looking2live

Leaning

2012-02-13T20:01:00.000-05:00

After several people commented that my walking had seemed better after my hip replacement and now seems to be worse again, I decided to make an appointment with my surgeon to see if he could explain why that is. Even though he hadn’t had much bedside manner (and in fact had been downright rude), he was my best choice for a consultation.

He did a bunch of X-rays and then showed me the reason. I have a fairly prominent curve to the left at the bottom of my spine. I had always known about a curve in my upper back, but the lower one was news to me. My weakened muscles which were cut during my hip replacement have perhaps allowed this curve to get even worse.

He annoyingly kept referring to my condition as a “deformity”, making me feel like a dwarf with a hunchback. But I just let that one go and asked him if there was any intervention. He said in a worst case he would suggest surgery to insert a rod in my spine, thereby making it straight but rigid. Fortunately even he said I wasn’t ready for that. He did order an MRI to see if there was any indication of stenosis.

I did heroic meditative breathing through the 30 minutes of the MRI under the threat that they might have to start over if I moved. Fortunately I was still enough and the results didn’t show any real problem other than the scoliosis.

Today I had a private class with a teacher in Herndon who does Yoga for Scoliosis. She went through a number of yoga poses with me that are aimed at keeping curvature from progressing. That sounds like a much more pleasant remedy that adding more metal to my body.

Sometimes I wonder if anything could have been done about my “deformity” when I was a child or even a teenager. But what-if-ing doesn’t usually accomplish anything. Instead I’m trying through natural means to deal with what nature threw my way. Most of the time I have very little pain even though my gait continues to be rather bizarre and labored. I always remind myself that there are so many people out there with problems much worse than mine.

Comment failure

2012-02-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

One of my long-time readers has told me she can no longer leave comments on my Blog. The word verification never seems to work. How frustrating for her! And for me because I have always liked her insightful comments.

I don't think this is universally the case because I have received a few comments lately on my sporadic posts.

I tried Googling this problem and couldn't find an exact match. It must be a change in Blogger since I haven't changed anything for years.

If you have experienced this problem either on your Blog or in attempting to leave comments on mine, please let me know. Feel free to send me an email message at bndiskin@gmail.com.

Thanks for any help you can give me on this!

Om with Ketchup

2012-02-07T21:41:00.002-05:00

“Do you eat meat?” my new yoga friend Liz asked as we waited for class to start. I gave my usual response that we eat a lot of fish and chicken and sometimes we have a vegetarian meal, fully expecting she might say she was a vegan.

But instead she asked me if I would like to grab a half-price burger down the street after class. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had eaten a hamburger out, but I quickly said YES.

As we lunged and balanced and twisted into pose after pose, I had visions of the burger I was going to eat. During shavasana as we were supposed to lie there in stillness and ponder nothing but our breath, I could almost smell my hamburger.

After class we headed down the street to Mr. Henry’s where we ordered half-price medium rare hamburgers and an order of onion rings to split. I had thought I might take half my burger home to my husband, but there was not a bite left.

With the half price special, the bill was under $9, almost as cheap as McDonalds considering all we got to eat.

But the best thing about the evening was discovering more about my new friend from class. I love the fact that she suggested doing something spontaneously. She is recently retired and we share a lot of common interests. I have a feeling more serendipity is in our future.

Purple with Tears

2012-02-02T23:20:00.000-05:00

What a day this has been! It was supposed to be a day of a lot of cooking to get ready for a big dinner tomorrow night fit around a consultation with my hip surgeon, a piano lesson, and choir practice. Instead the main event of the day was a funeral for someone far too young to die.

It was the girl of the now 6,000 cranes who had waged a fierce battle against an even fiercer form of cancer for the last 6 months or so. In the end the cancer won.

Hundreds of people of all ages gathered at The Congressional Cemetery for a graveside service to tell her goodbye and to begin to comfort her family, who are left with a gaping hole where their daughter used to be. We came in purple and beads since those were among her passions.

We recited the mourner’s kaddish for someone under 30 who should have had the rest of a long life to enjoy. We shoveled dirt into the grave and threw in cranes to keep her company on her journey.

Then we gathered to share food and stories of this girl, known for her ability to help people make connections, just as she strung beads together.

I managed to keep the appointment with the surgeon, who has ordered an MRI to lend more information about my lower back curve that seems to be more pronounced. I postponed the piano lesson. And I managed to cook a Tunisian eggplant appetizer, Jewish cholent, and poached pears with chocolate sauce. And there was choir rehearsal, which found me wanting to yawn and sing sitting down.

But my memory of today will be the fact that the sky cleared and the sun came out shortly before the funeral and the next few hours were filled with a mixture of tears and stories about a person who was so good and so innocent, a person who was unfairly taken from all of us.

A Renewed Sense of Purpose

2012-01-29T13:48:00.003-05:00

I think everyone is motivated by having a sense of purpose, especially by something for which that person is responsible. I just inherited a job which may fill that role for me.

I had a real sense of purpose in my last job. I had built it from the ground up and my role was essential to the successful operation of a multi-million household national survey. But the political climate forced my decision to retire from that job, leaving it in someone else’s hands.

It’s not that I haven’t been busy in the last 6 years with music and literacy efforts, but nothing has felt like I owned it. Until now, that is.

When I was in elementary school, I loved spending time in the library. I loved checking out and reshelving books. I loved searching for books that had been shelved incorrectly. I loved reading everything I could get my hands on. But that was about the extent of my library science training.

I was recently approached to take over the Temple Micah library, a job being vacated by a young mother of 2 with a master’s degree in library science who had gone back to work. Despite her great credentials, it turns out she had had little time to devote to the synagogue library during her couple of years on the job.

Truthfully, in my 12 years at Temple Micah I have never checked out a book. It’s not even immediately obvious how to check out a book in fact. Instead I have viewed the books lining the library walls much as one might view boring wallpaper or still life paintings of a bygone era. They just seemed frozen in time and space.

I find myself getting really fired up over revitalizing the library of 2500+ books. I held meetings yesterday and today with members who have library credentials and Temple history in an effort to kick off this project. I have a bunch of ideas for modernizing and jump-starting the library, including:

-- Creating congregant awareness publicity

-- Adding signage to the stacks and to the circulation process

-- Notifying people about overdue books, not done in recent history at least

-- Creating an electronic way to search the collection online and to check out and check in books, creating a history of transactions as a bi-product

-- Adding electronic books to our collection

-- Visiting other synagogues to find out how they run their libraries

-- Purchasing books by request and by recommendation

-- Featuring congregant book reviews on our website

-- Creating seasonal displays of books

I’m really excited to be in total control over this project and to have a budget to support my efforts. I’m hoping to give the TM library a new start and to make it something that serves a real purpose in the community.

The Tools of the Trade

2012-01-26T10:40:00.002-05:00

The only thing missing is the oysters. But they will be there later when a friend and I go to visit Betty, still recovering from a massive stroke.

One of my favorite treats growing up was to get a half bushel of Apalachicola oysters at 2 cents apiece and take them home to shuck them. I got to be really good at it, learning just where to insert the oyster knife. We made oyster stew and ate them raw and they were great.

Today oysters cost a whole lot more, but they are just as much a treat. I don’t often have the opportunity to shuck them, but today I will. A choir friend and I are taking oysters for a happy hour with Betty, who still struggles just to stand up, her left side having been paralyzed with a stroke last Spring. I’m taking 2 oyster knives in case one of them wants the experience of popping open a bivalve.

I also made mignonette sauce, which Betty far prefers over the red cocktail sauce. It seems so elegant to be dipping a slimy oyster in a sauce made from Champagne vinegar and shallots.

It’s really not just about eating oysters, but rather a way to stay connected to someone whose world seems to have slipped away somewhat. I’m sure she had high hopes of resuming her normally busy life after the stroke occurred. But sometimes life has other plans for us. I will periodically remind myself to stop by to see Betty, with or without oysters!

Listening

2012-01-23T12:58:00.002-05:00

Temple Micah is in the midst of a “listening campaign”, geared up to getting more people to talk to one another and to effecting change based on what they say.

I went to a progress meeting yesterday which included those who had initiated some of the 68 conversations that had taken place, others like me who were the invited conversants, and still others like my husband who has yet to be invited to participate in any capacity.

As part of the meeting, we were asked to have a 15-minute conversation with someone we didn’t already know well and to tell each other stories about ourselves. I found myself faced with sharing the more positive parts of my life -- love of music, literacy efforts, joy from cooking, wanderlust -- or quite to the contrary talking about the things that scare me -- fear of losing mobility, possibly reincorporating an adult child into our household, worries about an aging dog.

In 15 minutes it was hard to cover a lot of ground, especially since it was a conversation with both people talking. I’m sure my “partner” came away with a rosy view of my life. I steered completely clear of the troublesome topics that define me just as much as the upbeat ones do.

In reality most of us are a mix of positives and negatives. I find myself reluctant to entrust my fears with someone I don’t know extremely well. Yesterday I talked about my passion for languages and my recent quest to recapture Spanish. It would probably have been a lot more beneficial to me to discuss the things that are most troubling to me.

Fish out of Season

2012-01-21T17:26:00.000-05:00

Many dishes are seasonal. Little did I think gefilte fish was one of them when I recently offered to make a batch.

Tomorrow a group of (mostly) women are getting together at Temple Micah to share stories and food based on the Holocaust Survivor Cookbook. The book is a collection of recipes with information about the cooks, who all survived the Holocaust. The afternoon sounded interesting, so I signed up to participate. I had only titles to choose from, but the recipes spanned most anything a good Jewish cook might make. For some reason I was drawn to Oma’s Gefilte Fish.

I’ve never attempted to make gefilte fish at any time other than Passover. Then I call up my Korean fishmonger to place my order for a combination of ground whitefish, pike, and carp with an accompanying bag of bones, skin, and heads. But this time when I called and finally explained to the woman what I wanted she laughed and said that type of fish was available only at Passover and furthermore I would need to grind my own.

So today I picked up rockfish and cod and hoped they would be suitable substitutes. In reading over the recipe, some of the proportions didn’t make a lot of sense, so I just decided to make my own version of the recipe, one where I dump things in with no regard to measuring. When it looks and feels right, I can begin to form the fish balls.

I’ll bet Oma never measured either. That’s probably why the measurements are off -- because she tried to write down what she thought she used.

The resulting fish balls look pretty much like my usual gefilte fish. People probably won’t know the difference.

Horseradish roots are also a seasonal thing, being a part of the Passover story. So I bought a jar of white horseradish at the Safeway and a small beet, which I grated into it to turn it red.

I hope Oma (now deceased) will forgive the liberties I took with her recipe.

Another MLK Problem

2012-01-16T21:43:00.000-05:00

All of the hullaballoo over the inscription on the recently opened MLK Memorial reminded me of another mistake on MLK weekend over 20 years ago.

In 1990 our son, who was almost 9, was quickly becoming an exceptional swimmer. We spent many weekends crowded onto bleachers around 8-lane pools smelling chlorinated air and watching for hours to see him swim just a few minutes in total. This particular MLK meet was for 8&unders, but there were probably hundreds of them in the DC metropolitan swim league known as Potomac Valley Swimming.

That particular meet Dan did quite well in most every event he swam. His second place ribbon was in the 100 M Individual Medley, where he got a 1:43:69 -- yes, recorded down to the hundredth of a second by averaging the times clocked by 3 timers on each lane.

When the ribbons were handed out, it quickly became apparent that someone in the D.C. Department of Recreation had fallen down on the proof-reading job. The honoree for which the holiday was named had become Dr. M. L. Kink, Jr. Ribbons in all eight colors had been printed incorrectly.

No one even suggested the idea of reprinting the ribbons or passing out stick-on G’s!

Call Me a Snob

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-05:00

On my daughter’s recent visit she labeled me a food snob because I tend to make everything from scratch these days. I confess to being guilty as charged and have no regrets.

My tendency not to purchase processed foods -- not even things like chicken stock or bread or hummous or yogurt -- might explain why I end up with not a lot of spare time. Convenience foods and ingredients are designed for just that -- to let you use your time in other ways.

I have recently gotten into making stock from things like chicken necks and feet that would otherwise end up in the garbage. My house perpetually smells of onion and garlic, but I could think of much worse “fragrances”. Today’s pot happens to feature chicken necks.

For lunch I made hummous from some chickpeas I had cooked a few days ago to go into soup. I like the fact that I can completely control the amount of garlic, lemon, salt, and hot sauce that go in. I added some ground cumin that turned it into a regal lunch.

We all decide how to use our time. And this may be a passing fancy. But I rather doubt it because I like this homemade-from-scratch food and I like the idea that it contains no artificial preservatives or other weird ingredients.

I could think of much worse things to be called than a “food snob”!

Light and Dark

2012-01-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

Tonight’s read-aloud at the shelter was all about light and dark. The children ranged in age from 5 to 11, which probably explains some of the behavior problems.

We started out as always by reading the “Promises” -- Listen, Respect, Cooperate, and Have fun. Even though we talked about what these words mean, they seemed to conveniently forget about listen and respect.

We struggled through 4 books, with a lot of jostling for position and an undercurrent of noise. A couple of kids who usually behave were acting out. A 5-year-old who seems to have some learning disabilities was particularly disruptive.

But then things suddenly shifted as we moved on to the activity. I had found some books intended for teaching drawing. The children could choose from photocopied and enlarged pages of monsters, dinosaurs, creepy crawlies, and things with motors like cars, motorcycles, etc. They suddenly began to focus as they colored and cut out their various images. Even the troublemakers shared the crayons and tried hard to produce something worthy of being mounted on a popsicle stick.

By the time everyone had one or two puppets in hand, we turned out the lights and got out the big flashlight. The show was supposed to be accompanied by music from my iPad, but instead the children provided the sound effects as their puppets danced across the walls.

Each child went home with a finger light that he or she could use to continue the puppet show on his or her bedroom wall.

Many thanks to Gary and Terry for their helpful ideas in planning this evening, to my friend Deborah for supplying the popsicle sticks, and to Kristin who helped pull it off.

Just Rewards

2012-01-12T00:27:00.000-05:00

Is it unethical to go to a 90-minute presentation which offers a reward for attending even if you know you are absolutely not going to shell out any money? As we headed off to the Georgetown Holiday Inn to hear someone’s spiel today, I told my husband not to let me eat any of their junk food because I am gaining weight and for God’s sake not to let me convince him to buy whatever they were trying to sell.

The come-on was two round-trip tickets to anywhere in the US where Delta flies and a 3-day, 2-night hotel stay. Sounded too good to be true, but definitely worth 90 minutes of any sort of hype.

On our first trip to Kauai, we went to a lot of these 90-minute presentations, giving us a luau and other excursions we would probably not have paid for otherwise. But then we actually bought a time-share at one of them, which we owned for the next 4 hours until we realized just what we had done. So we got out of it gracefully, but still with whatever reward they had offered.

On the entry form today when it asked if we had ever owned a time-share, I thought about putting the ‘X’ somewhere between YES and NO, but finally decided to just say YES. I refused to give them our income and begrudgingly recorded what we spent on vacations last year.

It turned out not to be a time-share offer, but rather a company that offers reduced prices on hotels, condos, rental cars, you name it. You have to put down a sizable amount of money up front and then pay a yearly fee. They promise savings of up to 80%.

It might be fine if we liked to stay in luxury resort hotels with all inclusive packages or go on cruises, which seems to be the dream vacations for most Americans. But that’s just not our style and probably won’t ever be.

So despite all of their cajoling, at the end of the 90 minutes we emphatically said no thank you and they finally proceeded to give us our reward for coming. We’re still trying to decipher the “rewards” brochure we came home with. There are lots of lines to read between.

I didn’t have to worry about the junk food because there was nothing but water in plastic cups.

Not Quite Right

2012-01-09T19:03:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I became acutely aware of a strange sensation that left me feeling slightly short of breath and like my heart was just about to race. It came with no pain and from time to time seemed to go away, only to return. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

With most things like this, I simply ignore them for a few days and they go away. But suddenly at around 11:00 last night I started to worry that it might be something more serious.

Feeling rather embarrassed about calling anyone, I decided to call my good friend who used to be my doctor (before she changed jobs) instead of my current internist. She quickly assured me I was most likely not having a heart attack, but rather suggested I might be suffering from some form of anxiety.

I hadn’t even considered that, not having ever had a panic attack before. But it made sense that I might be experiencing mild hyperventilation. I even have an idea about what might be causing it.

Just knowing that I didn’t need to get myself to the emergency room and instead could simply go to bed helped a lot. And I must say I have felt much better today.

My doctor friend checked back in with me this morning and despite the fact that I felt better urged me to make an appointment with my internist just to get checked out and to make her aware of what was going on. She also suggested that I eliminate all forms of caffeine. Probably all good advice, given I don’t want to find myself at 14,000 feet on the Chilean altiplano with a shortness of breath I could possibly avoid.

Ann, the Play

2012-01-08T22:00:00.000-05:00

Some politicians just beg to be remembered, to claim a little place in our hearts. They are indeed statesmen and stateswomen (is that a word?) and they often have charisma. And so it was with Ann Richards, who is best remembered as the governor of Texas and as the person who gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1988.

