Sweep-up Saturday

This is the day I get to sweep up all the leftover thoughts from the week...

The first leftover thought is about my seafood lunch with Maureen.  She was a much better luncher than I , only partaking of thin clam chowder and water.  I was not able to hold with my decision to eat only a shrimp cocktail, so had a grilled swordfish taco which comes with beans (also thin) and salsa..and some iced tea.  So I ate better than if I'd chosen that tempting fried oyster sandwich which is big as a barn...but more than I needed still.  And much more than I could have today, for I have gone on a breakfast to dinner fast, daily, in support of MoveOn.org's effort (actually a large coalition of religious leaders across the country) to move the legislators who are locked  up concerning the budget of the USA. We are not supposed to talk about our fasts, but I am only talking about it in hope of convincing others to join publicly and make some dent in the way our country is being run. Our national priorities are frightening.

And, the money I do not spend on bread, cheese, produce, tortillas, cookies, ice cream, and so forth between eight am. and five p.m. can be calculated and sent to the Episcopal Relief and Development as an offering for Japan.... And now on to another sweep-up topic:

Once, when I was about thirteen years old, my mother was very very expectant with my sister no 4.  This was the early summer of 1942, and my mother was just worn out with the heat, with  lots of ungrateful girls about.  So my father, who had to make a business trip down into Mexico, invited us two older daughters, I who was thirteen, and no. 2, who was eleven, to ride with him and Sostenes (Sosthenes, isnt that a wonderful name?) Berdeja I think, his cohort, down to Monterrey and to Victoria, which is the capital city of Tamaulipas.  Now, in spite of proximity, we girls had never really been down into Mexico since we were very small children, so we were glad to go.  I guess my mother and grandmother decided that no. 3, aged seven, would be okay there with them in Brownsville  while they waited for the baby to come.

So, as soon as it got dark one summer night, off we set across the border at McAllen/Reynosa, and into deepest Mexico.  Why at night?  Well, the nights were only about eighty degrees hot as opposed to nearly 100 during the day.  And there was no air conditioning.  So my dad almost always chose to drive by night.  My sister no. 2 immediately became carsick as she often did on trips, and we had to pull off the road. I remember the pleasant air, the darkness, the lights from the car, as two incompent men helped a sick child to feel better--then back on the road. I loved riding in the car at night; we'd made many trips to Laredo in the night time.

I particularly remember our coming into a town late at  night; it was a big town, and though it was PITCH DARK, there were scores of people milling about in the streets.  My father stopped and a young girl came up to the car window. "Why are all these people out on the street at this hour?" he asked.  Because the town cinema had just let out, it appeared.  "And what town is this?" he asked.  "Cadereyta," came the soft reply.  I well remember her lovely soft voice saying that beautiful place-name.

I looked up Cadereyta this morning on the wikipedia and found that it is the "Capital of Brooms" of Tamaulipas --or is it Nuevo Leon?  It's Nuevo Leon. Now that's synchronicity in action.  Good to think of it on Sweep-up Saturday.  Confirms our belief in Jung, no??    Hasta manana, YAZZYBEL who cant find the chart of making diacritical markings on the computer, or I could have put the proper accent on the  first-syllable O of Sostenes Berdeja. Yes, and the tilde in manana. Sweep it up.

Happy Birthday, Frank Parker!

Good morning!

Well, I don't know that Frank Parker is still alive out there.  If so, he's 82 years old today and I wish him a very happy day and year to come.

I don't know Frank Parker very well, but I know it's his birthday because once, in eighth grade when we were all very young and much younger than eighth-graders are today, a group of us sat around before math class confiding our birthdays to one another. I'll never forget Frank's nice freckled face, confiding with a blush and a laugh, that his birthday was on April Fool's!  I thought it was a wonderful and funny day to have a birthday, and the funny thing  is that I have remembered Frank on every April 1st since then, although I have practically never seen him again.

This important conflab took place on the lower floor of Brownsville Junior High School in an airy pleasant classroom where we were all learning advanced arithmetic.  My, I'm glad I took that class.  Even though  I had struggled in vain with beginning Algebra,  my little rat brain took in arithmetic with no problem whatsoever, and I learned many, many handy things that had never stuck with me before, if, indeed, they'd ever been taught---such as how to figure what percentage number A is of number B.  It is very convenient to know how to figure percentages, or was, in the days before the computer came to take our brains away.  And I learned that I was capable of adding many numbers together at lightning speed without a piece of paper, and doing many other calculating tricks in my head as my own brain devised them.  I loved that class.

