening to gun-nut radio, happy real-estate-selling radio, or tales of big foots and aliens, --or, my favorite, the economy's-down- the-tubes radio. Strangely enough, these diresome programs keep me happily occupied until, toward morning, I'll turn over and snuggle down and snooze deeply till dawn. YAZZYBEL
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Later and Later
Above, we see, in a none too clear photograph, the last additions to yesterday's stew that I wrote about. Zucchini are delicate, watery items that don't need too much cooking to be overdone. So that picture was taken after everything had rested for a while and I had just added some chunks of zucchini to cook last. The finished stew had meat, yellow bell peppers,onion, garlic, tomato, carrot, hominy, parsley (which was bitter and I took it out), and after it had stewed for a nice time it was just yummy and we enjoyed it very much. I had about a cup of broth with a cup of hominy left over and it is in a jar in the refrigerator waiting to be eaten tomorrow.
I served it in the Mexican style for vegetable soups and stews. They cut the things large, so it is easy to remove each thing from the broth and lay it out on a platter with its kind. So you have a beautifully arranged platter of meat (Usually sliced, from a large piece that has simmered in the soup) and vegetables. The broth goes into a small bowl that goes on the plate, and you can eat your vegetables alone or put them into the broth in the proportion you like. My broth had the hominy in it as well as tiny pieces of beef, but most of the beef came out and was laid out with the rest of the ingredients. Very pretty and super delicious.
Mother made wonderful light vegetable soup in the American style too, with lots of fresh vegetables, peas, carrots, tomatoes, and celery in the broth. Made from a soup bone usually...which was often a knuckle with some meat on it that got boiled to death, which I loved. She often skipped the onion, which my father did not like to eat. And she never put garlic. I like both. And the addition of a little barley is never amiss...it adds a lot. Sometimes a potato was boiled in the soup, in cubes, or a handful of rice. Yum to all the above. I love vegetable soup. YAZZYBEL
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
What's Cookin'
Good afternoon! This blog is getting later and later at starting up. That's okay. At least I made it to the post. :)
Well, today I thought I'd talk about why and how Mexican food is so good. There's an awful lot of it out there now, what with Mexicans of many states and ethnic groups taking up residence in the US of A. When I say, Mexican food, I basically mean the food of my border region when I was a kid, and to me that means beans, rice, tortillas, tomatoes, onions, garlic and chiles. That's a rather small list of ingredients to adopt and say, "If I had to eat a limited diet for the rest of my life, that's the diet I'd choose." The Mexicans in their wisdom realized that beans plus rice or beans plus corn (or preferably all three together) make a perfect protein. With two or more of those you need no other in order to thrive. Then, you can go for refreshment and flavor which are provided by the tomatoes, chiles and onions. That is all and that's enough.
That being said, I'm making a stew today. I bought a Mexican cut of beef, skirt steak. I am not in the mood to stir fry so I cut all those little steaks up and tossed them in olive oil in an ovenproof vessel, and browned them up in the oven. When they were browned, I added onion, salt and water and, the day being warm, put the vessel on the flametop as it's versatile. The meat is simmering away with its onions and salt and water. I looked for my potato because I was going to make a convention American stew, but could not find the potato. So I added hominy, which led to other considerations. I added thyme and a tiny pinch of cumin. I love cumin though it can take over a dish. After while I am going to cut up a tomato and add it, and also will cube up a yellow bell pepper and toss it in too. How delicious. If I had a sweet potato I would have tossed it in in place of the hominy...but we'll love the hominy. It is so much fun to eat; the bites are just the right size. I have some leftover New Mexico green chile bits in the refrigerator, and I think I 'll throw them in too. Why not?
At book club the other night the hostess served a light brown colored spicy apple cake, with a tiny dab of creme fraiche on top. I complimented her on it and told her how pleased I was to have gotten a corner, as I always like the crusty edges. She said that the cake had seemed a bit undercooked when she took it out so she put it back in to crisp up those edges. Very wise. She is a jewelry artist who makes things out of metal. I am sure that she probably re-does those items too until they are just right.
I have moved away from the beans and rice, have I not? But that's the fun thing about food, one thing leads to another. It leads in the side to side thinking as well as the back and forth thinking of present and past time. I am thankful for all those delicious meals I had in the past. Eating out, we had some wonderful food too. Restauranteurs cooked, in those days, and there were no chains. It was wonderful.