This afternoon we learned the intricate details of the life of Ann Richards as we saw the one-person play Ann in the Eisenhower Theater of the Kennedy Center. It is a play written and acted by Holland Taylor, who must feel like Ann reincarnated by now.

Several things struck me as I learned about the life of this outspoken, no-nonsense woman from the great state of Texas. She was a people-person. She found a way to get things done. She had friends in high places. She still made time for her family despite an incredibly busy work life. She seldom failed to speak her mind, often displaying a real feistiness. But most importantly she had an enduring sense of humor.

It is refreshing to encounter an honest politician who commands so much respect. Maybe if there were a few more politicians like Ann today, our country could emerge from the mess it’s in.

About Time

2012-01-06T09:40:00.000-05:00

When my best friend growing up turned 5, her father’s birthday gift to her was a ride to the park on the back of his bike. She was one of 10 children and he was a very busy pediatrician, which made his gift of his time even more special.

We all have priorities in our lives which dictate how we use our time. Some people even at my age stay extremely busy and can’t imagine ever not working. Others learned long ago how to relax and enjoy free time.

My birthday gift from one of the busiest people I know was an invitation to go to a museum of my choice and then out to lunch with the guarantee that it would be fun. The same person gave me a couple of very unique little presents in a beautiful card, but her promised gift of time trumped everything else.

Most of us will easily write a check or pull out a charge card without hesitation, but the decision to give of one’s personal time is even more special in my mind.

HB to Me

2012-01-05T11:33:00.000-05:00

I can’t sing the Beatles song quite yet, but I’m just one year short. My birthday arrived quietly and found me sleeping in until awakened by a phone call at 9:30. Did I ever even think I could sleep so late?

I was amazed to check my email and find it full of messages from people who use Facebook far more often than I do. They were interspersed with greetings from people who just happen to know it is my birthday. And there was an e-book gift from my daughter: The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain. A good way to start the day for sure.

Since it was so late, I figured I might as well eat brunch. So I made the most delicious frittata -- eggs with shitake mushrooms, sweet red pepper, green onions, parsley, sour cream, and parmesan cheese.

Tonight we will have dinner out with good friends and on Saturday a few more people will come help me blow out some candles. But as with the recent holidays, this one is more about taking it easy than about setting off fireworks!

Soup, Glorious Soup

2012-01-03T10:43:00.003-05:00

Cooking is such an evolutionary process. Over the last few years, I seem to be finding more and more ways to recycle things that used to end up in the trash can. Many of them contribute in one way or another to pots of soup.

I hate to even think about how many green leaves I lopped off the top of turnips, beets, carrots, broccoli, celery and then simply discarded them. I’ve only recently discovered they make wonderful vegetarian stocks or add nutrients to many kinds of soup.

But my biggest discovery is bones. A turkey carcass or a leftover osso buco bone simmered slowly with onion slices makes a rich stock that far exceeds the stuff you buy in boxes at Whole Foods. With marrow bones, don’t forget to scoop out the marrow!

My latest approach to soup-making is to make one of the above stocks and then throw in all sorts of greens (kale, mustard greens, collards, spinach, turnip greens) that have been wilted in a saute pan in a little olive oil with garlic and onion and maybe ginger. This then forms the basis for endless variations.

Here are some of the possible additions:

-- Oven roast potatoes (either white or sweet) that have been cut into small cubes, brushed with olive oil, and baked for an hour at 350 degrees F.

-- Carrot pieces.

-- Turnip pieces.

-- Israeli cous-cous.

-- Ravioli.

-- Various fresh herbs: dill, cilantro, basil, thyme.

You can give the soup a curry flavor by sauteing the additions in some curry powder and ground cumin. You may want to add salt and freshly ground black pepper to suit your taste. At any point along the way , if you want a creamier soup, use an immersion blender to emulsify some of it. It has the same effect as adding cream without the fat or calories!

Soup has long been the food of the poor. But instead of a thin gruel, think of thick, delicious, nutritious comfort food that can be customized to suit whatever taste you are craving!

Sty-m-Eyed!

2012-01-02T11:41:00.000-05:00

I have long suspected that I am allergic to a lot of the eye makeup on the market. I think that’s one reason I seldom apply eye liner or mascara. But occasionally I feel like really dressing up my face and then I do.

Lately I have paid a price for an evening of beautiful eyes. The last two times I have donned eye makeup, within a day after I have had a nasty sty on one or the other eye. Never both. And not the same eye. So I am thinking it’s the makeup and not just a random sty, which I never get otherwise.

I always wait for a few days before consulting a professional about things like this. And sure enough within a couple of days the sty has always disappeared.

I suppose the safest thing to do is to switch to a brand that emphasizes that it is hypoallergenic. Or I could just give up eye makeup altogether, which wouldn’t break my heart. It’s not that anyone ever says to me “Oh, what alluring eyes you have” as they hide behind my progressive bifocals. So maybe that’s the easier course of action.

Ah! The price of beauty…

(That’s not my eye in the above picture, but mine does look much like that.)

Deciding What to Learn

2011-12-31T14:11:00.000-05:00

It’s so odd to be taking classes where the curriculum is not at all fixed. As much as getting used to my instructor, I’m getting used to coming up with a game plan for each class.

The first class was very encouraging. She basically told me my Spanish was adequate and all I needed to do was to practice speaking. But speaking about what? Practicing the dialogues I learned so long ago? Or pretending to order off a menu?

For the next class I bit off a little more than I could chew. I chose to read an article about the equivalent of the “Arab Spring” in Chile. Although I could understand the article in its entirety, when it came time to discuss it, I realized there is a lot of vocabulary that I just don’t have. It was frustrating to try to answer her questions, when I knew what I wanted to say in English but just couldn’t come up with the Spanish words.

For my class last Thursday, I decided to be more pragmatic, realizing that I probably would not be sitting around with a bunch of intellectual Chileans talking about politics. And anyone capable of that sort of conversation would probably be fluent in English. So I decided that I should practice verb conjugations by learning how to describe the accident where I broke my hip and the aftermath. After all, I am probably going to be asked more than once why I walk with a limp.

When I was in Chile over 30 years ago, one of my fondest memories was going trout fishing on a beautiful river in the lake country. Each person went with a botero who rowed the boat and did all the disgusting things you have to do to catch a fish, leaving the pure sport of it up to the person with the fishing rod.

Since I would like to recreate that scene and share it with my husband this time, I have decided that my next class should include some of the words I might need to talk to my botero, most of whom do not speak English. Words like lure and hook and rod and “to catch a fish”, hoping those words would actually describe what happened.

As for my husband who was starting with no Spanish background, his three lessons have given him the ability to introduce himself, say where he is from, and exchange pleasantries with someone. He will definitely be equipped with survival Spanish by the time we leave.

I am happy that our instructor is supportive of this idea of creating classes to meet our needs and desires. That’s a far better use of our time together than going over things we will probably never need to say.

A Note of Optimism

2011-12-28T21:36:00.001-05:00

Another Mary Oliver poem (read by our rabbi Esther) from her book Evidence, which I just purchased.

Halleluiah by Mary Oliver

Everyone should be born into this world happy

and loving everything.

But in truth it rarely works that way.

For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.

Halleluiah, anyway I’m not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes

almost forgetting how wonderful the world is

and how miraculously kind some people can be?

And have you too decided that nothing important

is ever easy?

Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more,

and some days I feel I have wings.

Sweet News from Chile

2011-12-25T14:57:00.000-05:00

Years ago (37 to be exact) I traveled to Chile for the first time, where I would provide technical assistance to the statistics office there. Unfortunately my luggage didn’t arrive until 3 days later. That’s how I got to know Veronica.

She was by title the secretary of the AID office I reported to there. But in truth she was a lot more than that. She quickly took me under her wing and took me shopping in the trendy stores of Providencia. I’m sure I also bought the other essentials to survive, but for many years I remembered Veronica when I wore my clothes from Chile.

We kept up for many years. When I traveled to Chile, she would invite me over for dinner or take me down to her parents’ farm in the country. At one point her husband had a contract that brought him to DC for a couple of months, so the family came along. Her sister lived here for a year when he husband served as a diplomat from Chile. But eventually we lost touch.

When we decided to go to Chile in February, I determined to try to find Veronica. I started searching online for anyone with her rather distinctive last name. I came to learn through distant cousins that she and her first husband had divorced. She was remarried and living in Houston.

Just today I managed to locate an email address for her new husband, who owns a small company that exports dried plums from Chile, or prunes as we know them. I shot off an email figuring it might be days if he ever answered it.

But instead within 10 minutes I had a response from my wonderful friend, who said they will be in Chile during January and February, when the plums are harvested. I haven’t had a chance to ask all the many questions I have for her that will let me know what she has been doing for the last few decades.

I am so excited at the prospect of seeing her again, meeting her new husband, and maybe even visiting the plum farm, which I suspect is the same farm I visited so long ago.

On Duty

2011-12-24T14:26:00.000-05:00

Every time we go to Temple Micah, we pass this police car parked in a nice little indentation of Massachusetts Avenue. About half the time there is someone inside, but often it’s empty.

We’ve speculated about what it’s doing there. Perhaps guarding against terrorist threats to the VP at the National Observatory just down the street? Perhaps as a deterrent of some other kind?

I determined to find out on our way home today. So my husband pulled over and I went over to have a chat with the very large policeman sitting in his car and doing something on his laptop.

He was a little surprised to see me, but quickly told me he was there to catch speeders with a radar camera on the front left of the car. For once it was nothing about terrorism!

And here I thought I knew all the speed traps. I’m actually surprised I haven’t learned the hard way by getting a ticket. I think I have discovered most of the others in the city.

I’m guessing the camera works whether the cop is in the car or not. But wouldn’t it be more cost-effective to just mount a permanent unmanned camera at that location, thereby freeing up a police cruiser and the cop inside? The DC Government never ceases to amaze me with how it chooses to allocate taxpayer money.

Lipstick in Transit

2011-12-23T20:12:00.005-05:00

I don’t go through a lot of cosmetics, but when I find something I really like I want to be able to keep buying it. As these things often happen, my favorite lipstick, Trish McEvoy Sheer Palm Beach, is no longer being produced.

I recently talked to a very helpful sales rep at Nordstrom’s who suggested I might like Dior Addict Tokyo 422, supposedly similar to the one I was attached to. I found a place online that was selling it $10 cheaper than at Nordstrom’s, both of whom offered me free shipping.

So on December 11 I placed my order to this place in Southern California. It was shipped on December 13 with an estimated arrival date of December 20, which came and went with no USPS package containing my Addict lipstick.

I went into the tracking history provided with my order confirmation and found something most bizarre. Take a look at this:

Information about shipment

Ship carrier: USPS

Tracking Number: 9101900007540986103595

Status: In transit

Estimated Arrival: December 20, 2011

Track your package

December 14, 2011 US Shipment has left seller facility and is in transit

December 22, 2011 10:06 PM Hallandale, FL Arrival scan

December 22, 2011 11:21 PM Opa Locka, FL Departure scan

Why in the world would something traveling from the West Coast to Virginia end up in Hallandale, FL? I know it’s a crazy busy time for packages, but this seems like someone screwed up.

I will be most curious to see if my new lipstick ever arrives. It’s a good thing it wasn’t intended as a holiday gift for anyone other than myself!

Rediscovering Spanish

2011-12-22T22:28:00.000-05:00

I have just reached the crazy conclusion that I have so much more energy when I am insanely busy. I won’t even begin to list all the things I am attempting to do right now, but I will say I just added a new one.

Almost 40 years ago I took a job that allowed me to study Spanish and then French at the Foreign Service Institute (part of the State Department). I went every workday morning for two years for each language. The classes were small, never exceeding 5 students. All the instructors were native speakers. We rotated instructors every few weeks so as to experience a variety of accents. The emphasis was always on spoken (not written) communication. I had always loved learning languages, but never before had I realized how much the quality and style of instruction mattered.

All those hours of language training prepared me to speak to my third-world counterparts as I attempted to provide technical assistance on the data processing of surveys and censuses. I got to go to exciting places like Bogota, Tegucigalpa, San Salvador, Lima, Buenos Aires, and Chile.

At one point I really knew how to use the subjunctive and the various verb tenses. I knew the difference between “por” and “para”, “ser” and “estar”. I had a tremendous vocabulary in some things, like food items since I did a lot of work on agriculture surveys. But that was all in the 70’s and 80’s.

One of my first thoughts when we decided to go to Chile on vacation was that I would like to recapture my Spanish ability. So on a whim I called up FSI and spoke to the head of the Spanish Department. (She probably wasn’t even born when I was taking language training.) She seemed flattered that I had been so impressed with my training and sympathetic of my desire for a quick refresher course.

She put out the word to the various instructors and within a few hours I had a dozen or so offers of highly qualified people to teach me and my husband (who knows no Spanish whatsoever).

From all those offers, I chose a woman who is from Colombia and who has been at FSI for almost 20 years. I remembered the Colombian accent as being the clearest and easiest to understand. She seemed quite enthusiastic and suggested a very reasonable fee.

We had our first meeting with Lia on Tuesday and our next class is tomorrow. I had homework to review all the various forms of the present tense and to read something newsworthy. So I found a Latin American news service online and chose an article entitled “Chile: Ya es tiempo de cambiar”. It would seem we are not the only country whose citizens are fed up with what is going on.

We will continue to meet with Lia twice a week until our trip in late February. By then I may not be dreaming in Spanish, but I will be much better prepared to speak to Chileans in Spanish. And my husband will be able to communicate as long as they don’t stray too far from those initial dialogues!

'Tis the Season

2011-12-19T19:32:00.000-05:00

Not far from our house is a house where every holiday is immortalized with blow-up figures. We can't figure out why they do it -- whether it's a business trying to attract customers or someone just has a thing for armies of inflated animals and people.

I was most surprised to drive by and see that even Hanukkah had been blown up! This enormous Hanukkah bear is pretty cute. He sits apart from his red-and-green compatriots as he guards his dreidel. He was definitely in place before the start of Hanukkah tomorrow night. It will be interesting to see if he stays for the entire season or comes down after the eighth day of Hanukkah.

I have bought a few little things for people who are important to me, but for the most part I have totally escaped the hustle and bustle of the shopping malls, with their angry parking lots.

I'm enjoying seeing old friends at a couple holiday get-togethers. I'm also experiencing my yearly guilt when I receive holiday greetings from people I have know for decades but always seem to fail to send out my own.

My hope is that you are enjoying whatever ways you choose to celebrate the season!

Breakfast Then and Now

2011-12-18T12:13:00.001-05:00

One of the things that initially attracted my husband and me was our love of cooking and eating. The contrast of the breakfast we cooked today to that we cooked almost 40 years ago was amusing!

He introduced me to Jewish foods and cooking I had never encountered in the South. I learned about the marvels of schmaltz and we found ways to use it liberally. In 1973 our breakfast menu might have been something like:

-- Eggs Benedict made with either smoked lox or breaded veal scallopini cooked in schmaltz and topped with Hollandaise sauce

-- Broiled tomatoes

-- Hash browns probably with some schmaltz as well

-- Strong coffee

Today’s breakfast was just a little healthier:

-- Sectioned grapefruit and orange

-- Poached eggs with a sprinkle of sea salt

-- Hash browns cooked in a little olive oil

-- Multi-grain toast with nothing on it

-- Green tea

We still share the cooking responsibilities, but we both have modified our diets. There is no more schmaltz in our refrigerator. Instead olive oil seems to be our choice for all things sauteed. We greatly limit our coffee intake.

As we sat reading the Post and the NY Times after breakfast, I noted it was the same bad news of 40 years ago, just another administration. We had traded in Nixon for Obama.

Thrown Out

2011-12-16T17:11:00.000-05:00

My house was supposed to be cleaned today. But instead I got a tearful call from the El Salvadoran woman who comes every 2 weeks. She said she was too sad to work today because her boyfriend had gone back to her country.

I had thought the man she lived with who was presumably the father of her two children was her husband. I had seen him only once when he came with a big truck to take away some furniture we were getting rid of. I had the feeling he was gainfully employed and they were living comfortably in Woodbridge.

I know nothing of the details, but I am presuming this man was suddenly deported. Hardly anyone who is here legally from El Salvador chooses to go back.

I’m now wondering whether her tears were perhaps tears of fear that she would be the next to go. I’ve never asked if she was here legally. I suppose I’ve never wanted to know. She and her mother have been here for at least 25 years, but that does not give them legal status.

The children were born here, but who can say what would happen to them if their parents both had to go back to El Salvador.

This is a dilemma facing more and more immigrants as the conservative element in this country pushes for a crackdown. Have they really thought about who would do the millions of jobs now being done by immigrants? Have they realized that those of us who are not Native American by descent all came from someone who immigrated to this country sometime?

I knew this was happening all over the country, but not until that phone call today did I get a glimpse of what it really means. I hope this family will survive and will some day be together again, but the odds are probably against that.