Frank and I and the rest of the birthday people in that little group of chatterers all went on to Brownsville High School the next year and found that we'd skipped a grade.  The Texas School System decided that young  Texans needed twelve years of school, where we in the past had done just fine with only eleven.  The adjustment was made by having everyone presently in school just skip a grade and nominally jump to a grade higher the next year.  Actually, that jump may have taken place a year earlier--I can't quite remember now what grade it was that I skipped.  But I remember that pleasant afternoon with my friends in that leafy classroom, before the teacher came in, as if it were yesterday. YAZZYBEL

Oh boy, Point Loma Seafood!

Good morning!

This noon I am meeting my friend Maureen for lunch at Point Loma Seafood.  They have very good seafood lunches of the fish-and-chips variety. It's one of those establishments where you go in and, after studying the board, go up to the counter and give your order.  When you get your food you can take it outside to a table under an umbrella, or to a large airy room overlooking the water if the weather isn't so good. Today it promises to be hot out, so perhaps we'll eat outdoors.

My favorite food there is the fried oyster sandwich, rich and crispy and huge.  But today I'm having the shrimp cocktail if I can hold out for it.  That oyster sandwich is so tempting, but I do not really need all those calories.  In fact, my body will thank me if I stick to iced tea and a shrimp cocktail and a few crackers.

We'll probably be talking about the book club book, Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje, for a while.  She has long finished it; I can't bring myself to finish it up. If I did , perhaps I could make some sense of it.  As of now, I "don't like it." (Not an acceptable book club comment!)  After we eat, we may run over to Ocean Beach to look at the antiques. I am on the trail of  a particular dealer whose shop I have lost track of.  Then I'll  try to get home before the afternoon traffic swamps the freeways to the south.

My baby sister sent me a very interesting site in response to yesterday's remarks about the chakras. It's www.eclecticenergies.com/chakras,  and it's worth a click.
There's a test to see how your chakras are doing at this moment.  Mine are pretty profoundly clogged up, which does not surprise me.  There are instructions on how to get them open again. We all know them; we just are not enough self-aware, or conscientious enough with our practice. YAZZYBEL

Music Day from the Brain to the Chakras!

Good morning!

Today is piano day and I should make short shrift of my blog and get ready.

Have I been practicing? Not really, but I have been playing. I skipped a day this week, but have been at it with Sr. Mompou most days.  Improvement? What's that? At least I am doing it, even though Jeunes Filles Au Jardin is about as much of a mystery as it was the first day I looked at it.  It's a mystery to my fingers.  As well as to my mind.

I heard Dudley Moore, movie actor as well as serious piano player, say an interesting thing once on the television.  He thinks the memory that enables us to go to the instrument and play something we've learned is not necessarily stored in the brain. He felt that it was somewhere along the spine, I believe, and I agree with him.  Just think about it when you sit down to play; your whole body is engaged, your whole person, that is, brain and body.  And it probably is the body who remembers and plays the piece, tooth and toenail. 

When I was young I might feel that I'd memorized a piece, but sometimes in a recital I'd "come to" and feel a total blank.  I think that at those  moments I did throw my brain into gear and it said, in the words of 2011, "Wha?"  Where was I, in the world, in the piece of music? I had no idea. My body had been playing and my brain should have left well enough alone.

I have had piano teachers, one notably, who said that one should be able to recite the key signature, notes, chords of any spot in a piece at any time, USING THE BRAIN, of course.  I don't know that I could ever do that but maybe that is why I never made it to Carnegie Hall.  There have been plenty of times when it would have been handy to be able to do that.  "Oh, yes--I just played C sharp, A, and E in my right hand and A in the left and that means that next I play ..... because I am in measure 34 of the first section...," ooops, couldn't do that.  And the more I might stop to try to THINK my way out of my dilemma, the worse I might do.

I am trying to get Jeunes Filles Au Jardin into my SPINE and actually the chakras thereof.  That is probably where the music really is, and Dudley Moore didn't quite think that or say it.  I must employ my chakras more consciously and they will let my poor brain trail along in their wake, and I'll have that piece memorized.