I think of the past today, with my ancestors eating beans, rice and tortillas, with--every now and then--a piece of nice roasted goat, or a chicken, or a batch of fish or shrimp or oysters since they chose to settle so conveniently near the Gulf of Mexico. What a delicious menu. YAZZYBEL
Well, today I thought I'd talk about why and how Mexican food is so good. There's an awful lot of it out there now, what with Mexicans of many states and ethnic groups taking up residence in the US of A. When I say, Mexican food, I basically mean the food of my border region when I was a kid, and to me that means beans, rice, tortillas, tomatoes, onions, garlic and chiles. That's a rather small list of ingredients to adopt and say, "If I had to eat a limited diet for the rest of my life, that's the diet I'd choose." The Mexicans in their wisdom realized that beans plus rice or beans plus corn (or preferably all three together) make a perfect protein. With two or more of those you need no other in order to thrive. Then, you can go for refreshment and flavor which are provided by the tomatoes, chiles and onions. That is all and that's enough.
That being said, I'm making a stew today. I bought a Mexican cut of beef, skirt steak. I am not in the mood to stir fry so I cut all those little steaks up and tossed them in olive oil in an ovenproof vessel, and browned them up in the oven. When they were browned, I added onion, salt and water and, the day being warm, put the vessel on the flametop as it's versatile. The meat is simmering away with its onions and salt and water. I looked for my potato because I was going to make a convention American stew, but could not find the potato. So I added hominy, which led to other considerations. I added thyme and a tiny pinch of cumin. I love cumin though it can take over a dish. After while I am going to cut up a tomato and add it, and also will cube up a yellow bell pepper and toss it in too. How delicious. If I had a sweet potato I would have tossed it in in place of the hominy...but we'll love the hominy. It is so much fun to eat; the bites are just the right size. I have some leftover New Mexico green chile bits in the refrigerator, and I think I 'll throw them in too. Why not?
At book club the other night the hostess served a light brown colored spicy apple cake, with a tiny dab of creme fraiche on top. I complimented her on it and told her how pleased I was to have gotten a corner, as I always like the crusty edges. She said that the cake had seemed a bit undercooked when she took it out so she put it back in to crisp up those edges. Very wise. She is a jewelry artist who makes things out of metal. I am sure that she probably re-does those items too until they are just right.
I have moved away from the beans and rice, have I not? But that's the fun thing about food, one thing leads to another. It leads in the side to side thinking as well as the back and forth thinking of present and past time. I am thankful for all those delicious meals I had in the past. Eating out, we had some wonderful food too. Restauranteurs cooked, in those days, and there were no chains. It was wonderful.
I think of the past today, with my ancestors eating beans, rice and tortillas, with--every now and then--a piece of nice roasted goat, or a chicken, or a batch of fish or shrimp or oysters since they chose to settle so conveniently near the Gulf of Mexico. What a delicious menu. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Yesterday's Lunch and a Memory
Good morning!
I thought I'd tell you about yesterday's lunch. It was good and had some interesting things in it.
I re-heated the tender steak from Sunday's dinner, for the meat course.
With the leftover corn, which I cut off the cob, I made esquite...Esquite is popcorn, but it is also pan-toasted corn kernels fried up with green pepper, onion, red pepper, jalapeno. You understand, when I say fried I mean stirred around in a pan moistened with spray oil. Very little fat. It would be more delicious with more fat, but it is good.
I boiled up some baby bok choy for the green vegetable.
And on the side I made a travesty of Mama's fried corn bread. To make it, put some white corn meal and salt in a good sized bowl. I used a cup but half a cup would have done for us. You boil up a saucepan full of water, and pour it into the white corn meal, and stir. Go for a little at a time. I remember that Mama said, each time, "It's not ready. Keep pouring." The point is that the water cooks the corn meal gradually, and it softens and puffs up. You don't want it to be too wet. It has to be cooked and softened but still malleable like clay. When you can handle it you make it into oval cakes. I still remember the prints of Mama's fingers on the cakes. Then she would heat up Crisco in a black iron pan, and fry these cakes until they were golden and crispy. Oh, how delicious they were! They should be eaten with cold golden butter melting into the hot corn cakes.
Mine were not as good because I made them too moist I think, and just put the batter onto the skillet in dabs. Also, using spray oil cuts down some deliciousness right there, but I do try to watch it. My little cakes fried up very nice and were a good adjunct to the meat and gravy, but they were not as golden and crisp as Mama's were. Can one of my sisters tell me if these cakes were dipped into flour before being fried? That might have made them more golden.Tell me how Mama did it , in your memory. And I'll share it and give you credit, by the numbers.
Three of my sisters will be seeing each other this week, as no's 3 and 5 and their husbands drive down to Brownsville and the Nasty Beach for a few days. Lucky them. The nasty beach got its name thanks to my mother, who complained about her only outings being to "that Nasty Beach." My cousin no. 1, who was a great razzer, picked up on it and that is what the beach was called from then on. I loved the beach, nasty or not. They've missed the 26th of June, Dia de San Juan, (the Baptist), when everyone goes to the water. The beach is very popular that day for sure...but I loved it always. The sun comes up over the beach instead of going down over it as in California. It's wonderful to be out at dawn with the sun coming up, in a moment of cool air at the beginning of the day...I still remember the little tiny rainbow-colored clams we used to dig up for their beauty. How we loved them. When we took them home, they never looked as lovely as they had there in their brown sand. YAZZYBEL
I thought I'd tell you about yesterday's lunch. It was good and had some interesting things in it.