Going South

2011-12-15T18:23:00.000-05:00

A dream I have had for a long time now is finally going to come true. From the time I worked in Chile in the late 70’s, I have wanted to go back as a tourist. We have just decided to take a 3-week trip in late February to this southern place which will be celebrating summer while we shovel snow back here.

Of all the many countries to which I traveled giving technical assistance, Chile is still my favorite. It reminded me of Norway and of Europe in general. The Spanish was more understandable than the clipped fast Spanish of the Caribbean. The people were warm and hospitable. From Santiago I traveled to beautiful places on the weekends.

We will start in Santiago, getting acclimated to the warmth and the good wine and the language. From there we will fly 500 kilometers south to the lake country, where we will stay at a small hosteria in Villarica on the lake at the foot of a volcano.

We will continue south by (rented) car to Puerto Montt, where we will take a 6-day boat trip that features islands and glaciers. This will be the farthest south either of us has ever traveled.

From Puerto Montt we will fly to the far north to Calama to visit the Atacama Desert, the driest place on the face of the earth. It is not unusual for the temperature to reach 100 degrees F. during the day and dip down to 30 degrees F. at night. My first real desert adventure.

We will fly back to Santiago to spend our last night in Valparaiso, a quaint little town right on the Pacific coast, known for its seafood and charm.

We have most of the reservations made at this point, including using a bunch of frequent flyer miles. We must still deal with Jake-care and I would like to reclaim my knowledge of Spanish before we leave.

It is exciting to have a trip on the horizon, not even a very distant horizon.

Eye Check

2011-12-14T22:03:00.000-05:00

I go to a very thorough ophthalmologist once a year mainly because I want to be sure I don’t have any melanomas on the back of my eyeballs. Every year I get a clean bill of health after about a two-hour wait. Although I have gotten used to the routine, there were several things about today’s visit that annoyed me.

First of all there is Purell everywhere and my doctor uses it liberally in between patients. Today I asked him if he really believed it was effective and he said he was thoroughly convinced it was because his daughter who is a pediatrician had told him so. I wanted to ask why he preferred it over soap and water, but he was already squirting drops in the next patient’s eyes.

The second annoying thing is their cell phone policy, which is plastered liberally on the office walls. It doesn’t just say to silence your phone, but rather it prohibits the use of cell phones. People all around me were talking to each other, so I decided to test the phone policy, figuring my talking quietly on my phone was far less disruptive than the general dull roar.

Soon thereafter an office worker I dubbed the cell phone police came over and verbally informed me of their policy. I pointed at what was going on around me and asked why. She was most afraid that my cell phone might ring. My assurance that it was on vibrate wouldn’t do. So I quickly concluded my conversation and sat reading a book on my phone, fully expecting she would return and tell me I couldn’t do that either.

I can never figure out why it inevitably takes 2 hours to get out of that office. The total time seeing the technician who does the eye check and then the doctor amounts to no more than 15 minutes. But true to form, my appointment was at 9:45 and I walked out at 11:45 with blurry vision and the good news that my eyes are a year older but just fine.

Holiday Cheer

2011-12-13T16:49:00.000-05:00

It was somewhat odd to walk into the holiday party of my old office (of 5 years ago). I was immediately greeted by familiar faces, but there were so many new faces, people who had come on board after my departure.

One of the reasons I decided to attend was the fact that the venue was a sports bar only minutes from my house. I would not have relished a trip to Suitland, but Arlington was too good to pass up.

I showed up with my wrapped gift for the round robin gift exchange -- a jar of Wasabi Passion Fruit mustard from Kauai. I decided not to go with a bottle of wine or beer although they had always been the most highly sought after gifts in past years. (It turns out my mustard exchanged hands several times before ending up with someone who really wanted it.)

The big boss who had caused me so much angst apparently left a few years ago, rumored to have been forced out. Part of me would say that served her right if it was true. But regardless, I met her successor, someone I had worked with at least 10 years ago. He is an easy-going competent guy who seems to have the support of his staff.

I talked at length to the guy who took my place. He never mentioned the possibility of bringing me back as a consultant and I never asked. There is a good chance I wouldn’t remember enough about my old job to even be effective any longer.

I made the rounds to visit with lots of people who worked with me and for me, giving each of them a hug, something I never did while working there. I learned about children grown up and off to college, one coworker who was actually fired by my old boss, and any number of other interesting tidbits.

It was a good feeling to be so warmly received. It was nice to realize that none of the bitterness that clouded my retirement remained any longer.

Remembering

2011-12-11T20:30:00.000-05:00

Today we went on a most interesting Temple Micah field trip to the Ripley Center, part of the Smithsonian Institution, to see an exhibit of 36 tapestries made by a most talented woman.

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz was a 12-year-old girl in Poland when the Nazis invaded the country in 1939. After 3 years of occupation that was increasingly brutal, they started marching the Jews of her small village away to death camps.

She and her sister said a tearful goodbye to their family and managed to pass themselves off as Catholics during the rest of the war. They worked for farmers and even enlisted in the Polish army at one point. Esther had quite a reputation as both a seamstress and a cook.

After the war they ended up in a displaced persons camp, where they both married other survivors and eventually made their way to America.

Esther constantly told stories of those war years, never embellishing but always amazing her listeners with her exploits motivated by her sheer will to survive.

It was not until she was 50 years old that Esther began to make elaborate handmade tapestries depicting her life in Poland before and during the war and her subsequent life in America. They were painstakingly created, each one focusing on a different episode.

At first she knew nothing of perspective. But by the third or fourth, she had learned about the third dimension. Some scenes are a snapshot, where others show what happened over the course of time.

But each is a gem which always dwells on the beauty of the country despite the brutality of what was going on.

In the one below, while she and her sister were tending cows, they looked across to see young boys being brutalized and killed when they could work no longer. It depicts the thin line between good and evil.

Although Esther is no longer living, we were fortunate to have her daughter as our tour guide today. She told a fascinating story of her mother’s life and provided additional insight to each of the tapestries on view. She is now heading up a non-profit organization aimed at spreading this most unusual story.

This free exhibit is well worth a visit!

Sad News

2011-12-07T12:06:00.000-05:00

Every time I encounter death, I feel the same helpless vulnerability. And so it was when I learned just this morning of the death of the “patriarch” of our piano group.

He was a wonderful man, probably in his 80’s and still a practicing psychiatrist. He had the most wonderful piano I have ever played -- a huge Steinway model L. He always attempted extremely difficult music and fussed at himself when he made a mistake. His house was like a museum. His newest dog, a German shepherd he had raised from a puppy, was now well trained and totally devoted to him.

The last time I saw him a couple of months ago, he walked with a very smart cane but looked otherwise quite well. We heard he had taken a fall, but fully expected him to rejoin us soon.

He is the second of our group to pass away, the first having lived with ovarian cancer for quite some years. But this one took us all by surprise. In a sense maybe that’s better than a long anticipation of death.

We will indeed miss his music and his presence when we get together for our monthly renditions of “Works in Progress.”

I suppose life is really just a work in progress. And sometimes it’s finished.

No Show

2011-12-06T18:37:00.000-05:00

Here’s the question of the day: What should I do about a no-show for a free piano lesson?

I have given 10-year-old Margalen lessons here and there over the past year when her mother thinks to call and schedule a time. It seems like we have made little headway, mostly starting over each time and never graduating from the initial book in the Alfred series. I don’t know if that’s because I really don’t know how to teach piano or whether she may have some real learning disabilities that make this more difficult.

In any event, I had come up with some additional things for today’s lesson in the hope there would be a breakthrough. I bought her a similarly easy book of holiday music thinking she could show off to her family if she could sit down and play something like Jingle Bells.

I also bought a set of music flashcards with the thought that they might provide another approach to learning how to read music. I don’t personally remember needing anything like this when I was a kid. Instead we learned things like “Every Good Boy Does Fine” and “FACE” and “Good Boys Do Fine Always” and “All Cows Eat Grass” to give us the necessary clues to decode the musical score.

So here I sat armed with all this new ammunition while 4:00 came and went without even the typical phone call to say she would be late.

Should I regard this as the gift of an hour I would not have otherwise had today? Or should I lay down an ultimatum that I won’t tolerate missed lessons, even if there is no monetary exchange? Or should I call and ask if they would like to reschedule, knowing that it was definitely not Margalen’s fault that she didn’t show up for her lesson?

I am convinced that people are much less likely to miss an appointment if they know they will have to pay for the time one way or the other. But when there is no penalty for not showing up, it’s a whole different story.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2011-12-04T19:06:00.000-05:00

Do you even remember the first time you heard and saw a symphony orchestra? I’ll bet you weren’t sitting in the front row as I was today with a group of shelter kids who were experiencing symphonic music for the first time.

It was not without considerable angst that I was able to get 15 comp tickets to the annual carol singalong with the Capital City Symphony. I had called and called to reserve tickets the minute they were put on “sale” at a processing cost of $2 per ticket. But by the time I reached a live person in the box office, I was told there were no more tickets to be had. Some string pulling by people in high places finally persuaded them to put aside tickets for our little band of kids.

By the time we managed to get everyone to the Atlas Theater today, the best seats were in the front row, so that’s where we sat. I was somewhat nervous that someone wouldn’t behave well, but that’s where we were to sit. As it turns out, screaming babies were far more disruptive than anyone in our group.

They were somewhat incredulous to be 10 feet away from the violin section and at the feet of the conductor. There were nonstop questions as I pointed out the various instruments while the orchestra warmed up and we got ready for the lights to dim. Questions like

-- Why do the violinists put their instruments under their chin?

-- Is a cello just a bigger violin?

-- And what about those even bigger ones where some people are standing up holding them (the double basses)?

-- Will the conductor be a boy or a girl?

I was surprised the kids didn’t know more of the traditional Christmas carols and songs that I grew up with. Even though they had programs with the words in them, it wasn’t until we got to songs like Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman that they joined in singing. They especially liked The Twelve Days of Christmas where the audience was divided into odds and evens and we stood up and sat down as our numbers came around.

We stuck around briefly after the concert to ask the first violinist about why he played his instrument the way he did. He was a friendly African-American man who seemed to take a special interest in my 10-year-old boys.

After the concert we were treated to a smorgasbord of holiday cookies donated by local bakeries. That was even better than the ice cream cones we had originally promised them.

I was so glad my friend had suggested this concert as a way to introduce these kids to a little culture and to give them a place to go on a Sunday afternoon. I think even the most sullen teenager had a good time.

A New Old Trumpet

2011-12-02T19:26:00.001-05:00

One night as I was getting ready to leave the shelter after reading to the younger kids, I saw David (age 10) in the office trying to resurrect an old abandoned trumpet. It seemed rather hopeless.

I learned that he plays the trumpet at school. I also learned how much he would really like an instrument he could call his own. Possessions are especially important when you are homeless.

So I recently put out the word to all the people I know who either play the trumpet themselves or are in an orchestra of some sort. I was willing to pay for an instrument, but not too much.

The only real offer I got came from Blogger Cyndy’s husband, who is a professional trombonist:

I have a "Regent" trumpet/cornet (Ohio Band Instrument Co.) from about 1940. It's a quality built horn, not junk, and it's in excellent condition. It's a special short instrument for smaller kids, sort of a cross between a trumpet and a cornet, but it takes a cornet mouthpiece, which is slightly different from a trumpet mouthpiece. It has a case but no mouthpiece. I'm working on finding a mouthpiece for it.

He did indeed find a mouthpiece for it and proposed a price I couldn’t refuse. So tonight he dropped it off before going to a gig. He had also included a brush and cleaning fluid. The case is a little worn, but the horn is a beauty. I only wish I could play it.

Now I am in search of someone who could give young David a few lessons, both in the care of his new trumpet and how to play it. It seems like the perfect community service project for a teenager. But it might also be fun for an older musician who would like to pass along his knowledge to a younger generation.

I’ve decided not to give David the trumpet until I find this person to get him started down the right path. I’m sure just the right person will come along, just as the trumpet itself appeared.
******

At intermission at tonight's NSO concert, a young Temple Micah member who goes to Duke Ellington High School and will be off to play the trumpet at a conservatory next year, came up to me to say he would love to work with David. He is absolutely perfect to be a trumpet mentor. I just know this is going to work out well!

Up Against a Door

2011-11-28T14:20:00.001-05:00

If my father were still alive, he would be proud of me today. I managed to fix a household problem by myself without hiring a handy man. As a result I now know more about bifold doors than most homeowners will ever know.

We have bifold doors separating the main part of the basement from the workroom. Until the recent “gym” project, the doors stayed open and it was not a problem that the right one was bumping metal-against-metal on the track instead of gliding smoothly. (The first two pictures are of the repaired door since I didn't think about writing this until it was fixed.)

But just the other day, the metal on top fell to the floor and the particle board at the top of the door had come unglued. It obviously needed some wood glue and some replacement hardware. Upon closer examination, I could see that what was missing was the hard round roller piece at the top.

I headed off to the dreaded Home Depot yesterday where I managed to find replacement hardware on my own since the man making keys never seemed to get a break to help me. But all I found was obviously the wrong size. I thought perhaps I could pry the round roller thingie off the shorter metal spring-loaded piece and just put it on top of the one that had fallen on the floor.

Yesterday afternoon I carefully applied wood glue and secured the top of the door with masking tape while it dried. But last night after the door had dried, I realized the new white thing was missing a small lip on the lower edge that kept it from going up into the track.

So today I went to what was once an excellent hardware store, only to find fairly bare shelves and fairly incompetent staff, who referred me to a store that sold appliance parts and had nothing to do with door hardware.

Driving home it occurred to me that I could possibly make a replacement part from the bottom of a spool that once held thread. I had virtually all sizes from which to choose.

Just as I was going around the workbench to get a coping saw to cut up the spool, I noticed a little white round thing in an indentation at the corner of the workbench. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was the missing part and it had probably been there for years. You know that feeling of finding an object on the floor and not knowing what it is, putting it somewhere just in case.

I quickly reassembled the old hardware and it works like a charm!

My Ace friend Merle may be the only one who cares enough to read to the end of this saga. I’ll bet he would have been able to save me some frustration.

'Tis the Season for Pumpkin

2011-11-27T22:12:00.001-05:00

Here’s a little secret: I post recipes here so I can find them again. If you find them too, that’s fine with me.

As we were sitting around talking about what to cook for Thanksgiving, my son mentioned the pumpkin flan he had made last year and I drew a blank, despite the fact that he also mentioned it was our favorite dessert.

Fortunately his memory is almost perfect and he immediately pulled the New York Times Cookbook off the shelf and opened it up to the recipe. So of course it was on the menu again this year.

Cinnamon Pumpkin Flan

1-1/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup pureed cooked pumpkin

5 large eggs, lightly beaten

1-1/2 cups undiluted evaporated milk

1/3 cup water

1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Melt 1/2 cup of the sugar over low heat until the sugar forms a golden syrup. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Pour immediately into a souffle dish or a 9-inch pie plate, turning and rolling pan from side to side to coat with caramel Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine 3/4 cup of the remaining sugar with the salt and cinnamon. Add pumpkin and eggs. Mix well. Stir in the evaporated milk, the water, and the vanilla. Mix well and turn into the caramel-coated pan. Set in a pan filled with 1/2” of water. Bake for 1-1/4 hours, or until a knife inserted in the center of the filling comes out clean. Cool and chill.

To serve, run a spatula around the sides of the pan. Turn flan out onto a serving plate. Cut into wedges. Combine the whipped cream with the remaining sugar and the ginger and serve as a topping.

This is a winning dessert worth repeating every year!

Legacy

2011-11-26T11:06:00.000-05:00

As my daughter was growing up, she actually learned more of my behavior than I ever imagined. We had a lot of time to observe each other in the kitchen yesterday as we all pitched in to make our belated Thanksgiving dinner.

As I was cleaning up as others cooked, her boyfriend remarked that the can barely set down a glass or a spoon without her washing it.

Then as we were cleaning up after the feast and I went to work on the stove, her boyfriend said she does the same thing every time they cook.

Thinking back, I am pretty sure I inherited both of these behaviors from my mother, who always did all the cooking herself.

It’s quite a surprise to see yourself in your adult child. I wonder what else she inherited from me...

Feasting a Day Late

2011-11-25T17:58:00.000-05:00

We’re eating our Thanksgiving dinner the day most people are having leftovers. In an effort to include everyone in the cooking we put it off a day. So today has been the cooking frenzy that ordinarily takes place on Thanksgiving.

This year has some new challenges imposed by my husband’s gluten free status. We have tried to accommodate his dietary restrictions for most of the meal.

Like the pies above. One gluten-free and dairy-free, the other with regular flour and butter. Can you tell the difference? I didn’t think so.

The gluten-free pie is the one that looks the best (on the left). Its crust is made from almond flour, oat flour, tapioca flour, teff flour, potato starch, sweet rice flour, xanthan gum, guar gum, salt, goat butter, lard, an egg, and ice water.

Both crusts contain leaf lard, supposedly the highest quality of lard, which comes from the fat near the pig’s kidney. I had always steered clear of lard, but there are many people who swear it makes the best pie crust.

The proof will be in the eating, which should happen in another couple of hours.