I love the chakras.  They come in all colors and they make sounds like chimes.  The chakras are vortices that are not actually ON the spine; they are just outside it within the aural body.  Could we say that they are of spirit AND of flesh together, perhaps just the place where those two essences meet to make us what we are?
Yes, I shall actively involve the chakras today to see what I have been missing.  I just need to remember, to think about it every morning, and I know that.  I know it, and still I get up, tend to dogs, go out to get the paper, make coffee, read the paper, come to the computer, feed Theodore when he gets up.   And the chakras are left to fend for themselves.  Thank God, they seem to know what they're doing.  And I need to pay attention. YAZZYBEL

More About Food, and Washing Up Instructions

Good morning!

I seem to be in an eating phase right now, so I might as well write about it too. 

Yesterday or the day before I was talking about Tomato Sauce with a Catsup Taste, and I meant to mention that I've recently found,  in a book by Suzanne Somers , a recipe for catsup that you can make yourself.  Her recipes are good and interesting except for cutesy names like Sommersize, etc.  But anyway her catsup makes a lot more than I would want to make (it's a ton of preservatives that keep the commercial catsup stable in our refrigerators for weeks or months) as I am the only one here at present that eats it.  But you can go there for a good recipe if you want more precise quantities than "a knife tip." 

I do use a knife tip.  And it's a pointed caseknife kind of knife.  I figure the point is about 1/4 teaspoon.  More or less.  I have made entire meals (eaten them too) using only this wonderful old old English knife that we bought at an open air market in Oklahoma once long ago.  It was once two inches longer in the blade than it now is. It is dark un-stainless steel with a wooden handle that is gradually coming apart.  Once we 'd bought it I found my eight-year-old son sawing some copper wire with it, and the blade used to have two little nicks in it for years.  Those nicks are gone, now, worn away entirely.  The long tip got so thin and dangerous that I asked my husband to go to the garage and cut it down, conforming to the original curvature of the blade.  He did a great job.  It could hold up for a few more years yet.  The blade used to say "Sheffield England" but those letters have been gone years ago.  I tell people I know I'm old because I look at the sheets of  music of Debussy and Ravel which I bought new and crisp when I was young, and they are limp, faded, and flaking--telling me something about me, folks.  Same way with that knife. It was old when I got it but it is a lot older now.

I think I will end this by telling you how to wash dishes.  When I was about ten and our family lived in Laredo out on Piedra China, my father was gone a lot working in Mexico, so the adults in the family consisted of my mother, my Tennessee-born grandfather, (this was his family's dishwashing ritual) and my grandmother Annie Bell. The main meal was eaten at lunch, and after we had eaten, all three of them went into the kitchen and went to work in a practiced, expert way.  One person brought in the dishes, or maybe they all did.  One person washed the dishes, one person dried the dishes, and the third person went about the kitchen setting things to rights, wiping the work areas and the stove, and so forth. 

Two enamel pans, each one about ten or eleven inches round, held the wash water and the rinse water.  Every household, my children, had at that time a handy implement which was a little wire cage with a handle, and into that cage went all the odds and ends of all the family soap.  The wash pan was filled with hot water and the little soap implement was shaken through the water till the water  turned slightly milky and sudsy.  Not too much at all.  The rinse pan was filled with hot water.

First, glassware was washed, rinsed, and immediately dried by the two workers.  Second after glassware, the silverware: knives, forks, spoons, were washed and dried.  Thirdly, the plates and other chinaware were washed and dried. Needless to say, person number three was putting away each item after it was dried.  After that, any cooking vessels were washed and dried, although my grandmother had the habit of washing up skillets and saucepans as she used them in preparation so they were almost always all done.  Dishcloth washed out and hung up, dishtowel, likewise.  Drainboard, clean and empty. Everything put away. Kitchen, spotless.  Workers off to put their feet up for a minute.  Actually nobody ever really put their feet up that I saw.  They were all skinny and didn't get too tired even in Laredo's hundred degree noontime heat.  We kids participated in that ritual from time to time, but mostly the adults did it to get it over with.  That was fun to remember. Thanks for letting me go back in time for a moment! YAZZYBEL

Monday , Thinking About Food and Words and Colors

Good morning!