I re-heated the tender steak from Sunday's dinner, for the meat course.
With the leftover corn, which I cut off the cob, I made esquite...Esquite is popcorn, but it is also pan-toasted corn kernels fried up with green pepper, onion, red pepper, jalapeno. You understand, when I say fried I mean stirred around in a pan moistened with spray oil. Very little fat. It would be more delicious with more fat, but it is good.
I boiled up some baby bok choy for the green vegetable.
And on the side I made a travesty of Mama's fried corn bread. To make it, put some white corn meal and salt in a good sized bowl. I used a cup but half a cup would have done for us. You boil up a saucepan full of water, and pour it into the white corn meal, and stir. Go for a little at a time. I remember that Mama said, each time, "It's not ready. Keep pouring." The point is that the water cooks the corn meal gradually, and it softens and puffs up. You don't want it to be too wet. It has to be cooked and softened but still malleable like clay. When you can handle it you make it into oval cakes. I still remember the prints of Mama's fingers on the cakes. Then she would heat up Crisco in a black iron pan, and fry these cakes until they were golden and crispy. Oh, how delicious they were! They should be eaten with cold golden butter melting into the hot corn cakes.
Mine were not as good because I made them too moist I think, and just put the batter onto the skillet in dabs. Also, using spray oil cuts down some deliciousness right there, but I do try to watch it. My little cakes fried up very nice and were a good adjunct to the meat and gravy, but they were not as golden and crisp as Mama's were. Can one of my sisters tell me if these cakes were dipped into flour before being fried? That might have made them more golden.Tell me how Mama did it , in your memory. And I'll share it and give you credit, by the numbers.
Three of my sisters will be seeing each other this week, as no's 3 and 5 and their husbands drive down to Brownsville and the Nasty Beach for a few days. Lucky them. The nasty beach got its name thanks to my mother, who complained about her only outings being to "that Nasty Beach." My cousin no. 1, who was a great razzer, picked up on it and that is what the beach was called from then on. I loved the beach, nasty or not. They've missed the 26th of June, Dia de San Juan, (the Baptist), when everyone goes to the water. The beach is very popular that day for sure...but I loved it always. The sun comes up over the beach instead of going down over it as in California. It's wonderful to be out at dawn with the sun coming up, in a moment of cool air at the beginning of the day...I still remember the little tiny rainbow-colored clams we used to dig up for their beauty. How we loved them. When we took them home, they never looked as lovely as they had there in their brown sand. YAZZYBEL
Monday, July 11, 2011
Monday Morning Morals
Good morning!
Yesterday evening, Diane Sawyer came on with a young lady who, as everyone in the US knows, was kidnapped as a child and forced to bear children for a mad man and live in his back yard, for years and years.
My husband turned off the station and declined to listen to this interview. You know, he was right. If he'd left it on, I'd probably have listened through indolence and low-level curiosity and participation in the sad details. But you know what? We do not have to listen to this.
We don't have to listen and watch the trial of a young mother for the murder of her little girl. We don't have to seeth with anger, nor burn for revenge. We were not there. We don't know what happened. As it turned out, the prosecution did not prove its case. Which is it obliged to do. Cases are not judged on whether or not we believe that such-and-such happened. They are determined on the prosecution's need to prove that the person charged is guilty. Obviously, it did not convince the jury. End of trial.
Let it go. Let the girl who was kidnapped, raped, and forced to bear children GO. Let her have her life and suffer what she had to bear, and get over it as best she may. Let Casey the mom go. If she murdered her child, our business with it --the trial--is over. Don't we have enough to do in our own lives, enough work, enough worrying, enough caring?
Sometimes I see a child in a store whom I believe is being seriously harassed by a caregiver. If I do nothing, I feel terrible about it. But, if I do anything, folks say it will be worse for the kid....I have devised a strategy. I wait for a lull in the haranguing. Usually it is fairly surreptitious so I'm not supposed to have over head. In the lull, I smile broadly at the child and say to the (usually) mother: "Your little girl is so cute." Usually this provokes a moment of shock in the mom, as she takes in the world outside her own skewed mentality. Then, most often, she says, sometimes grudgingly, "Yes, she is." Usually she adds a qualifier, "Sometimes."
"Well, I remember when my own kids went through stages, " I say, as we sort through clothes or dishes at the (usually) thrift store or grocery store. "They can really get to us, can't they?" By this time, you can often see the mom, who's had a break in her thinking, relax somewhat. Sometimes they even smile at the kid and seem to accept their situation a little more easily.