We are just five for dinner: the two of us, our children, and our daughter’s boyfriend. Jake will also be hanging around hoping for a handout.

The strange thing about this meal is it’s the same amount of work no matter how many people are sitting around the table. But everyone has shared in the work and we can be flexible about when we eat.

Hope your Thanksgiving meal included good food and lots of family!

Mega Yoga

2011-11-24T13:49:00.000-05:00

When I woke up today I was very tempted to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep instead of going to the 2-hour yoga workshop I had signed up for. I’ve been feeling like I was on the verge of a cold and my energy level was flagging.

But instead I had a quick breakfast, fed Jake, and headed into DC, not knowing fully what to expect in a very long open-level class. I watched the studio fill up with people who had never considered going to the “gentle” classes I normally attend. They were mostly much younger and full of energy.

One of the greatest strengths of a yoga teacher is being able to teach a multi-level class and have everyone feel like it was geared to his or her unique abilities. That meant that for today’s classes, many poses had options. There were often 3 or 4 different possibilities for a pose.

I had fun just looking around. As most people flipped up into their perfect handstands, I did my shoulder stand, feeling happy that I could still manage to get myself into it. I watched some pretty awesome poses over the course of those 2 hours.

After about an hour, down dog started to seem like a resting pose. With lots of modifications, I managed to get through the two-hour class that systematically worked most every part of our bodies. I settled into shavasana with a strong feeling of contentment and a new level of appreciation for my body.

I walked out of this gratitude workshop with the sudden realization that my cold symptoms had totally disappeared. I was now ready to enjoy family and feasting over the next few days.

Turkish Torture

2011-11-22T18:05:00.000-05:00

In any sort of physical training program, there is always something just out of your reach to which you are aspiring. But how far out of your reach?

Last week my physical therapist decided to have me do a Turkish getup, figuring it would fire up my gluts and abs and virtually every part of my body. From the get-go, I could see that this maneuver was way harder than anything else I had ever attempted. By the end of the session, I had managed to do one small piece of it and I was totally exhausted and a little discouraged. I’m sure my attitude did not seem overly positive.

We had an email conversation afterwards about this and I hoped it would be put off for a while until the necessary body parts could be strengthened through exercises I could more easily do. But that didn’t seem to happen.

Instead I showed up today for my hour with my trainer (who works for the PT) and he once again attempted to convince my body it could do the Turkish getup. Despite his words of encouragement, it still seemed pretty hopeless.

I understand that to progress we need to be challenged. But my question is how challenged should that be? It seems like it might be better to move through a series of progressively harder exercises which would give me some positive feedback along the way if I could actually do them.

I consider that I usually have a fairly optimistic attitude toward new things, but every now and then I am reminded just how far I still have to go.

In Search of a Discounted Yoda

2011-11-20T11:46:00.000-05:00

Last year when we started the book club at the homeless shelter, I knew we would have to pay for all the books because we have no corporate sponsor. That doesn’t sound like a big deal for 6 kids. But 6 kids once a month adds up.

I’m usually able to go online and buy used books for as little as 1 cent with $3.99 for shipping.

But occasionally we choose a popular book that isn’t available at such a good price. And so it is with “The Strange Case of Origami Yoda” by Tom Angleberger. It was recommended by a children’s librarian at the Arlington County Public Library. One look at the book told me it was the sort of book that might grab our reluctant readers.

The best I could do anywhere was $7.99 with free shipping, but that adds up to $48. So we decided to go in search of a greater discount. I called Abrams, the publisher in NYC, and left a message. My husband wrote an email to Amazon, where we buy lots of stuff. And I sent an email to the author, who happens to be a newspaper reporter in Roanoke.

Several days had passed and I was getting ready to pay the $48, when I got a message from the author today:

Let me see if I can wrangle some copies for you…

One way or the other Origami Yoda will be our January book. We will spend some time talking about the book and eating healthier snacks than the kids are used to eating. And then we will attempt to make our own origami yodas using this or one of the other many utube videos out there.

I’m so determined to see these kids take off as young readers. Their worlds know no limits if they cast their lot with books!

Zebra Question

2011-11-18T22:06:00.002-05:00

At Friday night services we are treated to a reading by the bar/bat mitzvah boy or girl. Tonight’s reading was particularly enjoyable and thought-provoking:

Zebra Question by Shel Silverstein

I asked the Zebra,

Are you black with white stripes?

Or white with black stripes?

And the zebra asked me,

Are you good with bad habits?

Or are you bad with good habits?

Are you noisy with quiet times?

Or are you quiet with noisy times?

Are you happy with some sad days?

Or are you sad with some happy day?

Are you neat with some sloppy ways?

Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?

And on and on and on and on

And on and on he went.

I'll never ask a zebra

About stripes

Again.

Yogic Wisdom

2011-11-17T11:21:00.000-05:00

My young yoga teacher is wise beyond her years. Yesterday afternoon she started our class by reminding us that we have everything we need and we need everything we have. And by remembering this we open to grace, one of the 5 principles of Anusara yoga.

I’m intrigued by this concept. Obviously this is not about material possessions, since I certainly don’t have the underwear I’m going to need to buy in 10 years and I don’t have the food I’m going to eat tomorrow. But rather it must be about what’s in our heads and hearts and bodies.

It asks us to look inside and take inventory to see how best to use what’s there. We may find the baggage from a relationship gone awry, but that too contributed to who we are. We may find the scars from from an accident, but they remind us that the body can heal. We may find a surplus of love that has never been spoken. We may find untapped strength. Who knows?

Whatever we find will be as unique to us as our fingerprints are. It is our raw material to inform how we live right now.

I associate opening to grace with the asanas of my yoga practice. When in fact, it can be extended to embracing life off the mat as well.

New Shoes and Free Shipping

2011-11-16T10:36:00.000-05:00

I recently tried on these shoes at The Walking Company and really liked them. But before buying them at $115, I decided to look online and sure enough I found them for $76 with free shipping.

When the shoes arrived 2 days later, I realized the Chinese quality control on shoes may not be so good because the very same 9-1/2 M was way too tight. Thinking perhaps I had actually tried on a 9-1/2 W, I ordered a second pair at the same $76 with free shipping, which arrived the next day. That pair slipped right off my feet.

So I bit the bullet and bought the shoes that fit, leaving me with 2 pairs of shoes to return. That’s when I realized return shipping wasn’t covered. I boxed them up and prepared to go to the USPS, knowing the shipping would probably be $20 or more.

Then I had the idea of calling Amazon to find out if there was a cheaper way to return them. Miraculously I talked to a guy in India who figured out how to get prepaid shipping for both pairs of shoes.

Which brings me to my real question du jour about all the free shipping that is out there luring us to make purchases online. I often get the item the next day or the day after that and pay nothing for the many people responsible for the delivery to my door.

The free shipping seems to apply to items large and small. Last week we bought a refurbished Kitchenaid stand mixer online weighing at least 30 pounds. Free shipping. Yesterday I bought a jar of shoe polish online for $2.50. Free shipping. Both items already had rock-bottom prices, leaving me to wonder how these companies are actually paying for shipping.

All I know is at the cost of shipping these days, I mostly buy items which advertise free shipping.

How about you?

Massaged to a Spasm

2011-11-15T12:27:00.000-05:00

Last week I had a very frightening experience. I found myself buck naked on a massage table after a 90-minute session virtually unable to get up because my back was in spasm.

I have been seeing my excellent massage therapist every 3 weeks for almost 2 years. He does a very rigorous combination of therapy that is somewhat of a blend of PT and Thai massage. I am stretched in virtually every direction with a lot of emphasis on my lower back and hips. However, last week’s massage must have been a little more than my back could take.

The massage studio is actually in the efficiency condo where my bodyworker lives. He finishes up the session and then disappears into the bathroom while I get dressed. By the time he called out to find out if I was dressed, I had managed to get myself off the table and with difficulty to get mostly dressed. I told him I had had difficulty getting up but didn’t go into the details.

I was still in somewhat of a state of panic as I walked to the car, wondering if I had done irreparable damage to my back in an activity that was supposed to be therapeutic. I wondered if I should continue to see him. I wondered if I should continue to receive massage from anyone. But mainly I wondered if and when my back would stop hurting.

I popped an Aleve and tried to avoid bending over for the rest of the day. I sat carefully and got up slowly. And eventually my symptoms began to subside. While previous back problems have taken days to resolve, I was pretty much back to normal in about 24 hours.

I have had a long email dialog with my massage therapist and my physical therapist. He identified my left SI joint as the site of the problem. We have agreed that he should back way off on the intensity and limit my next session to 60 minutes. Perhaps we can gradually add back in some of the things he usually does. But whatever we do, I have to make sure my back is not negatively affected.

I continue to learn the strengths and limitations of my body. And I must pay full attention to both.

Killing Me Softly with... Shampoo?

2011-11-10T09:10:00.000-05:00

I am one of those people who wander aimlessly from shampoo to shampoo, always searching for the perfect blend that leaves my hair lustrous and manageable. But what I didn’t realize was the reason I may not have liked quite a few of those products was they contained toxins.

I have long had problems with my hair feeling lifeless and my scalp itchy after a shampoo. I just attributed it to the fact that I have always had somewhat dry skin. For this reason I seldom wash my hair more than twice a week.

Last week while I was wasting time waiting for my knives to be sharpened, I walked into a chic hair salon in Tysons Galleria and bought Aveda shampoo and conditioner recommended by a stylist. The bottles were attractive and it smelled nice enough to justify the cost.

But after washing my hair, I could scarcely get a comb through it and it felt robbed of all nutrients. Not such a good showing for salon hair products.

A few days later while shopping at MOM’s Organic Market, I saw an array of natural products and decided to cast my luck with Desert Essence Green Apple and Ginger shampoo and conditioner.

Today my hair feels totally different and it looks 1000 times better as well. Who ever heard of Desert Essence anything? I’m beginning to think brands mean nothing when it comes to shampoo. It’s all about ingredients.

A New Take on Bread

2011-11-06T20:43:00.002-05:00

Today I entered the world of gluten-free baking. Very unfamiliar but not a total failure.

My goal was to make bread that was not hard and flat as a rock, that didn’t fall apart when I took it out of the pan, and that tasted at least remotely like bread.

I started with Alison’s Gluten Free Bread recipe and made a few modifications. First of all I really don’t like those little bullet shaped loaves that come out of a bread machine, so my bread was going to be baked in loaf pans. I substituted goat’s milk for cow’s milk, since my husband is on a dairy free diet as well.

As you can see, the loaves came out just fine. I was almost afraid to bite into a slice because I am so particular about bread. But surprisingly it tasted quite good and had a nice, although different from gluten bread, texture. It reminded me a lot of brioche.

Here’s the resulting recipe:

Gluten Free Bread

1 egg + 2 egg whites

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup canola oil

1/4 cup honey

1-1/2 cups skim goat’s milk

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon zanthan gum

1/2 cup tapioca flour

1/4 cup garbanzo bean flour

1/4 millet flour

1 cup white rice flour

1 cup brown rice flour

1 tablespoon dry yeast

Egg wash (one egg with a small amount of water)

Seed mixture (flax, poppy, sesame)

Heat goat’s milk to around 112 degrees F. Add oil, honey, and yeast. While yeast proofs, measure out dry ingredients and lightly beat eggs. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and beat with a spoon for 50 strokes or until there are no more lumps of anything. Cover with a cloth and let rise in a warm space for about an hour. (I put a heated skillet in my electric oven.)

Stir to deflate dough. Spoon into one large or two medium greased bread pans. Brush the tops with the egg wash and liberally sprinkle with seeds. Cover the pans with the cloth and place them place them back in the oven to rise for another hour.

Remove pans and preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake for 35 minutes. Cool on a rack for at least 20 minutes. Gently remove the loaves from the pans, running a knife around the outside to loosen the bread.

Slice and either eat or freeze in sandwich bags.

Roboticizing

2011-11-04T20:33:00.000-04:00

Someone who is really smart recently mentioned the trend is to get rid of jobs these days instead of creating them. In many fields work that had always been done by humans is being given to robots. He mentioned the legal and medical fields as examples.

But today I encountered yet another example of robotics in action while I waited at Tysons Corner Galleria for my knives to be sharpened at Sur la Table. As I ate my take-out crabcake from Legal Seafood, I was treated to a concert by this white Boston piano with no one playing it.

Player pianos have actually been around for many years. But it used to be that upscale shopping centers like this one employed a human to entertain their shoppers.

Don't get me wrong, the piano played Moonlight Sonata and many other favorites perfectly, but almost a little too perfectly. And there was never the chance of making eye contact with the pianist during a long ritard.

How sad that the job of a starving musician has now been delegated to a mechanized piano that will play 24 hours a day if asked to without asking for a penny. I wish they would think of a better way to economize.

Cooking Challenge

2011-11-04T10:35:00.000-04:00

I feel like I am on one of those cooking challenge shows and all of a sudden somebody took away half of my favorite ingredients. My husband saw the nutritionist (for the first time) yesterday and after hearing his various symptoms, she stripped down his diet to bare bones.

For at least the next month, he is supposed to be dairy-free, gluten-free, and low-acid. This translates into no cows milk, no butter, no wheat, no Balsamic vinegar, no ginger, no curry, and many other no-no’s.

Last night I found myself making two versions of stuffed peppers -- mine with the curry, tomato paste, and hot peppers and his without those things. It means we now have to keep track of his and my leftovers. How complicated!

He is allowed to have goat products. So I made goat milk yogurt yesterday. The good news is he can eat goat cheese, instead of avoiding all cheese as he has been doing for lactose-intolerance.

I have found recipes for gluten-free bread, gluten-free cake, gluten-free turkey stuffing. There are obviously a lot of people out there who are trying this alternate diet.

But it does call for a lot of extra planning and the purchase of ingredients like xanthan gum (helps to bind ingredients like gluten does) that I had never even heard of.

I must say my husband is embracing this with the determination to follow the new diet 100%. He’s making god use of the Vitamix to make things like cucumber juice and pear-parsley drinks. For the next month, I can guarantee he won’t cheat even once.

Hopefully some of those missing ingredients will be introduced back in over time, but for now we will simply adapt to keep him honest and hopefully more healthy.

Learning

2011-11-03T13:04:00.000-04:00

You may recall after the High Holy Days, I voiced my frustration at not knowing what I was praying during all those hours of services. I put out a message to our current rabbis and to our former rabbi asking for their help.

Today my husband and I had our first lesson with Toby, our rabbi from 2 years ago and one of the best teachers I have ever encountered.

On the ride into town, I verbalized some of my thoughts about embarking on this project to better understand. I wondered if perhaps I might be disappointed when I finally figure out what it is I have been praying. I wondered if when I finally understand the Hebrew, I will no longer think about its meaning, much as I said the Pledge of Allegiance day after day in school with not a thought to its meaning or said The Lord’s Prayer ever Sunday without pondering phrases like “hallowed be Thy name”. I wondered if my current ignorance of the meaning actually allowed me to evolve my own personal meaning without being forced to comply with what the words actually mean. I wondered if Israelis (who speak Hebrew and) who pray those prayers every day or every week pay much attention to their meaning. So many things to think about.

Our classes with Toby are starting at the very beginning of our weekly worship service. We will go prayer by prayer, talking about historical context, the words and their meanings, and how those same words show up in other places.

It’s a fascinating process. I have immediately reaffirmed how well qualified Toby is to teach this subject and how well she has already figured out how to best impart this knowledge to us.

On the way home after having my head packed with Hebrew words, I remarked about how lucky we were to have the time to do this. Many people our age are still slaving away at full-time jobs. Instead I am fortunate enough to study piano, music theory, and now Hebrew. Hopefully my brain is up to the task of expanding just a little further as I ask it to grasp some new bits of knowledge and make sense of them.

Strings and Things

2011-11-02T00:02:00.000-04:00

I met up with an old friend tonight at the Kennedy Center. We worked together for years and he does a good job of keeping in touch.

The Orion String Quartet were playing at the Terrace Theater, a smaller venue at the KC. That included 2 violins, a viola, and a cello. It was a fairly classical program -- Bach, Brahms, and Schubert -- with a dose of Webern (1883 - 1945) thrown in.

What was most interesting about their performance was we got to see a very human side of serious performers playing serious music. They started the program with an impromptu round of “happy birthday” for Marta Casals Istomin, a long-time benefactor of the Kennedy Center.

Midway through the first movement of the Schubert Quartet, they stopped abruptly when one of the strings on the viola broke. The violist left the stage for about 5 minutes to replace his string.

At the beginning of the third movement, the first violinist started the fourth movement and they had to start over after an embarrassing explanation.

All of these things made them seem like just 4 regular guys who love to play music together but sometimes have to roll with the punches.

I thoroughly enjoyed the evening, especially the Schubert. I ran into another friend on the way out who pronounced it the worst chamber music she had ever heard. Obviously not everyone felt the way I did.

Silver Reclaimed

2011-10-30T14:46:00.001-04:00

It’s funny how you remember things so wrong sometimes. I would have sworn the two silver trays were huge, when in fact they are about 12” across. But what really matters is I now have them and they will be ours forever.