I was just looking at Saturday's post, about sauces, and it reminded me that there is a great, beautiful book that I have, about Southwest cookery.  It is called New Southwestern Cooking, by Carolyn Dille and Susan Belsinger. This is an elegant book, from its red-pepper covered cover to its amazingly varied and ambitions recipes using southwest ingredients.  They have many sauces, delicate and precise variations on the tomato-onion-chile theme all.  I wish I had six people to cook for when I read a book like this one;  I get all inspired.  It also has a section of  "Menus."  I love menus.  Love reading them. I used to love planning them, but nowadays I am out of practice for that.

My favorite cookbook for all time--have I told you?--is Perla Myers's The Seasonal Kitchen.  There  she is on the cover, all young and active, walking along in her seventies' trenchcoat with baskets of FRESH food in her hands.  Fresh was a new watchword in those days.  Women seemed to make ninety percent of their dinner dishes using cans, really.  Especially cans of soup.  Perla must be nearly my age by now, hard to believe.

Anyway, I love the book because it is based on seasons, and menus...her food is very simple compared to the cuisine of today.  Nowadays, those who cook are condemned to a very rigorous criterion if the recipes of the magazines are to be followed.  A simple salad can contain, must contain, at least twenty ingredients at least half of which are from Asian sources.The simple stirfry has had to become "fusion cuisine" with a mish mash of ingredients never heard of by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.  I go for Perla and her simple but good ideas.

The timer has just chimed, telling me it is time to go climb into the waiting bathtub with horrible horrible novel, Divisadero.  Why am I having such a hard time reading these novels lately?  What is that novel about? and I mean, with what has that novel to do?  Maybe it doesn't have to do with anything, but just be readable.  Helloooo! I can hardly read it.  I am, really am, going to go into art.  Three primary colors, plus black,lots of paper, a big glass of water (near a tap).  And just spin out.  Literature has obviously escaped me now.  Three primary colors, lots easier than twenty six letters and all those words. YAZZYBEL

Sunday the Mysterious

Good afternoon! Late breakfast.

Well I got up and went off to church at the crack of dawn as usual...we are having the Lenten Study now and it is about The Atonement.  The whole concept, which appears to have as many centers as a hydra has heads, is a mystery to me.  I must say that I am much more at home with the Jewish idea of Atonement, and if they were honest I am sure most of the folks sitting around me would be in accord.  That is because the Jewish idea of Atonement is logical.  And the Christian idea is--mystical? Magical? I can't say what that last word could be yet, because I have not yet heard what the two teachers are saying yet.

Yesterday afternoon I spent at cleaning out some of my writing.  I took it to a stationery store and punched 3 holes in a bunch of it to put into a notebook.  Great bales of incidental writing, such as schoolwork and email correspondence have gone into the shredder.  And I have boxes and boxes more to go. Shall resume later on.

It takes a long time to go into one's writing because one finds kself reading it, fascinated.  Could I really have had the brains to write all that stuff?  I just love a lot of it, which, I guess, means that it is pretty bad.

I finally finished up the box of Thrifty Rocky Road Ice Cream which I errantly bought and divided up into many little 1/2 cup portions.  Trouble is,  one of those little portions is never enough, and it is too convenient to bring out a bunch at once and polish them off.  Thank goodness, I have eaten the whole RR bunch, which are especially tempting because here you get a nut, there, a marshmallow, and the choclolate ice cream in between is especially delicious.

I find myself pining for Mexico, a sinecure for retirement for less than wealthy Americans for many years.  We cannot now go there for fear of having our throats cut, it seems...and yet, and yet....Given the choice, would you rather have your throat slit in Mexico or die lying in your own pp and bed sores in an American nursing home, goggly on pharmaceuticals and psychotropics?....I have been scorning Brownsville, TX, as a refuge  for the elderly, as it is so--what can I say? So near the border, that's it!!!   But, if there is any of old gracious Mexico left , I think it may be found in a patio here, a garden there, a cafe here,  a sunporch there, in a Texas border city...Hey--I may have hit on something.  Go there to live, and if they capture you (your nearest and dearest) and are going to put you into a nursing home on the American side, run quick to el bos, cross the river, get lost in Matamoros or >>>>? city, and await el cuchillo.  Whew! Decision solved!!! YAZZYBEL