At a distance, that is the most we can do for our crazy world. Interfere a little in a way that might do a little bit of good, if only alleviating a bad situation for a very short while.
Listening to trash-talk on the television reminds me that Jesus says that bad deeds done vicariously are marked up against our own records. Oh-oh. Adios stories of serial killers, adult porn stories, thriller novels of detailed gore and lust and degradation. Adios, interviews of child victims of rape, and minute descriptions of the details of child murder. Of possible child murder. Somebody probably killed little Kaylee once, for sure....but how many times has she been killed since, in our minds?
What do you think? Am I wrong in this? YAZZYBEL
Yesterday evening, Diane Sawyer came on with a young lady who, as everyone in the US knows, was kidnapped as a child and forced to bear children for a mad man and live in his back yard, for years and years.
My husband turned off the station and declined to listen to this interview. You know, he was right. If he'd left it on, I'd probably have listened through indolence and low-level curiosity and participation in the sad details. But you know what? We do not have to listen to this.
We don't have to listen and watch the trial of a young mother for the murder of her little girl. We don't have to seeth with anger, nor burn for revenge. We were not there. We don't know what happened. As it turned out, the prosecution did not prove its case. Which is it obliged to do. Cases are not judged on whether or not we believe that such-and-such happened. They are determined on the prosecution's need to prove that the person charged is guilty. Obviously, it did not convince the jury. End of trial.
Let it go. Let the girl who was kidnapped, raped, and forced to bear children GO. Let her have her life and suffer what she had to bear, and get over it as best she may. Let Casey the mom go. If she murdered her child, our business with it --the trial--is over. Don't we have enough to do in our own lives, enough work, enough worrying, enough caring?
Sometimes I see a child in a store whom I believe is being seriously harassed by a caregiver. If I do nothing, I feel terrible about it. But, if I do anything, folks say it will be worse for the kid....I have devised a strategy. I wait for a lull in the haranguing. Usually it is fairly surreptitious so I'm not supposed to have over head. In the lull, I smile broadly at the child and say to the (usually) mother: "Your little girl is so cute." Usually this provokes a moment of shock in the mom, as she takes in the world outside her own skewed mentality. Then, most often, she says, sometimes grudgingly, "Yes, she is." Usually she adds a qualifier, "Sometimes."
"Well, I remember when my own kids went through stages, " I say, as we sort through clothes or dishes at the (usually) thrift store or grocery store. "They can really get to us, can't they?" By this time, you can often see the mom, who's had a break in her thinking, relax somewhat. Sometimes they even smile at the kid and seem to accept their situation a little more easily.
At a distance, that is the most we can do for our crazy world. Interfere a little in a way that might do a little bit of good, if only alleviating a bad situation for a very short while.
Listening to trash-talk on the television reminds me that Jesus says that bad deeds done vicariously are marked up against our own records. Oh-oh. Adios stories of serial killers, adult porn stories, thriller novels of detailed gore and lust and degradation. Adios, interviews of child victims of rape, and minute descriptions of the details of child murder. Of possible child murder. Somebody probably killed little Kaylee once, for sure....but how many times has she been killed since, in our minds?
What do you think? Am I wrong in this? YAZZYBEL
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Dinner de Domingo
Good morning! That's how you say, Sunday Dinner, en español. Or, rather, in Spanglish.
Yesterday we went to the Supermercado Foodland, of which there are many in Chula Vista. It amuses me that the supermarket industry in this burg is becoming overweeningly Mexican. It's only right, you must agree, since the Mexicans have long taken over the labor--and then the management-- of the produce departments of supermarkets, that they should have the running and I hope the ownership of them too.
Our most sensational Mexican store is the Gonzalez Market...mariachi music is blaring and the whole shopping experience is like a visit to our neighbor country...but these smaller places like the Foodlands are coming right up. You go into the store at the newest Foodland, and there's the cafeteria lineup right at your left hand. It all looks and smells wonderful, from the Pollo en Mole to the Sopa de Verduras...Just across the entry path to the store are a few small booths where you can take your food and enjoy. Next time, we will.
There are the usual aisles of canned foods, which I havent had time to fully explore yet...Lots of salsas, I'll tell you. And there is a meat counter with great cuts of meat. There is ground beef of the 90% lean variety and of the 75% variety. We got a blob of the good...and there are cuts and roasts of different styles from the American. I got a large steak which looks like a chuck steak. I mean, this steak is huge. For $3.50. It's thin, and when it cooks down it will feed me and Theodore but n ot many more. It's got bones in it--no problem. It has a seven-bone and another large bone. I cut it into about seven pieces.