The case for UPS however is not looking so good. Not only did they deliver my package to the wrong (nonexistent) address, but they also left it just inside the gate with the “Beware of dog” sign on it, only 10 feet from the street. So any passerby could easily have taken it.

Just as she said she would, the woman called this morning and left a message when her husband returned from West Virginia with my box in the back seat of his truck. So I immediately went up the street to claim it.

There was no conscious wrongdoing in the whole saga. Maybe some negligence on the part of UPS, but no intentional mistakes. The elderly friend of my mother in Florida had addressed the box incorrectly. It had gotten delivered despite the fact that it bore a nonexistent address. The recipients hadn’t opened it, but had instead left it in the back of their truck for some purpose I don’t understand.

But all is now well. I have two fairly shiny small silver-plated trays. One bears the engraving “Bay Co. Fair 1967”. One tray can go to each of my children. Some day maybe they will tell their children how the trays came to be and how they almost left our family permanently.

This is a case where sentimental value trumps actual value. But as it turns out, sentimental value sometimes counts for a lot.

Mystery of the Missing Silver Trays

2011-10-28T21:12:00.000-04:00

When I was growing up, I sewed. I made doll clothes, my clothes, my father’s shirts, and whatever anyone commissioned me to make. About the time I turned 12, I started entering things I had made in the “homemaking” category at the county fair.

I made some money (not a whole lot at $3 for a first place) and collected a lot of ribbons. Two years I managed to take the top honors, receiving a silver (plated) tray for each of those years.

When I was cleaning out the house after my father’s death, I found the old trays which were entirely blackened with tarnish. They were so hopeless looking I decided to donate them to my parents’ church, which often catered wedding receptions.

I’ve thought about those trays every fall when it was time for the county fair and wondered whether they were an important part of my history that deserved to be passed down to future generations.

I finally contacted the church to see if they were still around. They referred me to an old friend of my mother’s who managed to located both trays in some distant closet. I offered to make a donation in exchange for their return.

About two weeks ago, my mother’s friend let me know they were ready to go in the mail. I waited patiently, but no package came. Finally yesterday I emaled her to request a tracking number.

She checked with UPS and found they had supposedly been delivered 8 days ago, but apparently not to my house. Or perhaps someone could have taken them off our front stoop.

Upon further inquiry, it turns out she had sent the package to 5616 instead of 5816 Dawes Avenue. But that was just the beginning of my problems.

My husband, upon learning about the address problem, called me at my piano teacher’s house to say he would go down the street and retrieve the package. But it turned out there was no 5616 on our street. So was it 5614 or 5616 Doris or 5616 Colfax? Or had the UPS delivery person, who is at our house every week, figured out the problem and actually delivered it to our house from which it had been stolen? Too many possibilities, but no trays to be found anywhere.

I looked on Google maps and found 5616 Dawes, right at about the place that was actually 5614. I drove by there on my way home, to find a sign on the fence that said “Beware of dog”. Upon not seeing any monster dog, I let myself in and rang the doorbell. No one answered the door, but the barks behind it were indeed ferocious. I still had a feeling that the package could have been delivered there because there was no street number displayed.

I called UPS to see if they could shed any light on the matter. They were quick to tell me the sender could file a claim and not too sympathetic to the fact that the contents were not replaceable at any price. They agreed to talk to the delivery person to see if she could remember delivering such a package 8 days ago.

My next task was to discover the name of the family who lived at 5614. After many, many calls to neighbors, I came up with a name and a number.

But when I called the number I reached a hotel, which claimed to have a different phone number. I got the Cox operator involved, who said the lines were crossed and only the 2 parties could resolve that problem.

A few more calls informed me the family no longer had a land line and gave me the woman’s cell number. When I reached her, she immediately sounded relieved to know to whom the package they had been carrying around in the backseat of their car belonged.

She just called me to say the package is on its way to West Virginia with her husband for the weekend, having remained in the back seat of the car. By Sunday afternoon, it should be back in town. She offered to drop it off on my doorstep. I declined saying I didn’t want to chance another mishap, asking instead for a call so I can go pick it up.

Meanwhile UPS has failed to explain how they could deliver my package to a nonexistent address.

Stay tuned until Sunday, when I hope to give you a photo of my “prize” silver trays!

Simple Truths

2011-10-26T22:49:00.000-04:00

The past two evenings I have been in the presence of one of the most spiritual people I will probably ever encounter. Thich Nhat Hanh, now 85 years old, shared his simple truths with Washington audiences.

Last night was a lecture at the Warner Theater that required a ticket purchase. Tonight was a free lecture at the Library of Congress.

Each evening began with a guided meditation, followed by a lecture periodically punctuated by the biggest bell I have ever seen.

He talks a lot about things like lotus flowers and clouds and even cups of tea. But the simple truths he imparts make so much sense. Such as,

-- If you really love someone, you will give that person your full and undivided attention when you communicate.

-- If you really love someone, you will be sympathetic to his suffering. You will be a good listener.

-- Suffering is a necessary part of life. Without suffering, there would be no happiness and no compassion.

I wish I could remember all the many things he said over the course of about 4 hours of speaking. While a few people around me were furiously writing in notebooks, I decided to just listen.

Last night the person to my left was texting. The person to my right was reading her email on her phone and noisily eating an energy bar. It was all I could do to keep my mind from dwelling on these less than mindful activities. Tonight’s audience seemed to have much better manners, although I did hear at least one cell phone go off.

Our teacher sat in the lotus position on the stage, surrounded by his entourage of monks and nuns all dressed in flowing brown robes. You could tell they highly revere him.

Perhaps it was my imagination. But I felt like I had a somewhat more positive and contented attitude toward life today. These brief encounters with Thich Nhat Hanh will long be in my memory.

Going Solo

2011-10-25T16:31:00.000-04:00

No, I am not in Austria. This would be Vienna, Virginia. It was a great day for a bike ride.

I keep trying to entice people to go on slow rides with me, but I finally just launched off on my own today because it was a perfect fall day. I got on the W&OD (Washington and Old Dominion) Trail in Dunn Loring and road out past Vienna for a total of about 10 miles.

It's not terribly hilly and the bike path is wide and well maintained. Given it is a workday for most people, the path was not at all crowded. There were a few walkers and a few more bikers, but not a lot of little kids or crazy dogs.

I reaffirmed that I love my bike. I'm sure it would like to go much faster, but my speed will never be fast.

I hope the mild fall weather continues and I can get in a few more rides like this one before the cold weather comes again.

Come Sweat with Me

2011-10-24T11:29:00.001-04:00

Someone recently reminded me that I had never showed you the finished basement project. So today you get a tour of my workout space, which is now more like a pleasant room than a dank basement.

The biggest change was the roller shades installed over the floor-to-ceiling open shelves. I painted the wood that you can see and pulled down all the shades to create an almost-wall of a very neutral color. The walls, including the cinder block wall, were then painted the same color.

The room is now adequately lit by two sets of track lighting on dimmer switches. I can look up when lying on the floor and no longer be greeted by the two bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

The furnace is mostly hidden by a shoji screen, which my husband initially announced to be unbelievably ugly, but I like it a lot and it accomplishes exactly what I intended.

For entertainment to take my mind off what I’m doing, I have all sorts of possibilities on a very large flat screen TV. With Apple TV, I can watch TV, movies, Netflix, or listen to music. Most of the time I seem to go back to the 92 oldies played in a shuffle format.

I couldn't stand looking at all the cords hooked to the television, so I wrapped them in fabric that matches the color of the walls. It cost absolutely nothing and I no longer even think about what's inside.

After the negative reaction to my idea of a blue sky with clouds overhead, I have resigned myself to looking at beams, pipes, and ducts. They are really not so bad now that the rest of the room looks so much better.

My constant companion never seems to break a sweat as he lies on the floor while I do my daily workout. Although he makes it necessary to frequently vacuum the rug, I appreciate his company!

I keep trying to entice friends and family to join me in the basement. It really can be fun now!

Sonmi-451

2011-10-21T22:35:00.000-04:00

It must be extremely difficult to write something that takes place in the distant future, in a society far different than the one in which we live. I have just finished The Orison of Sonmi-451, the 5th story in David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas”, set in a very different world indeed, and it was brilliant.

The story is told from the point of view of Sonmi-451, a clone who is awaiting execution for the crime of gaining intelligence. The story is set in what we know as Korea.

In this society most of the menial jobs are done by genetically engineered clones, or fabricants as they are termed. They are created without human emotion or souls and relegated to serve the purebloods of society by a lifetime of working at places like “Papa Song’s” diner, which is obviously a takeoff on McDonalds with its golden arches. They are given limited knowledge, and know nothing of things like secrets or humor.

Although Sonmi’s story itself is quite intriguing, the thing most interesting about this segment of the book is the creation of a language to represent life in futuristic Nea So Copros. Mitchell has made generic many of the words of our present society. All cars are called fords. Nikes are shoes. A rolex is a watch. Sonys are laptops. The verb sony means to call. Nikon is a verb meaning to take pictures. A hygiener is a toilet. Yellow-up is the equivalent of dawn in a world below ground. A sunpole is a streetlight. A city is a conurb.

In order to understand this story, it was necessary to learn a new language, one vaguely built on English with some new words thrown in for things we have never named. At first it was a little maddening. But as the story progressed, my mind opened up to the possibility of new language.

I love books that stretch one’s imagination, that make us think in a slightly different way. I experienced the same thing when reading The Magus years and years ago.

My son is reading Cloud Atlas as I read it. We check in daily to compare notes and to talk about the subtleties of the book. He and I both agree the book may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we both are thoroughly enjoying the read.

Daisies Forever

2011-10-20T18:58:00.000-04:00

One of my friends from childhood was diagnosed with lung cancer last year. We were all hopeful that new medications and chemotherapy could keep her disease at bay for a long time. But it has recently gotten much worse and she seems to be slipping away.

This was the person we visited last winter when I turned out to be getting so sick. It is somewhat miraculous that she didn’t catch the awful germs I was spreading. At that point, she looked like nothing was wrong. She was as beautiful as ever, even as she turned 61 on the Ides of March.

We were delighted to hear that she and her partner of probably 15 or 20 years decided to get married a week ago. It was sweet to know that they officially declared their love for each other. It has always been obvious how much they adore each other.

What do you get for someone who can’t really go out much any more and who isn’t finding food very appetizing? One of our gang proposed flowers. And then the question was what type?

That was easy for me. Daisies, of course. When we were in high school, we formed a club for those who hadn’t succumbed to the desires of the flesh. Our symbol was a white daisy, of which each of us wore a little felt flower inside our graduation robe. A bit hokey, but something we could always look back on and laugh about.

So I think our friend will soon be getting a big arrangement of daisies. Hopefully they will lend some cheer to what must be some very dark days.

This could easily be any one of us. After all, life is like a lottery and sometimes our number is up. We will cherish our visit earlier this year and send our heartfelt wishes for ease and gentleness. It’s hard to know what more one can do.

Pondering a Gluten-ectomy

2011-10-19T23:33:00.000-04:00

What is it about gluten that has all of a sudden caused many people I know to drop a large part of their diet? Food like wheat, barley, rye, even spelt have been around for thousands of years, providing nourishment to humans in their various forms. But they seem to be getting the blame for all sorts of ailments.

My husband’s physical therapist just yesterday suggested that he might want to consult a nutritionist about some ongoing problems he has. Her personal experience was that eliminating gluten from her diet had caused her asthma and hip pain to go away.

Another friend’s husband went gluten-free and suddenly his energy returned, making him feel younger than he had in years.

Just tonight I had dinner with my friend who is an acupuncturist. She has determined to try a gluten-free diet for the next year to try to eliminate gas she experiences after eating bread products.

The people who have succeeded in feeling better hold up GLUTEN-FREE almost as if it was a religion. They are committed and seldom cheat because cheating brings back the symptoms they were trying to shed.

Realizing I could no longer make my now perfected 5-grain bread any longer, I went in search of a bread recipe that wouldn’t make me gag. I came up with Alison’s Gluten Free Bread recipe, which gets rave reviews from most of the 58 reviewers. It has ingredients like tapioca flour, garbanzo bean flour, white rice flour, and brown rice flour. I’m reserving judgment until I make it.

Most people associate gluten with wheat and wheat products. It turns out there are a whole lot of other things to avoid if you really go down this path. Take a look at this list and kiss all baked goods and pasta and pizza as you know it goodbye.

My acupuncturist friend and I talked about why this phenomenon seems to be popping up all over. We wondered if genetically engineered grains were to blame. Or is our species just evolving away from gluten?

If my husband decides to try it, I suppose I will go along for the ride. It will mostly affect the one piece of bread I eat for breakfast every day and an occasional serving of couscous in my diet. I will be curious to see if it makes any difference in the way I feel.

Beliefs

2011-10-18T10:14:00.000-04:00

My mother was an unfaltering believer. She cringed when at 12 I dared to question the veracity of the Bible. I’m sure she privately wept when I converted to Judaism.

At some point after my marriage and my conversion, she managed to convey the fact that we wouldn’t be seeing each other in the afterlife and that was of great concern to her. I can’t remember if she came right out and said my conversion had damned me to eternal hell or what, but that seemed to be the gist of it.

I can’t personally conceive of buying into that sort of dogma, but her church and her faith were her life. I can’t remember how or if I responded to her beliefs about our afterlife. I’m sure I didn’t laugh. But did I express anger or pity or any emotion at all?

Recently seeing “A Bright New Boise” at the Woolly Mammoth has caused me to think about my parents’ beliefs and mine and how they intersected and mostly disconnected. I’m really glad I managed to escape the Deep South without a fundamentalist view to God and religion. I appreciate the compassion for humanity my mother passed down to me, but I much prefer my belief system (what littler there is of it) when it comes to religion.

Maybe in our next lives we will change roles. My mother will come back as a liberal Jew and I will find Jesus and pray for the Rapture. Who ever knows?

Mind Games

2011-10-15T19:55:00.000-04:00

I have recently been immersed in cancer. A young woman in our Temple Micah congregation is suffering from a rare form of ovarian cancer. My childhood friend in Atlanta who has lung cancer has taken a turn for the worse. And I just finished The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s tome on the history of cancer. I guess it only stands to reason that I might personally be suffering from an overactive imagination right now.

Last night I started worrying about a sensation in my left side which I have been having for over a month when I bend over. I managed to convince myself it was some sort of tumor with which my ribs were colliding. I slept fitfully last night, imagining the worst.

Today I’m feeling somewhat more rational. I reminded myself I recently had a physical and a colonoscopy, which both checked out perfectly well. I can’t feel any unusual lumps or bumps and I’m not in pain otherwise.

Instead I think poor posture is to blame. My right glut muscle has never been strong since my hip surgery. Scoliosis tends to make me slouch toward the left. And it may be that a weakened ligament or my soaz muscle is to blame for the sensation that started me down this path of worry.

I need to figure out what sort of doctor to see about this. But I think that can safely wait until Monday. You might be thinking what I really need is some “talk therapy.” That probably couldn’t hurt anything...

Cabbage Inspired

2011-10-14T20:27:00.001-04:00

This week’s CSA share presented me with a beautiful little light green napa cabbage. By Wednesday I had decided to make Rustic Cabbage Soup (courtesy of Heidi Swanson), but I wanted to get an ingredient she recommended for the vegetable stock.

Today my Rapunzel’s Herb Bouillon came via UPS (I love the 2-day delivery with free shipping through Amazon Prime). So I got to work making stock and then soup.

I took every green thing in my produce drawer that wasn’t already spoken for and threw it in a pot. That would be carrot greens, celery leaves, and parsley. I added a large garlic clove cut into pieces, about 8 black peppercorns, and a cube of Rapunzel’s bouillon and let it cook for awhile. At the same time I cooked up some white beans. And while they both simmered on the stove, I did my workout in the basement.

Here’s the vegan soup recipe. It’s a keeper! (And I still have half a head of cabbage to do something else with.)

Rustic Cabbage Soup

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
a big pinch of salt
1/2 pound potatoes, skin on, cut 1/4-inch pieces
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
5 cups stock
1 1/2 cups white beans, precooked or canned (drained & rinsed well)
1/2 medium cabbage, cored and sliced into 1/4-inch ribbons

Warm the olive oil in a large thick-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Stir in the salt and potatoes. Cover and cook until they are a bit tender and starting to brown a bit, about 5 minutes - it's o.k. to uncover to stir a couple times. Stir in the garlic and onion and cook for another minute or two. Add the stock and the beans and bring the pot to a simmer. Stir in the cabbage and cook for a couple more minutes, until the cabbage softens up a bit. Now adjust the seasoning - getting the seasoning right is important or your soup will taste flat and uninteresting. Taste and add more salt if needed, the amount of salt you will need to add will depend on how salty your stock is (varying widely between brands, homemade, etc)...

Serves 4.

Going Out on a Literary Limb

2011-10-12T23:18:00.002-04:00

My turn to choose a book for our couples book club is coming up. There’s always a question as to whether to play it safe and recommend a book of around 300 pages that is universally praised or to go out on a limb, knowing there may be some rotten tomatoes thrown during the discussion.

The last two books have been nonfiction -- The Good Soldiers and The Emperor of All Maladies. Both extremely well-written, but both rather depressing in their content: the war in Iraq and the war on cancer, grim and without victory in either case.

I had toyed with recommending That Used to Be Us (Friedman) or Millennial Makeover (Winograd/Hais), which would continue the non-fiction difficult truth trend. And if not, I had thought of Loving Frank, the biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. It is historical fiction, with one of the most gruesome scenes at the end I have ever read.

Then this week, my son strongly recommended the 2004 book Cloud Atlas by (British) David Mitchell. It’s a highly acclaimed novel that interweaves 6 stories over 1,000 years.

Our book club policy is that you must have read the book to recommend it. So as I struggle to finish the 500+ page book on the history of cancer, I am also reading Cloud Atlas and liking what I have read.

However, I can already predict there will not be universal enthusiasm for this book among our 10 members. Mainly because it is long (540 pages) and the writing is sometimes difficult. (I had to look up a bunch of words in the first chapter, which isn’t so hard when you are using a Kindle edition, but is still somewhat annoying when you realize how many more words this author knows than you do.) In talking about the book, Tom Bissell of the NYT said, “Deliberately difficult novels are the only novels he (Mitchell) seems to be interested in writing. This is to the good; the tree of literature drops its best fruit after being shaken with conviction and intelligence.”

Hopefully people will give it a try and will get seduced by the author’s ability to tell a good story. In the worst case it will join The Charterhouse of Parma and She’s Come Undone as the worst books of our 14-year book club history.

If you are a Can’t Beet It Book Club member reading this, you now have insider knowledge on my choice. You might want to get started soon...

If you have read Cloud Atlas, please let me know what you thought of it.

Unsanitised Health

2011-10-11T12:50:00.001-04:00

I have steadfastly refused to use hand sanitizers like Purell, insisting they take away good bacteria as well as bad and end up making germs more resilient. Today’s Post article would say I am right.

My first encounter with Purell-mania was when we went on a cruise soon after the swine flu outbreak. There were Purell dispensers every 100 feet on that ship and people were practically bathing in it in the hope of remaining germ-free.

I recently saw a young mother line up her 3 children upon entering a local store to clean their little hands. People have bought into this on a large scale, undoubtedly boosting the price of shares in the companies that make this stuff.

But there on the front page of today’s Post is an article “Good bugs may be key to staying healthy.” It turns out a lot of things -- bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microorganisms -- live on our skin with only one in 10 cells being human. All these things work together to maintain a healthy balance in our body’s function.

Scientists are becoming convinced that when we interfere with that balance by things like diet, antibiotics, and obsession with cleanliness, we run the risk opening the door to all sorts of things we don’t want -- like allergies, obesity, asthma, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and even autism.

Think twice before squirting Purell onto your hands or taking unnecessary antibiotics. You could be asking for trouble!

Searching for Understanding

2011-10-10T12:40:00.002-04:00

It always takes me a few days to bounce back from the intensity of the high holy days. It’s a time of deep reflection, where a lot of things of the past year get mulled around and sorted out.

I have come to feel quite comfortable with the services, especially with the beautiful music, tunes and words passed down through the centuries, sung year after year around the world.

Even though I appreciate the feelings evoked by singing a particular song, there is often something missing. The songs are in Hebrew and my knowledge of that ancient language is spotty at best. I love the way a word like “Hashkiveinu” feels as we sing that beautiful prayer, but I have a hard time remembering that what we are saying to God is “Lie us down and spread over us a blanket of peace.”

Occasionally there is a prayer/song in English. At those times I can almost feel a palpable connection as the congregation hears words we all understand. It happened on Yom Kippur during the afternoon memorial service as our cantor sang “Tribute” (in English) and remembered the recent death of her mother. Her powerful emotions and the words of the song increased the intensity of the moment as the entire congregation empathized with her and thought about their own losses.

Part of me wishes for a service in the language I speak that would then give words and music equal weight in my experience. But Judaism is so steeped in tradition, that will probably never happen. And if it did, it would only serve to distance us from Jews around the world.

So instead my goal for next year is to make the leap of understanding that will enable me to really comprehend what I am singing as I pray the ancient Hebrew prayers. Perhaps I can organize classes for people like myself who long to have a deeper and even more meaningful experience. Perhaps I will find a knowledgable person to work with me one-on-one. Perhaps I will tackle only a small handful of prayers. But hopefully I will make some effort at understanding.

The Cab Ride, as told to Rabbi Jory Lang

2011-10-09T11:05:00.002-04:00

At yesterday’s Yom Kippur service, we read a collection of short pieces during a silent meditation. I’m passing along this one in its entirety because it made a deep impression on me.

**********

Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living.

When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, then drive away.

But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always sent to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.

So I walked to the door and knocked. “Just a minute,” answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door was opened. A small woman in her 80s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned onto it like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she asked. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly to the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness.

“It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.”

“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” she said.

When we got to the cab, she gave me an address, then asked “Could we drive through downtown?”

“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered quickly.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.”

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.

“I don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I don’t have very long.”

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. “What route would you like me to take?” I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had danced as a girl.

Sometimes she would ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring in the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door.

The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. “How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching for her purse.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You have to make a living,” she answered.

“There are other passengers,” I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

“You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said.

“Thank you.”

I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light.

Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware -- beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

People may not remember what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance. Every morning when I open my eyes, I tell myself that it is special. Every day, every minutes, every breath is truly a gift from God.

Yom Kippur Cranes

2011-10-08T23:14:00.000-04:00

I have been reading “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddhartha Mukhergee, a book chronicling the history of cancer. The early attempts at a cure for various forms of cancer were truly barbaric, as were the first attempts at chemotherapy. I found myself feeling glad cancer research had progressed as far as it has.

Then I went to services today and learned about the 28-year-old daughter of one of our congregants who has a rare form of ovarian cancer. There have been only 400 documented cases EVER of this type of cancer. It strikes young women, as young as 14 months old. It is extremely aggressive. There is only one survivor of the 400 people who have had it. I suddenly realized just how far we still have to go in coming up with a cure for the many variants of this awful disease.

Going back 20 years, this girl was in my daughter’s 2/3 class. The mother of one of their classmates was diagnosed with an extremely virulent form of breast cancer. The girl came up with the idea of making 1,000 origami cranes for the woman, who is today a survivor.

The woman, upon hearing about the girl’s recent diagnosis, bestowed upon her the 1,000 cranes. We at Temple Micah are working on a second thousand so that she can have cranes flying all over her parents’ house. In between afternoon prayers today I made about 10, finally mastering the many folds.

I can’t even imagine a parent’s pain at learning such news about a child. Neither can I imagine the fear each family member has as the days tick away. We always said the 1,000 cranes helped the woman survive her battle with breast cancer. Maybe 2,000 cranes will help the girl beat what look to be very slim odds.

Dwelling Place of the Self*

2011-10-06T10:02:00.000-04:00

I’ve always thought all that stuff about the chakras was a bunch of hooey. Somewhat interesting in a fanciful sort of way, but not practically applicable to my life.

Yesterday’s yoga class was all about the second chakra. That’s the orange one that is seated in the pelvic area.

My teacher ran down a checklist for an excessive second chakra. I didn’t identify with a single characteristic -- things like addiction and excessive drama. But then she started down the list of characteristics for a repressed second chakra and I found myself going CHECK, CHECK, CHECK. Things like loss of creativity, passion, sensuality.

Then it hit me that’s where my hips and lower back reside. Those are the parts of me that struggle to work well, to keep me walking. It made sense.

The class was all about hips. We tried multiple approaches to opening up these essential joints. We breathed deeply into tight places.

Next week we will move on to the solar plexus, the yellow chakra. I’m now curious to see what I will learn as we make our way slowly upward in this body that is such a complicated thing.

* Svadhisthana in Sanskrit

Self-reflection

2011-10-02T20:14:00.000-04:00

I have recently realized something about myself that I don't like very much. Instead of taking the initiative to make plans with friends, I tend to wait for them to do the asking.

It's not as though I don't enjoy myself when I'm with the various people I know. So why is it that I don't take the initiative? The end result is I seem to be staying home a lot more than I used to.

The same thing is true with email. I faithfully answer messages sent to me, but I'm usually the respondant, not the original author.

And with Blogging. Unless I am traveling, I am having a hard time coming up with things to write about. I haven't been good about responding to comments. And I seem to be reading other Blogs less and less. There was a time when I created a post and checked my entire Blogroll every day, actively commenting on much of what I read.

I wonder what's behind my slide into introversion? I hope it's just a passing phase because I liked being more socially active and more connected with the people in my life.

Gearing Up for Rosh Hashanah

2011-09-28T14:43:00.000-04:00

The Christians have their parable of the loaves and the fishes which fed a multitude. Today I translated that into red and white wine for a multitude of young Jews.

Temple Micah is the site of a new endeavor to attract young Jewish adults back to their religion. There will be FREE high holiday services led by our Rabbi Esther for 20’s and 30’s with a heavy dose of rock music.

I was there as the sound system was being set up for Michelle Citrin, who will be the cantorial soloist for these unique alternative services. Hers is the kind of music young people identify with.

Prior to my arrival this morning, other volunteers had cut up 50 pounds of apples and poured bowls of honey for the hundreds of young people expected to come tonight. Rosh Hashanah is the season for apples and honey. And even though no tickets are required for their service, they will be appropriately fed in true Jewish style.

My job was to pour red and white wine into enough dixie cups to give as many as 300 people a taste. With 12 bottles of what looked to be excellent wine, I figured I had to eke out 25 little cups worth from each bottle. It looked like a sea of tiny cups by the time I had finished.

So while we are singing the traditional melodies in a rather sedate service at the huge Methodist Church near AU, Temple Micah will be the scene of a much livelier worship service.

L’shana tovah to all! May you have a sweet new year!

Out of This World

2011-09-27T09:50:00.000-04:00

I’m sitting here marveling at what my body underwent just yesterday and feeling so glad I was unaware of any of it. There is a lot to be said for being knocked out when you don’t want to remember what happened.

In contrast I refused to take any drugs when in labor. It was somewhat a matter of principle, but also I just wanted to know exactly what was going on as my two children came into the world.

I have come to love the rush that accompanies that transition from full consciousness to nothingness. I could feel myself getting agitated as they struggled to get the EKG machine working properly before my procedure yesterday. They cleaned the leads, cleaned my skin, and finally brought in a new monitor.

It was at that point the anesthesiologist told me that within a minute I would be asleep. He asked me to breathe deeply a few times and by the second breath I was out. What a rush as I gave up my consciousness to the people who would keep me vital as they explored the far reaches of my colon. Apparently my colon is long and twisted with a lot of sharp turns. But I never felt a thing as the scope with a camera looked around.

Upon waking up I felt groggy but not otherwise uncomfortable. It was as if awaking from a long deep sleep. So deep there were no dreams, no memories. Just the way I wanted it to be.

It's Time

2011-09-25T20:30:00.000-04:00

This morning as I ate a delightful brunch in Hoboken, I remembered it was the equivalent of my “last supper.” Guess what I’m doing tomorrow morning?

Yes, it’s time for my 5-year colonoscopy. So I got to come home this afternoon and mix up a gallon of the most God-awful tasting stuff imaginable. I ate clear chicken broth for dinner. Then I started with 2 little Ducolax pills. Now I’m drinking an 8-ounce glass of the yucky solution (flavored lemon-lime as if that would help) every 15 minutes for 2 hours. The intent is to totally clean out my colon so it will be pink and beautiful tomorrow for the procedure. Staying near a bathroom seems like a good idea.

I am planning not to remember a thing that happens during the event itself. I learned the hard way on my first colonoscopy that twilight sleep doesn’t work for me (I ended up screaming through the entire procedure), so I will be totally knocked out with MAC anesthesia tomorrow.

Hopefully by noon I will be pronounced polyp-free and given a 5-year time frame for a repeat performance. One way or the other, my liquid diet will be over and I can eat what I want once again.

So many bikes

2011-09-23T23:15:00.001-04:00

It was not a good day for looking at bicycles because for much of the day NYC was under a flood watch. That doesn't make for great conditions to take a bike out for a spin.

We started out by getting lost in Queens on our way to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We finally arrived at Nycewheels, expecting a huge store since they sell more electric bikes than most anyone else in the US. Instead we found a place about 12 feet wide. It did hold quite a few bikes with motors and batteries, intended to offer the option of assistance on hills. Brands like Kettler and Gepida and Reptila, not your run of the mill road bikes. I opted for a toasted onion bagel and coffee while my husband asked all his questions.

After that we slowly made our way down to the southern part of Manhattan to visit Bicycle Habitat and Adeline Adeline, two other fairly small stores selling regular people-powered bikes.

I came away liking the way many bicycles look, but realizing I hadn't seen anything I liked more than the bike I already have. If only I could remove the upper bar that makes it somewhat difficult to get on and off.

I later started reading about various bikes on the Internet and realized there are an awful lot of people who take this very seriously, defending their bicycle choice almost as though it were a religion. They even have forums where they discuss the merits of various kinds of bike lights. Sheesh!

We may make another trip up to Nycewheels tomorrow if the sun comes out. My husband would really like to see what it's like to ride with power.

As for me, I may just stick with my old Specialized.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:NYC

Bikes

2011-09-22T11:51:00.001-04:00

For the past couple of years I have been feeling afraid of riding my bicycle. It was mostly a fear of falling off, something I never did before breaking my hip.

Earlier this week I decided to put away that fear. I had to take my Sequoia Specialized to the bike shop to pump up the tires that were flat as pancakes. Upon bringing it home I tentatively got on and everything felt wobbly. Was it me or the bike?

Back to the bike store where the tech rode it and determined the handlebars were loose. Finally yesterday I tried again and remembered why I loved my bike so much.

My husband has recently decided to look at electric bikes -- bikes that give you an assist when you need it. The best store he found is in NYC, so guess where we are headed right now.

I started wondering if I should also think of getting another bike, perhaps not a speedy road bike like the one I have, but rather a comfort bike. I would certainly welcome a step-through frame, but do I really want 10 or more extra pounds? The Sequoia weighs in at just under 20 pounds.

Then I remembered my other most favorite bike, a Peugeot with a mixte frame. I can't remember where this bike went, but I'm sure I was lured into thinking a hybrid was a more versatile bike.

I decided to Google "Peugeot mixte for sale" and much to my surprise I realized there is a booming market for vintage bikes like my old Peugeot. While we are in NYC I will look at the yellow Peugeot below being sold by Peter in Brooklyn.

Peter, who seems quite well versed in bikes old and new, told me about a current day bike with a mixte frame made by Linus, a company in California. I should say "made FOR Linus" since virtually every bike is made in China these days.

So while in the city, we will stop into Bicycle Habitat, which promises to have just about every new bike for sale today.

The only bad news here is it's supposed to rain the entire time we are in New York AGAIN!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Then and Now -- Communication

2011-09-21T15:33:00.000-04:00

The last than-and-now topic I am going to address is communication, the way we talk to each other and to the world in general. The Internet has totally revolutionized both the method and the speed of communication.

My mother looked forward to the mail coming every afternoon, because most days a handwritten letter arrived from someone and she posted one or more outgoing letters. A single exchange cost 6 cents in postage (3 each way) and the price of the stationery. But it usually took a couple of weeks.

We called our relatives only when there was some sort of big news to convey and my father’s mental 3-minute timer always sprang into action. Long-distance phone calls did cost money.

When my father was in the Pacific for 3 months to work on testing the atom bomb, we could speak to him only via a ham radio operator. The connection crackled and he was barely audible.

When I went away to college I wrote a letter home each week and called on Sunday from the phone booth located on my dorm hall.

Any sort of travel arrangements were made by writing letters well in advance of the trip and hoping for a timely response.

Flash forward to today. Our daughter’s favorite way of communicating is by texting. Short, sweet sound bites which are usually real-time. She seldom bothers with email. We often talk to our son with Skype, paying nothing for the call.

I have gradually come to use my cell phone for things like calling home to get a grocery list or to talk about what to cook for dinner. I try to avoid using my phone in the car, but sometimes the temptation is too great.

Virtually all forms of travel planning involve the use of the Internet. We find our vacations; read reviews; locate lodging, cruises, travel guides, rental cars, etc. online in the comfort of our homes or offices.

Letter writing has gone by the wayside. Everything is much more immediate. How were we ever so patient?

All of this speed with so many possibilities comes with an associated cost. We now pay for cell phones and phone plans and data plans for smart phones. But most of that is done automatically so we fail to really miss the money as our phone buzzes to alert us to a new text just in.

We are not alone in this obsession with phones and immediacy. Even in the poorest of countries, people now have cell phones. Globalization has indeed leveled the playing field allowing us easily to talk to each other or to people halfway around the world.

I’m not finding the book as intriguing as my own personal thought on this subject. Maybe I will be impressed with the promised remarks on how we can restore out country to its former place of glory.

Then and Now -- Identity

2011-09-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

My few readers may be wondering if and when this series is ever going to end. Just humor me for a few more posts and then I will either take another break or move on.