I have browned it and am simmering it with onion, salt and pepper, and am counting on it to be delicious at Sunday dinner.
In the produce department there are all the usual fruits and vegetables, plus whole fruits of the prickly pear in both red and green colors. And huge papayas. And mangos. And leaves of the nopal all ready for YOU to take off the thorns and go for a meal after slicing them up and sauteing with onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers...and there are leaves whose thorns have already been removed for you. The best part of the fruit section is the prepared fruit section with clear plastic boxes of sliced juicy honeydew melon or watermelon, or pineapple, or mixed fruit, all deeply powdered over with dried chiles. Yum yum.
For lunch I'll have cooked zanahorias and fresh raw rabanos along with tortillas and the meat. And watermelon which I already had and will cut up and serve with ground cayenne pepper. Yummo.
I went to church but did not stay for yet another tour of Turkey with St. Paul; I'd rather be there than listen about it once more. Happy Sunday! YAZZYBEL
Yesterday we went to the Supermercado Foodland, of which there are many in Chula Vista. It amuses me that the supermarket industry in this burg is becoming overweeningly Mexican. It's only right, you must agree, since the Mexicans have long taken over the labor--and then the management-- of the produce departments of supermarkets, that they should have the running and I hope the ownership of them too.
Our most sensational Mexican store is the Gonzalez Market...mariachi music is blaring and the whole shopping experience is like a visit to our neighbor country...but these smaller places like the Foodlands are coming right up. You go into the store at the newest Foodland, and there's the cafeteria lineup right at your left hand. It all looks and smells wonderful, from the Pollo en Mole to the Sopa de Verduras...Just across the entry path to the store are a few small booths where you can take your food and enjoy. Next time, we will.
There are the usual aisles of canned foods, which I havent had time to fully explore yet...Lots of salsas, I'll tell you. And there is a meat counter with great cuts of meat. There is ground beef of the 90% lean variety and of the 75% variety. We got a blob of the good...and there are cuts and roasts of different styles from the American. I got a large steak which looks like a chuck steak. I mean, this steak is huge. For $3.50. It's thin, and when it cooks down it will feed me and Theodore but n ot many more. It's got bones in it--no problem. It has a seven-bone and another large bone. I cut it into about seven pieces.
I have browned it and am simmering it with onion, salt and pepper, and am counting on it to be delicious at Sunday dinner.
In the produce department there are all the usual fruits and vegetables, plus whole fruits of the prickly pear in both red and green colors. And huge papayas. And mangos. And leaves of the nopal all ready for YOU to take off the thorns and go for a meal after slicing them up and sauteing with onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers...and there are leaves whose thorns have already been removed for you. The best part of the fruit section is the prepared fruit section with clear plastic boxes of sliced juicy honeydew melon or watermelon, or pineapple, or mixed fruit, all deeply powdered over with dried chiles. Yum yum.
For lunch I'll have cooked zanahorias and fresh raw rabanos along with tortillas and the meat. And watermelon which I already had and will cut up and serve with ground cayenne pepper. Yummo.
I went to church but did not stay for yet another tour of Turkey with St. Paul; I'd rather be there than listen about it once more. Happy Sunday! YAZZYBEL
Friday, July 8, 2011
Dinner and a Movie, and Books, and a Story
For dinner we had chicken tacos. The tortillas were old, so I fried them in a little olive oil. It makes the tacos so much better to have fried tortillas. So I take any excuse.
It was okay to have fried tacos because I was starving.We'd spent the previous two hours at the cinema, viewing a movie called " A Better Life." This movie was, in a nutshell, corny. Ostensibly it was the story of a poor inmigrante mexicano in LA, trying to make a life for himself and provide for his son a better life than he'd had so far. The fact that this migrante spoke perfect English and communicated in English with his son--well, the movie really lost me there. No Mexican has ever learned English that well in just six years spent at manual labor in gardens of Los Angeles, in the first place. That he'd bother to converse with his high school aged son in English just for the convenience of American moviegoers was the last straw. No, it didn't happen. The only good part was the last scene was when the immigrant, having been deported to Mexico after a lot of shenanigans involving a truck, is returning to LA on foot with a lot of his compatriots--returning "home," to the only home he has on this earth. I could buy that. But it was too late.
Too late.
Now to the books of the title. Lee Child is the author, and someone had given Ben a handful of thrillers,one with "Bad Luck and Misfortune,"in the title. These books are purchased at airports by persons desperate to occupy their minds with something other than their present reality. Anyway, that book is GREAT....very readable...very suspenseful. Not too much gore or prurient action...very very good. So next, I read the first book in the series, The Killing Floor, and enjoyed it a lot. It is a book that you cannot put down, and that is a very desirable quality in the circumstances described above. And the author can write, very well. I brought the third book home with me and it succumbed to the very forces I have mentioned as being so undesirable in books in a series--over-familiarity. Over-familiarity of the hero and his mannerisms or quirks...his taste in women...his moral code...his chivalry...and his determination to revenge himself on everyone who crosses his path in the wrong way. He's a killer, folks. His name is Jack Reacher and he makes Elvis Cole and his strong stalwart sidekick Joe Pike look like amateurs.