Today I am pondering who we are and what control we have over our identities. The answer to that has definitely changed over the past 50 years.

When I was a child, who ever heard of identity theft? Occasionally you might hear of someone pretending to be someone else who had died, but stealing someone’s VISA number didn’t occur because no one had a VISA card. Many people didn’t have a Social Security number so that couldn’t be easily stolen either. For a lot of us our birth certificates or driver’s licenses were our only proof of identity.

Fast forward to today where we have multiple charge cards and we exist in countless databases because of our employment, memberships, purchases, activities, etc. There are many more ways to pretend to be someone else.

Not to mention our Internet presence. In fact it has become very difficult for a person to hide with things like Facebook and the various people-finders out there. What has become a genealogist’s dream has become a personal nightmare for people who don’t want to be found.

Other than making us much more vulnerable to identity theft and becoming a time sink for social networking, this change has probably been a positive one. George Orwell’s 1984 has in effect come to be without necessarily all the negative consequences.

I did hear just yesterday that a running Camcorder was discovered in the bathroom of the Starbucks I often frequent on Capitol Hill. That’s just a little too up close and personal for me...

Then and Now -- Manufacturing

2011-09-19T09:28:00.000-04:00

One thing that has definitely changed in the past 50 years is where our manufactured goods are made. It used to be that everything from steel to textiles to shoes to cars was made right here at home, but that has all changed.

Fifty years ago, anything not made here was relegated to the category of flimsy toys made in Japan or overpriced European goods. We were basically self-sufficient.

But over the years as the cost of labor skyrocketed, manufacturers found cheaper labor next door in Mexico and then in India and finally in the various countries of Asia, where most every piece of clothing we wear today is made. We simply can’t compete with women who are willing to sew for a few dollars a day.

The same thing has happened with the auto industry, even with American brands like Ford. In fact, it is hard to find a car today made exclusively either in this country or outside its borders. Ford has assembly plants in Mexico and Honda assembles some of its cars here in the US. The bottom line is how to make things for the least cost and sell them for the biggest profit.

The labor unions today that were once founded to protect the American worker have had to sit by and watch more and more of the work taken elsewhere. They are like cumbersome giants bound for the old folks’ home.

It’s not necessarily the American economy that is suffering the most from this move to manufacturing overseas, but rather the blue collar worker whose job has now been outsourced to someone who works for much less money. It’s that worker who is now unemployed or must be retrained to do another job here at home or must be willing to take a huge salary cut, something probably not acceptable to the particular union.

It’s a dilemma that only gets worse as developing countries take on more and more of the work previously done here. As the gap in labor cost widens, the dilemma only gets worse.

Then and Now -- Security

2011-09-18T09:49:00.000-04:00

When I was a child, we were undoubtedly the most powerful country in the world. Our borders were safe. The iron curtain existed, but posed no real threat.

It was not until I was 12 and the Cuban missiles were pointed at us that I first learned to be afraid. That was the era of the fallout shelter. A few people even in my little town in Florida dug them in their back yard in preparation for a nuclear attack. But we prevailed against the Cubans and finally the iron curtain came down and we no longer felt threatened by the Soviets.

It was really not until the attacks of 9/11 that we realized we weren’t safe after all. The events of that day ushered in a paranoia that continues to permeate American society.

I am convinced that we could repay the national debt if we had all the money that has subsequently gone into homeland security. We have a new cabinet level agency for that purpose. Our airports have taken on the air of a maximum security prison. Our public buildings have all been fortified. We have initiated profiling at every juncture (although we can’t call it that). Our days are now color-coded to indicate the threat level. All of this is supposed to assure the American public of their safety.

Meanwhile we wait for the next big attack and wonder where it will occur. We hope the wiretaps will flush out the terrorists before they can unleash their latest weapons. Or that some observant policeman will spot a smoking car before the bomb goes off.

And those of us who can remember wish we could return to a time when we weren’t so afraid of the world to come.

Then and Now -- Debt

2011-09-17T15:29:00.000-04:00

A huge change in the last 50 years is our individual and national attitude toward debt. It has come to be status quo instead of something we fear and avoid at all cost.

My parents had survived the Depression, but it left its mark on them. My father, in particular, saved his money with a vengeance. He didn’t buy anything he couldn’t pay for other than a house (for $8,000) in 1952. He paid cash for his cars. He never used his Mastercard, the one charge card he possessed. And he instilled a fear of debt so deep in me that I could never imagine being there.

Today’s generation of young people, for the most part, have a very different attitude toward debt. Many of them are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when they graduate from school, often carrying multiple school loans. They max out their credit cards. Some finally declare bankruptcy. But many simply accept their debt, not really letting it cause them too much angst.

Our country has evolved much the same attitude. When Bill Clinton left office, we were in great fiscal shape, actually showing a surplus. But those days are long gone as we dig ourselves out of multiple wars and economic woes. In reaction to our 3 trillion dollar deficit, we simply print more money and hope the world believes in the almighty dollar.

Instead of collective angst, we as a nation seem to be in collective denial about the fact that we are in a bad way and we sorely need to generate income, most obviously by taxing those with the most money who have been enjoying a relatively free ride for sometime now.

I don’t know how much longer this complacent attitude can go on before it really catches up with us. But I do know it eventually will if we don’t put our politics aside and figure out how to return to solvency.

Then and Now -- Government

2011-09-16T09:15:00.001-04:00

Another aspect of American life that is in a sad state of affairs is our government. What once seemed like a well conceived system of checks and balances seems now to be perpetually churning but accomplishing little.

Was it my naivete as a child, or are those we elect to office these days very different from the leaders of 50 years ago? We revered those elected officials as statesmen, who would do what was best for those who had elected them without the pressure to conform to the party’s platform. We counted on them to come up with legislation that would keep our country strong and productive and on a fiscally prudent course.

But today the two sides of the aisle grow increasingly far apart and our lawmakers spend more time fighting with each other than enacting legislation. There is not much they agree on. And meanwhile as the economy tanks, we get the idea that those on Capitol Hill are incapable of turning things around.

As I read Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged a few years ago, I reminded myself how lucky we were not to have to endure such ineptness in government. My feelings on a reread today might be somewhat different.

Does the current state of government indicate our form of democracy has run its course? I keep wondering what could possibly restore us to a place where we once again had confidence in our elected officials and where the common goal was the good of the country, not satisfying the special interests of a party or industry or those in a particular economic stratum.

I can only imagine the rest of the world is sitting by and shaking their heads as our internal conflicts make progress virtually impossible. A benevolent dictator is starting to have a certain appeal...

Then and Now -- Education

2011-09-15T10:22:00.000-04:00

One of our biggest failings as a country today is in the field of education. There is a widely held misconception that we have fallen from a position of leadership, when in fact we have never been there. Many in this country have continued to be shocked since national comparisons began decades ago and the US has never performed to a degree commensurate with its global standing in other fields.

I recently read an article in the Smithsonian Magazine while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. It was all about how little Iceland is now outscoring every other country in the world in things like reading, math, and science. It turns out Iceland takes a very different approach toward educating its children. They don’t start school until they are 7. They have very few standardized tests. Their school days are punctuated with a lot of outdoor play time. But perhaps most significantly, their teachers are drawn from the top 10% of college graduates. A very different model from the the approach taken in the US where we push kids to learn early, we test them weekly, we limit non-academic time, and our top grads become doctors and lawyers. And while you might think Iceland has a homogeneous population, it is now the home to many immigrants who must first learn a new language and then a new culture.

Another recent article told of a failed attempt in Arizona to cure the education woes with an influx of technology. The idea that the latest and greatest electronics can somehow bridge the gap. I sometimes think the root of our current math woes was the introduction of the calculator, which made it no longer necessary for children to know basic math facts. Although technology can be a powerful extender, it can never be a substitute for basic instruction.

Just yesterday an article in the Washington Post reported the lowest scores EVER on the SAT test. This is since 1972 when reporting began. The cause is attributed to the increased diversity in the population. The question then becomes whether we are failing this diverse segment of the population or whether we need a new test. In any case, this news basically reaffirms that “No child left behind” was a colossal failure and we need a new approach.

If we are to reclaim our former position of preeminence in the world, we are going to have to figure out how to better educate those who will do it. And it must include those who don’t have the means to afford private education.

Then and Now -- Road Work

2011-09-14T21:24:00.002-04:00

I grew up in the ‘50s, in the days when America was unquestionably #1 in the world and when we still believed that the Horatio T. Alger story was possible. So did the authors of this new book (That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented...), which I started today. After just reading the introduction, I was suddenly filled with things I wanted to write about THEN and NOW. Instead of dumping all of these ideas into one post, I decided to deal with one thing a day until my list is exhausted.

The book opens with Tom Friedman comparing a construction project in China to one in his neighborhood. He notes that in a rather remote area of China, a huge civic center sort of complex with a lot of bells and whistles was constructed start to finish in a mere 5 months. Whereas at his Bethesda Metro stop, the repair of the two escalators exceeded 6 months. He was most disturbed by the fact that instead of complaining about the inconvenience and unreasonable period of time, the Metro riders complacently accepted this as the new norm.

I have noticed a similar trend with road work. The project to repave the small stretch of road around the Lincoln Memorial took many months with nightly road closures. As has the work on Rock Creek Parkway that continues, often with no workers in evidence but lanes closed off. Granted a few workers get paid longer this way, but what about the thousands of people who commute on these roads daily? Like the Metro riders, I too have become conditioned to these ridiculously long repair schedules and simply sit in traffic complaining about it.

I wonder if it’s additional bureaucracy that stretches these jobs out so long. Or if workers are not being totally productive. Or what it is that makes us look so incredibly slow when stacked up against the Chinese, who probably don’t have access to much of the technology we take for granted.

This is just one of many symptoms of our fall from grandeur. Stay tuned...

Far from Good

2011-09-13T10:31:00.003-04:00

That would be me when it comes to atrocities like the Holocaust, genocide in Rwanda, 9/11, and war in general. It’s not that I am in denial, but rather the emotions these things bring up are almost too much for me to handle.

And so it was with fear and trepidation that I started “The Good Soldiers” by David Finkel, our current book club book. Finkel was an embedded journalist in an Army battalion in Iraq for 8 of the bloodiest months of the war. Although there was levity in his telling of the story, for the most part it was grim and disheartening. It completely reaffirmed my belief that we should never have been at war in Iraq or Afghanistan. I’m not sure if it was more difficult to read about those killed (mostly by roadside bombs) or those left maimed for the rest of their lives. Contrary to their leader, whose motto was “It’s all good” and who lived by every word President Bush uttered, it was far from good and more often horrific.

This and all the other hateful things I usually refuse to think about make me question the roots of the hatred. Specifically in Iraq, we sent thousands of troops in to rid the country of one of the worst dictators in history (although the charges on which we acted were later shown to be false). Why then did a significant faction of those liberated people continue to try to kill us? Why were the few who showed friendship called traitors and punished by the others? And most importantly why did we stay for so many years?

I fear the result of this decade of war will be yet another generation of (mostly) men with serious mental disorders and serious physical disabilities that will see them out on the street corners begging for an existence.

I finished the book last night and will look for something a little more uplifting to read next. But for the past week I pulled my head out of the sand long enough to feel an abiding sadness that so many lives were affected so badly by this war. It was almost symbolic that 9/11 passed just as I neared the end of the story based entirely on fact.

Spending Time

2011-09-12T10:45:00.000-04:00

Why haven’t I written anything for over a week? I’ve been crazy busy with working on the basement, playing music, but mostly cooking. And those are all things that make me feel good.

The basement is close to finished. An electrician is adding dimmers to the lights on Friday so I don’t have to look up from the floor or a machine into a glare. After consultations with people who should know, I am leaving the ceiling alone with its beams and ducts and returning the 12 queen size blue sheets to Target.

At yesterday’s piano group I played 3 pieces: a Brahms 4-hand waltz with Lou, a movement of a Bach sonata with Deborah, and a tango of Albeniz by myself. I practiced hard last week in preparation.

But cooking has become my real passion (and time-sink). In addition to finding ways to use the CSA bounty each week, I make a lot of things from scratch that could be so conveniently purchased ready-made. Like yogurt, pickles, dog food, hummus, and bread. It’s my choice to spend my time doing things like soaking and cooking garbanzo beans and kneading dough and waiting for it to rise. But I like the results and find many of those things somewhat therapeutic.

While recently searching through my recipe box, I came across a recipe from my mother for “Five Grain Health Bread,” written in the beautiful handwriting people of her generation had. I don’t recall her ever making it when I lived at home, but with a few tweaks it has become my favorite bread recipe.

Here’s my version of it:

Five Grain Health Bread

1 tablespoon yeast

2-3/4 cups warm water (around 110 degrees F.)

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup canola oil

1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1-1/2 cups rye flour

1/2 cup oats

1/2 cup cornmeal

5 cups (white) bread flour

2 teaspoons salt

3/4 cup milk powder

1 egg mixed with a little water

Mixture of seeds/grains for topping: oats, flax, sesame

In a very large bowl, soak yeast, honey, and oil in the lukewarm water for 10-15 minutes. Then add the remaining ingredients except 3 cups of the white flour in order and stir 50 times. Cover and let rise until doubled (about 2 hours). (I put a heated skillet in my electric oven with the rising bread. It gives off just enough warmth to grow the yeast.) Sprinkle kneading surface with 1-1/2 cups of the remaining white flour. Turn punched down dough onto it and knead flour in. Knead in the rest of the flour until dough is pliable (about 250 times). Divide dough into 3 parts. Shape into loaves and put in greased bread pans. Brush egg wash on tops of loaves. Sprinkle liberally with seed/grain mixture. Let rise until doubled (about 1 hour). Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes (take bread out of the oven while oven is heating). Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake 25-30 minutes longer. Remove from oven and let cool on a rack until loaves can be easily removed from pan. For convenience, slice and freeze in serving-size portions.

Beware: If you make this even once, you may decide to give up commercial bread and spend time making your own!

How do you choose to spend your time?

Going Veg

2011-09-02T20:26:00.000-04:00

In the late afternoon when there was no evidence of meat or fish in the refrigerator, my husband kindly said, “Should we just go out to eat tonight?” Little did he know I was contemplating a veggie dinner.

The CSA has been bountiful beyond belief this summer. It’s a challenge to even use all the food we get in our week’s share. This little hot pepper was the catalyst for tonight’s dinner. That and the red lentils and eggplant and green beans we had also gotten this week.

I ended up making a red lentil dal served over brown rice. The challenge was to feel the heat of the little orange pepper while not overwhelming my husband, who has a low tolerance of spiciness. I threw in 3 big chunks of pepper, staying clear of the seeds.

Meanwhile I marinated eggplant in a sauce of oil, balsamic, and fresh herbs. With 15 minutes left on the dal clock, the eggplant went on the grill and the beans were turned on to steam.

As the finishing touch for the dal, I sizzled the seeds and other spices in oil in a small All-Clad pan and then added them to the slightly mashed lentil mixture.

It turned out to be a delightful blend of sweet, hot, salty, and grilled. The bland but slightly crisp beans were countered by the stronger flavors of the other dishes. It was a healthy meal that filled me up with just enough room left for a small square of dark chocolate.

In case you are game to try, here are the two recipes:

Everyday Red Lentils
Grilled Eggplant

As you can see, there wasn't anything left for Jake on my plate!

Wonder of Wonders

2011-08-30T14:50:00.000-04:00

I had been dreading the annual auto safety inspection that was due by the end of August on the old ’85 Volvo. I was fairly sure it would fail, my husband would convince me not to spend the money to make the necessary repairs, and I would finally have to say goodbye to the old car.

I knew there was a gas leak near the top of the tank. So I never fill it up all the way any longer. I also knew that if they smelled gas when I brought it in for inspection, they would fail it and that would be it. It was a crapshoot, but it seemed inevitable that it wouldn’t pass if not for this reason then for another.

When I dropped the car off last night, I wished I hadn’t recently bought gas but I knew there were only two days left in the month of August. (And the fine for driving a car with an expired inspection sticker is steep, as my husband recently found out with the Prius.)

I added a little note at the bottom of the drop-off envelope: “Please pass it!” And then I went home to hope for the best.

By 10 am this morning, I could wait no longer. I called the neighborhood place where we take it to find out if I needed to start looking into donating the old car to charity. But instead the technician who answered said, “You got your wish!” They were probably all laughing at my pitiful request.

Yesterday we saw someone with a similar car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot. His was a ’91 with 275,000 miles. He said it has been nothing but trouble, proving once again how very different the same model can be from one year to the next. I have never owned a car requiring less maintenance than the old Volvo.

So I guess we are legal for another year. I’m just hoping to be in this same dilemma next year as I take it for inspection. As with my aging dog, I will take just one day at a time and hope they both keep going strong.

Aftermath

2011-08-29T12:04:00.003-04:00

We made it through the storm with very little damage. A piece of siding ended up in our front yard and there is a lot of debris, but little else to complain about. Even the basement stayed dry with the new sump pump which worked like a champ.