But--over-familiarity is a killer too, and as a result I will never know what happened to the Vice President of the United States back in eighty-something....
The story is a story whose title has slipped my mind, as has the author's name. I read it in one of those compendia of stories that are culled from all over as "Best Stories of....," in all different genres and years. In this story, the heroine is in Spain perfecting her Spanish and struggling with the subjunctive case of verbs. In the background of her thoughts if the lover she left at home who was crumbling before her eyes as a result of the onset of mental illness. Now, the subjunctive case is the form used for the unknowable, the improbable, the possible. For life, in other words..It's too bad we stopped using it in English. It opens up the mystery of our world as nothing else does. People "take" Spanish, and learn it from the Indicative point of view---our English viewpoint---that's the way it is, so take it or leave it. However, that is NOTthe way life is. Life is unpredictable, un=understandable, unknowable. You can't pin it down in the Indicative Case. It's NOT the way it is, and you have to take it. Thus, the Subjunctive Case, which tells us as we speak that we don't really have a clue, folks. Anyway, her bewilderment and sorrow and tragic sense of loss as she loses her lover to his destroyed mind--are perfectly expressed in her struggles with the Subjunctive in Spanish. Good story. I keep looking for it but haven't found it yet in my welter of books. If you love language as I do, Spanish and English both....I hope you find and appreciate this remarkable short story....Hasta manana, and..Buenas noches a todos. YAZZYBEL
It was okay to have fried tacos because I was starving.We'd spent the previous two hours at the cinema, viewing a movie called " A Better Life." This movie was, in a nutshell, corny. Ostensibly it was the story of a poor inmigrante mexicano in LA, trying to make a life for himself and provide for his son a better life than he'd had so far. The fact that this migrante spoke perfect English and communicated in English with his son--well, the movie really lost me there. No Mexican has ever learned English that well in just six years spent at manual labor in gardens of Los Angeles, in the first place. That he'd bother to converse with his high school aged son in English just for the convenience of American moviegoers was the last straw. No, it didn't happen. The only good part was the last scene was when the immigrant, having been deported to Mexico after a lot of shenanigans involving a truck, is returning to LA on foot with a lot of his compatriots--returning "home," to the only home he has on this earth. I could buy that. But it was too late.
Too late.
Now to the books of the title. Lee Child is the author, and someone had given Ben a handful of thrillers,one with "Bad Luck and Misfortune,"in the title. These books are purchased at airports by persons desperate to occupy their minds with something other than their present reality. Anyway, that book is GREAT....very readable...very suspenseful. Not too much gore or prurient action...very very good. So next, I read the first book in the series, The Killing Floor, and enjoyed it a lot. It is a book that you cannot put down, and that is a very desirable quality in the circumstances described above. And the author can write, very well. I brought the third book home with me and it succumbed to the very forces I have mentioned as being so undesirable in books in a series--over-familiarity. Over-familiarity of the hero and his mannerisms or quirks...his taste in women...his moral code...his chivalry...and his determination to revenge himself on everyone who crosses his path in the wrong way. He's a killer, folks. His name is Jack Reacher and he makes Elvis Cole and his strong stalwart sidekick Joe Pike look like amateurs.
But--over-familiarity is a killer too, and as a result I will never know what happened to the Vice President of the United States back in eighty-something....
The story is a story whose title has slipped my mind, as has the author's name. I read it in one of those compendia of stories that are culled from all over as "Best Stories of....," in all different genres and years. In this story, the heroine is in Spain perfecting her Spanish and struggling with the subjunctive case of verbs. In the background of her thoughts if the lover she left at home who was crumbling before her eyes as a result of the onset of mental illness. Now, the subjunctive case is the form used for the unknowable, the improbable, the possible. For life, in other words..It's too bad we stopped using it in English. It opens up the mystery of our world as nothing else does. People "take" Spanish, and learn it from the Indicative point of view---our English viewpoint---that's the way it is, so take it or leave it. However, that is NOTthe way life is. Life is unpredictable, un=understandable, unknowable. You can't pin it down in the Indicative Case. It's NOT the way it is, and you have to take it. Thus, the Subjunctive Case, which tells us as we speak that we don't really have a clue, folks. Anyway, her bewilderment and sorrow and tragic sense of loss as she loses her lover to his destroyed mind--are perfectly expressed in her struggles with the Subjunctive in Spanish. Good story. I keep looking for it but haven't found it yet in my welter of books. If you love language as I do, Spanish and English both....I hope you find and appreciate this remarkable short story....Hasta manana, and..Buenas noches a todos. YAZZYBEL
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Thursday
Up betimes and to the Witt Lincoln to get our poor car. It needed work...(surprise).