However, just across the street from us our neighbors weren’t so lucky. A huge tree in their front yard fell on their roof. It must have been a tremendous shock to them, while we slept peacefully through the night. A crane is coming this afternoon to lift the tree off their house. And then they can begin to really assess the damage and figure out how to make their house whole again.

There are stories like this in any natural disaster, where there is no real explanation for why some are spared and others are victims. Our yard is loaded with big trees just like the one that came down. I suppose it just wasn’t their time.

Today is the most perfect day, a precursor to fall with clear, crisp air and very blue skies. We know it can’t stay this way forever, but it is certainly a welcome reprieve from the anxiety of last week.

Getting Ready

2011-08-26T20:35:00.000-04:00

By 8:30 am today our house was filled with the sounds of a jackhammer and Jake’s barking. There were multiple workers trudging in and out because we had stupidly scheduled the basement lighting installation and the installation of a sump pump at exactly the same time.

I thought the electrical guys might pack up and leave, but instead they put in their earplugs and continued to do what they came to do. Everyone was very cordial, but there was a hint of friction in the air.

We desperately wanted the sump pump to be installed since the basement has recently become a sieve in one corner and we are going to have hurricane rains dumped on us over the weekend. We may still be in trouble if the power fails because the sump pump is electrically operated and a backup battery would have cost us an additional $500.

We had purchased lawn tickets to see Mary Chapin Carpenter at Wolftrap with friends tomorrow night. We have wisely decided to bag that and just have a hurricane potluck instead. It’s fortunate we hadn’t paid big money for the inside seats because there are still going to be gale force winds to contend with. The Wolftrap people say the show will go on whatever the weather, but that remains to be seen.

My husband commented tonight how wonderful it would be to know if and when we will lose electricity and for how long. But what would we really do differently if we had that information? I will be doing my cooking for the potluck early just in case the power leaves us.

We are very much looking forward to our daughter coming home hopefully before Irene arrives.

But tonight we can say, “Goodnight, Irene. Please let us off easy this time. After all, we’ve already been through an earthquake this week.”

Painting

2011-08-25T22:59:00.001-04:00

As I am doing just a little paint job in the basement renovation project, I am remembering the summer I learned to paint. In addition to learning how little I really knew about painting, I quickly learned that music with a beat is essential to what is an incredibly boring and messy job.

I was 16 and I was going off to “Math Camp” at FSU for 6 weeks mid-summer. I desperately wanted to earn what I thought was some quick money before leaving home. My parents offered me $20 a room to paint the three bedrooms of our house. It sounded so simple.

I hadn’t considered the cleaning and prep work. I hadn’t considered cleaning brushes loaded with oil-based enamel. I really hadn’t considered how long it would take.

Having always been a child of little patience, I am sure I vented my frustration. But I turned up the volume on the transistor radio and stuck it out until the job was done.

Meanwhile I learned the lyrics of every popular song of that summer. Songs like Sweet Talkin’ Guy, Cool Jerk, Double Shot, When a Man Loves a Woman. At that point I couldn’t identify with the emotions they sang about, but I knew all the words.

It would be a few weeks later that I would first fall in love. Math Camp was the first time I felt cool in the least. When you are with 25 other geeky teenagers, it isn’t so difficult.

But I digress. The painting lessons of that summer have stayed with me. I seldom take on a painting job in the house because I tend to be too much of a perfectionist. I can tolerate someone else’s imperfection, but my own drives me crazy.

However, I am trying to save money on the basement project and I figured I can probably do a primer and 2 coats on the wood framing the shelving in 6 hours. The job has to be done by next Tuesday when the roller shades are being installed on the shelves.

Yesterday I thoroughly cleaned the area to be painted. Tonight I did the primer, counting down the 8 sections of shelving. Not so bad. No big spills. No falls off the ladder. Brush is clean and ready for the next coat tomorrow.

I’m glad I didn’t have to paint as a profession, but I’m also glad I learned how in the summer of ’66.

All Shook Up

2011-08-23T14:38:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not, we just had an earthquake -- not a big one, but enough of a shake to be convincing. I understand it was felt all up and down the east coast.

I had just driven into the driveway and turned the car off. It felt like the car continued to run -- well sort of. More like the car continued to shake violently. I was convinced the old ’85 Volvo was in its death throes.

But then my meteorologist neighbor who was outside picking figs just at the end of my driveway said with certainty, “We just had an earthquake.”

His dog was barking frantically, but then she often is. Jake was visibly upset but bewildered in his blind-deaf state.

I can’t seem to get any phone service, but other than that there is no sign that anything peculiar happened.

I flashed back to standing in the doorway of my pension in Lima, Peru, with the ground shaking and the building swaying. Any loss of equilibrium is unsettling.

This was nothing of great significance, but it was a reminder that no ground is sacred. Let’s just hope it’s not a foreshadowing of something more significant to come.

Blue Skies Downstairs

2011-08-22T22:58:00.002-04:00

Although the basement facelift is well under way, I am still trying to figure out the ceiling -- that is, what I’m going to do to hide the beams and ducting. I am still leaning toward some sort of draped fabric. It would really be great if it looked something like the sky. But how to achieve that look?

I spoke to a neighbor who is a well-known fiber artist. She agreed with my idea of using flat bedsheets and suggested hanging them with a staple gun. We talked a little about tie-dying, but not enough that I had a real plan for doing it.

After my seeming unsuccessful search for white sheets, I had another idea today after locating very inexpensive light blue sheets at Target.com (thanks, Steve!) I thought about using a weak Clorox solution and bleaching clouds onto the blue background. My fiber artist friend said eventually they might fall into holes where I had applied the Clorox. She also suggested that I do this outside and use a mask and eye goggles because of the fumes.

Then tonight I came up with the idea of making stencils and spray-painting white clouds, stars, and moons in a random pattern. I would still do it outside, but it might be a little easier and more permanent than the bleaching approach.

I could probably achieve the same effect with white fabric ironed on with Stitch-Witchery or a similar product.

I’m not sure exactly what sort of expert to contact to help me make decisions. I suppose I could purchase a sheet and try all these things to see what works best.

Fortunately I am under no time constraint and this project is keeping me busy as I think about how to do each piece.

Let me know if you have any ideas on giving my basement a blue sky!

Walmart Woes

2011-08-21T16:49:00.000-04:00

As I sit here on hold waiting patiently for a Walmart associate on their customer service number to pick up, I am quickly coming to the conclusion my initial thoughts about Walmart were correct.

I never shop at Walmart, partially because the closest store is more than 10 miles away. Also because of all the negative things about Walmart’s treatment of its employees I read in Tom Friedman’s book “The World is Flat.”

Unfortunately my recent search for inexpensive white sheets for the tie-dyed basement ceiling project led me to Walmart, where it appeared I could buy a king size white (flat) sheet for $15.97, a really great price. My initial attempt to order these sheets online proved futile because they are only sold in Walmart stores.

The Walmart website gave me a listing of the dozen or so local stores with indications of “In stock”, “Limited stock”, and “Out of stock” associated with each one for the item I needed. I attempted to call a couple of them and experienced being put on hold indefinitely, foreign sales people who didn’t even understand what I was looking for, and no result that at all matched the “In stock” label.

In frustration I fired off a message to Walmart.com asking for help in the form of where exactly I might find 9 such sheets without having to drive hundreds of miles. Instead of an answer to what should have been a simple question, I continued to get formulaic responses, culminating in a customer satisfaction survey in which I gave them the lowest possible rating on every category. That obviously didn’t wake anyone up at the corporate office.

Not having found the sheets anywhere else and not quite willing to give up on the cheap sheets at Walmart, today I Googled to find a customer service number so I might attempt to talk to a human being. After being put on hold for about 25 minutes, I finally reached Renee who fortunately spoke English well and who works for Walmart customer service, but unfortunately couldn’t tell me anything more than I already could see online about Walmart.com. She took down my information and assured me someone would get back to me within 2 business days.

I’m not holding my breath in expectation.

Do you have any Walmart stories to tell?

Stein and Sushi

2011-08-18T23:32:00.001-04:00

By today I had acclimated to the cold SF summer and was ready to embrace what the city had to offer. Most of the day focused on the art of Gertrude Stein and her family, but tonight was all about sushi.

One of my main reasons for coming was to visit the SFMOMA to see the extensive exhibit of the Stein family art. The numerous Picasos and Matisses were carefully curated to reveal the family's early passion for these artists and their contemporaries.

After lunch at the museum with my son and my long-time friend, we moved on to the Jewish Museum for another dose of Stein. She comes off as a Renaissance woman who was never afraid to question the system. Another excellent exhibit with a guided tour.

Tonight my son and I headed back to Tataki for another meal of extraordinary sushi, which began with the raw oyster in ponzu sauce, followed by an "extinguisher" roll (literally on fire) and a Tataki roll featuring 5 varieties of grilled fish.

Green tea ice cream mochi finished out the meal.

Now it's early to bed since the Super Shuttle will arrive between 3:45 and 4:00 am to take me to the airport. It was another good visit with someone I care deeply about.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Sacramento St,San Francisco,United States

A Little Help for the SF Homeless

2011-08-18T02:19:00.001-04:00

I was out bright and early today to buy all sorts of cleaning supplies at the local Ace Hardware. I had decided to help my son do some long overdue apartment cleaning.

Even though the store is only 6 blocks away, the hills are steep and I ended up with 7 bags of things ranging from a broom to a step-stool to a bucket and sponges and so many other things.

I stood on the corner and cab after cab passed me by. Then a homeless man came by and offered to help me hail a cab. After he didn't have any better luck with the cabs, I suggested that we both take the bus up the long hill.

That's Calvin sitting on the bus with my purchases at his feet. We loaded everything off the bus and up to my son's building door across from Lafayette Park.

I paid Calvin something for his assistance and he headed back down the hill using his transfer on a bus going in the opposite direction.

A full day of family cleaning reminded me that I still know how and that I am glad I don't have to do that on a regular basis. Everything looks and smells clean tonight.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Sacramento St,San Francisco,United States

Basement Facelift, Part II

2011-08-15T20:20:00.000-04:00

Anyone who knows me well knows I get a little carried away with an idea from time to time. My current focus is the basement. It has blossomed into something much more interesting than just installing track lighting, which will be installed in a couple of weeks.

I realized one of the things that made it look most like a basement was the floor-to-ceiling shelving on two walls. I came up with the idea of hiding those shelves with roller shades like you might install on a window. We went over to Next-Day Blinds to check out the possibilities and the cost. Although they had never done exactly what we were asking for, the woman we spoke to thought it was a great idea (so great she was contemplating doing the same thing to her basement) and came up with an inexpensive shade that seems just perfect. That’s it -- Marguerite -- above. Fortunately we don’t need any blackout capability since there is no external light in the basement.

From there I moved on to Cyndy’s suggestion of painting the cinder block walls an off-white to match the shades. I contacted Luis, the guy who painted our entire house last year, and sent him pictures so he can give me an estimate.

Another distinguishing feature of the basement is the unpainted wood beams and heating/cooling ducts in the ceiling. My idea to camouflage these was to hang beautifully tie-dyed sheets from the ceiling in a draped way that they cover up the unwanted and provide something interesting to look at. I contacted a neighbor who is world-renowned in the field of fabric arts. She gave me a quick lesson in tie-dying and told me how to fasten the sheets to the wooden beams. She is way too sophisticated for a job like this, so I sent an email to her artistic daughter to see if she would like to collaborate in creating a faux-ceiling in the basement.

And just to entice my husband down to the basement to exercise with me, I suggested we get a TV, which will allow us to watch and listen to just about anything. I have become a fan of entertainment to pass the minutes of sweating.

It’s probably a good thing that I’m taking a break from thinking about the basement to go see my son in San Francisco tomorrow. While there I will go to the Gertrude Stein exhibit and see a friend who goes back many years in my life.

I’m sure the basement will be just the way I left it when I come home on Friday afternoon. It’s fun to carry an idea to an extreme sometimes.

Chanting Torah under Duress

2011-08-13T13:44:00.000-04:00

Summer services at Temple Micah are lay-led, giving ordinary people like me a chance to lead or chant the Torah or Haftarah. Today I chanted from Deuteronomy, but not under quite the scenario I was expecting.

Instead of the congregation being a handful of the faithful and predictable, it was dominated by the friends and relatives of a very young baby Isabella, who was there to be named. There were scads of very young children.

The baby’s immediate family of mom, dad, brother, and sister (with all children under the age of 3) were on the bimah with me to do the first aliyah. As I started to chant, some sort of tantrum ensued behind me which got louder and more distracting with my every word. It took all my efforts of concentration to make it to the end of that 7 verses, with a few mistakes being corrected by my “safety net” Teddy, our music director.

I realized that all the weeks I had been practicing my portion, I had been at home in the company of a sleeping dog, nothing to compete with the bedlam that I experienced this morning.

The baby naming occurred after the first aliyah. It was a lovely affair and the baby was much better behaved than either of her siblings. I must say I was relieved to see that entourage leave the bimah.

The second half was relatively uneventful and then it was over. I had made a deal with myself to dwell on the parts that had beautiful melodies and quickly forget the parts that I stumbled over. I was true to my resolve and people were commendable of my chanting after the fact.

Chanting from the Torah is a privilege I always look forward to. I miss the regimen of practice when it is over. That’s the time when I begin to look for another opportunity.

Julie

2011-08-12T20:31:00.001-04:00

Every time I clean my glasses I think of Julie, one of the numerous young women who lived in my group house in NW DC during the 5 years I spent there. She had risen from nothing to something and seemed unphased by anything thrown her way.

Julie had grown up with a single mother, gone to a prestigious girls’ school probably on scholarship, and had landed a boyfriend who was brilliant and rather nerdy and guaranteed to do big things in life.

Julie was practical about some things I would never have thought about. Instead of using special sprays to clean her glasses, she washed them with dishwashing detergent each morning when she came down before breezing off to work at the Pentagon and then on to graduate school at night at AU.

She also clued me into the fact that pouring hot water out of a tea kettle on my frozen windshield was likely to shatter it. Coming from the south, I had little experience with things like this.

Her association with the wealthy boy who was a Princeton graduate and who played the bagpipes gave her important names to throw around. She had magnificent jewelry from Pampillonia, bought her wedding dress at Claire Dratch in Bethesda, and got married at The Cosmos Club, where the boy’s father was a member.

I have often wondered what happened to Julie. Whether she converted to Judaism so as to share the religion of her husband. Whether she had children. Whether she had a meaningful career of her own or whether she was content to support her husband as he became a distinguished computer science professor and went on to start multiple successful businesses during the peak of the .com explosion.

Of one thing I can be sure: Julie is still washing her glasses with dishwashing detergent every day, that is unless she has had laser surgery and no longer wears glasses.

Finding Albeniz

2011-08-11T22:20:00.001-04:00

For several months my piano teacher has been suggesting that I play some music from a Spanish composer named Albeniz. The problem has been that she seems to have lost her copy of his music and the local store where I buy piano music has been unable to get it.

Today she was pleased to present me with a copy of one of his tangos, made by her 90-year-old husband from another student’s book. But unfortunately her husband had cut off some essential notes.

I came home and much to my surprise learned through Google that I could download the piece from “EveryNote” for the whopping price of $1.86. I am legally allowed to then make as many copies as I want. What a great find for music that is otherwise hard to come by.

Isaac Albeniz lived from 1860 to 1909 in Spain. His Tango in D was published in 1936. So it’s no small wonder that it’s out of print. This little 2-page gem will make a wonderful piece to play for my “Works in Progress” piano group.

I am sure this won’t be the last piece I download from EveryNote. Most everything they offer is $2 or less, a real bargain in today’s music market!

To Dispose or Not to Dispose

2011-08-10T21:33:00.001-04:00

I always thought one of the main purposes of a food disposal was to cut down on one’s garbage. But even as we manage to leave more and more things out of ours, one of the two sink drains in our kitchen got hopelessly stopped up a couple of days ago.

Fortunately it was the smaller “bar” sink drain. The disposal seemed to run just fine, but after about 10 seconds it would regurgitate all the water back up into a sort of waterspout out of the disposal. There were bits of stinky food and lots of water that eventually disappeared leaving a residue of the stinky food. Lovely, yes?

Truthfully we seldom need to use that sink, which is even more perplexing as to why that drain would stop up.

Since we don’t own a snake and wouldn’t know what to do with one if we did, we called a plumber. It was one we had used before who continues to get good ratings on Angie’s List. I recalled that they had been expensive the last time. But Angie’s List seems to rule here, so they came out this morning to unstop our drain. Forty minutes and $200 later it was clear and they were done. That seems like a lot of money for something that didn’t even require any parts.

The real kicker is three more items added to our “do not dispose” list: pasta, egg shells, and coffee grounds. Except for an occasional egg shell, these have never gone down that drain.

So I ask myself just what is left since we no longer dispose of onion peels, potato skins, fruit rinds, and many other things that have been the culprits on other occasions. Why in the world do we even bother with garbage disposals at all?

Maybe I should take a course in plumbing. I could probably go on a nice trip or at least have a few nice dinners out for the money we spend on plumbing in a year...