Then we went to the IKEA and exhausted ourselves creeping about on just one floor. We got a pillow, a cushion, a baking dish (I only have about fifty), two tiny stuffed toys for James, (grand-nephew), and a breakfast for 99 cents. IKEA has great food at a cheap price. My breakfast consisted of a good-sized portion of scrambled egg substitute, a tiny portion of bacon, and a generous portion of really nice breakfast potatoes. And an iced tea for 1.49. Taterton's coffee was free as it was before the store opened. When the store opened we abandoned the cafeteria and plowed about looking for a particular pillow that he wanted, though to no avail.
I am going in to change my clothes as I can see that the day will be hot and even a tee shirt and summer jeans will be too much. I am still looking for a picture of Kitty Blanco to put on here. That picture above is a picture of what to do with the marketing when you have plenty of silver and onions. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Kitty Blanco
Good evening!
Today we had to go to the Witt Lincoln, formerly Witt Lincoln Mercury, because our car (as previously described) konked out thrice in the midst of LA freeway traffic on Sunday as we came home.
So that's why I could not blog today.
I'm writing to tell you that that white cat that hangs around here now has a name. Naming animals is n't easy and you might as well wait till its name comes to you and it has named itself. This cat's name is Kitty Blanco.
Kitty Blanco is a charmless creature, large and without grace. It is lots skinnier than it was earlier in the summer, and that is why I am making sure it is getting plenty of wholesome Chinese cat food. I cannot say that I like him or dislike him. Or that he is a him or a her, actually. It's too skittish to let anyone get a good look. However, I find him amusing. The day we came home I was sitting on the bed and looking toward the front hall I saw a white shape enter the front door and make its way into the heart of the living area. I got up to see, and it was indeed Kitty Blanco, going through the house and out to the patio, making its supper upon the scraps from Freckles. Freckles is a turn-up-your-nose sort of cat who eats just when and where he pleases. Or not. The presence of hungry Kitty Blanco is having an effect, however, and appetites are improving all over the place.
I'll end this piece by finding a picture of Kitty Blanco and putting it on this page. Perhaps I've done it before. He's kind of cute.
Well, the functions of the little toolbar at the top of the blogging page are not working, so Kitty Blanco must, for the present, languish unknown to you all. I will try to get one of my faraway sons to give me some advice about getting that mini toolbar to wake up. Hasta la vista, kitties.
Today we had to go to the Witt Lincoln, formerly Witt Lincoln Mercury, because our car (as previously described) konked out thrice in the midst of LA freeway traffic on Sunday as we came home.
So that's why I could not blog today.
I'm writing to tell you that that white cat that hangs around here now has a name. Naming animals is n't easy and you might as well wait till its name comes to you and it has named itself. This cat's name is Kitty Blanco.
Kitty Blanco is a charmless creature, large and without grace. It is lots skinnier than it was earlier in the summer, and that is why I am making sure it is getting plenty of wholesome Chinese cat food. I cannot say that I like him or dislike him. Or that he is a him or a her, actually. It's too skittish to let anyone get a good look. However, I find him amusing. The day we came home I was sitting on the bed and looking toward the front hall I saw a white shape enter the front door and make its way into the heart of the living area. I got up to see, and it was indeed Kitty Blanco, going through the house and out to the patio, making its supper upon the scraps from Freckles. Freckles is a turn-up-your-nose sort of cat who eats just when and where he pleases. Or not. The presence of hungry Kitty Blanco is having an effect, however, and appetites are improving all over the place.
I'll end this piece by finding a picture of Kitty Blanco and putting it on this page. Perhaps I've done it before. He's kind of cute.
Well, the functions of the little toolbar at the top of the blogging page are not working, so Kitty Blanco must, for the present, languish unknown to you all. I will try to get one of my faraway sons to give me some advice about getting that mini toolbar to wake up. Hasta la vista, kitties.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Home At Last!
Good morning!
Yes, THANK GOODNESS we got home yesterday after a relatively tranquil drive. It was Ben who suggested that Sunday morning of a four-day weekend might give us the easiest drive--and he was correct..
We left at seven thirty and got home at five. It would have been earlier but for three--or was it four?--separate stall-outs of the engine on the freeways of Los Angeles. Pretty scary, that, once! And multiples, scary times three. Each time when we'd coasted over to the right for a modicum of shelter in the non-existant side of the freeway, and had given ourselves up for lost but for the ministrations of the triple A, Theo was able to start up the engine again and get us back onto the road. A miracle! We made it! (A little later than we might've otherwise.)
Coming down Hwy 5 from the Bay Area is a blast. You drive through miles and miles of cow country, grass country, mountain country, oil country--and you are in a low broad valley in the midst of it all. From time to time there is a pullout where you may take refreshment. Yesterday we took it at Carl's Jr, where I'd had a good burger on the way up. I had a turkey burger, no mayo. Verdict: not edible. (Viz my crunched up sack afterward). The elements were good, as the lettuce, tomato, pickle and purple onion were excellent. Bun--bad. No one wants to eat cracked wheat type buns...! Turkey patty--so so. It was only about half edible, as it was just huge HUGE and very dry. So I put the lettuce tomato onion and pickle between the cold crunchy leaves of iceberg and ate that, plus some of the turkey. I never make turkey burgers, but by coincidence had made them twice while at Ben's. (He and I are both trying to eat less fat/beef.) They were derned good: Jennie-O's ground turkey has flavoring in it but was OK. And the secret to a decent turkey patty is to make them small and cook quickly. If you want a big burger, pile them in. But thin and quick is good, thick and dry, NO.
I also had a banana strawberry milkshake minus the whipped cream and it was not good either. When I think of the Blizzards I had in TX on our last foray!!! I had banana pie Blizzard that was just delicious and included small crisp bits of crust in the array. Delicious. All in all, I had no delicious food in Concord, and that included what I cooked myself. Benjamin is on dietary restrictions, trying to change his eating habits. Theo is on dietary restrictions, trying to fool his pancreas. (Not succeeding.) I am trying to lose weight, or at least not trying to gain it. Those three conditions preclude a lot of deliciousness right there.
I'd like to remind everyone that my Mama fried nearly everything she cooked, and weighed about 110 for most of her adult life. I mean, that lady FRIED! And she ate of the results. And lived to 86! And was beautiful. Riddle me that, folks.
Today James H. Kunstler has a great essay on American's birthday. It is not a feel-good bunch of boloney, I must warn you now. But we all need to read it. Happy Fourth of July, everybody! YAZZYBEL--at home.
Yes, THANK GOODNESS we got home yesterday after a relatively tranquil drive. It was Ben who suggested that Sunday morning of a four-day weekend might give us the easiest drive--and he was correct..
We left at seven thirty and got home at five. It would have been earlier but for three--or was it four?--separate stall-outs of the engine on the freeways of Los Angeles. Pretty scary, that, once! And multiples, scary times three. Each time when we'd coasted over to the right for a modicum of shelter in the non-existant side of the freeway, and had given ourselves up for lost but for the ministrations of the triple A, Theo was able to start up the engine again and get us back onto the road. A miracle! We made it! (A little later than we might've otherwise.)
Coming down Hwy 5 from the Bay Area is a blast. You drive through miles and miles of cow country, grass country, mountain country, oil country--and you are in a low broad valley in the midst of it all. From time to time there is a pullout where you may take refreshment. Yesterday we took it at Carl's Jr, where I'd had a good burger on the way up. I had a turkey burger, no mayo. Verdict: not edible. (Viz my crunched up sack afterward). The elements were good, as the lettuce, tomato, pickle and purple onion were excellent. Bun--bad. No one wants to eat cracked wheat type buns...! Turkey patty--so so. It was only about half edible, as it was just huge HUGE and very dry. So I put the lettuce tomato onion and pickle between the cold crunchy leaves of iceberg and ate that, plus some of the turkey. I never make turkey burgers, but by coincidence had made them twice while at Ben's. (He and I are both trying to eat less fat/beef.) They were derned good: Jennie-O's ground turkey has flavoring in it but was OK. And the secret to a decent turkey patty is to make them small and cook quickly. If you want a big burger, pile them in. But thin and quick is good, thick and dry, NO.
I also had a banana strawberry milkshake minus the whipped cream and it was not good either. When I think of the Blizzards I had in TX on our last foray!!! I had banana pie Blizzard that was just delicious and included small crisp bits of crust in the array. Delicious. All in all, I had no delicious food in Concord, and that included what I cooked myself. Benjamin is on dietary restrictions, trying to change his eating habits. Theo is on dietary restrictions, trying to fool his pancreas. (Not succeeding.) I am trying to lose weight, or at least not trying to gain it. Those three conditions preclude a lot of deliciousness right there.
I'd like to remind everyone that my Mama fried nearly everything she cooked, and weighed about 110 for most of her adult life. I mean, that lady FRIED! And she ate of the results. And lived to 86! And was beautiful. Riddle me that, folks.
Today James H. Kunstler has a great essay on American's birthday. It is not a feel-good bunch of boloney, I must warn you now. But we all need to read it. Happy Fourth of July, everybody! YAZZYBEL--at home.
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