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June 2004
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August 2004

Having a Great Time, Etc

I'm here, I'm here! It's me waving frantically to you from my perch on a stool in the P'town Cyber Cafe. I had to travel the 20 miles up here in order to log on. The high speed internet access promised at the rental house turned into a dial up where we are paying for a toll call to get on line, so we didn't bother to open an account. There's a local coffee shop with wifi, but after a frustrating hour when even the cafe owner couldn't get my laptop to open a web page, I ran out of juice and left. Next I tried the public library, but couldn't even find the reference librarian who is the gatekeeper. By then the cloudy day had turned sunny and I wasn't going to waste any more time trying to get on line.

So I'm addicted to blogging. I admit it. I will try a 12-step program some time in the future. But I'm not ready yet.

Enough of how I got here - I'm here! And I have so much to say, I don't know where to start. The house is great. It has a large living room and smaller TV room adjacent to a deck with a grill and a picnic table with umbrella. The TV room has a long pine table that has become our art table, with my sister's and my art supplies spread at one end and eating space at the other. The first two days, I was religious about keeping a written journal on the pc as a blog substitute, but now the urge is starting to fade and I'm blissed out on painting. While we were in Wellfleet we visited a sweet little shop whose owner is from France. It is stocked with all things French, including s Caran D'Arche small pan set of gouache. I started playing around with it on the richly colored Canson Mi Tientes pastel papers that I had ripped down into 8" journal cards. The gouache is gorgeous against the colors of the papers. I went to the local art store today and bought some more paper in the deep colors of burgundy, salmon, coral, French blue, sand, and more. The Niji watercolor brushes are perfect for travel, and I am painting more than I ever have before.

This morning I had time to myself while Stan washed his car and the kids slept in. I went off with my disposable camera, searching for flowers to photograph. The gardens and hanging baskets on the Cape are filled with luminous colors and artful plantings that beg to be painted. As it turned out, I couldn't drive and shoot (big surprise!), so I parked at the town landing on a pond and spent a pleasant hour taking shots of rowboats and docks and dead trees against the green marsh. A young woman was giving swimming lessons off a dock and I walked out to take some photos. Laid out on the railing of the dock were about ten molted shells of baby horseshoe crabs. They were lined up from big to smallest, the former about the size of an apple, down to one about the size of a pit of a plum. Two little girls wrapped in towels noticed me photographing the shells and they came over to tell me that they found them in the water. We talked about how they looked like helmets for toy soldiers and they watched me sketch them for a few minutes. I picked up the tiniest and brought it to them and asked if I could have it. They hesitated just a second and I knew it was their favorite and they nodded, but I gave it back to them. They proudly showed me a larger, dead crab about the size of an apple that was the prize of their collection. We left, the girls promising to put out more finds on the railing when they came back on Thursday for their next lesson.

The house we've rented is a large, two story ranch that has the main living space on the second floor. The house is on a wooded hill and two-story laurel and rhododendron bushes surround the deck. The owners left an ample supply of bird seed and we've enjoyed filling the feeder that hangs outside the TV room windows. Early this morning I was on the deck writing and watching female Cardinals and little black and white birds flit to and from the nearest branch to the feeder. Later in the morning, a large crow was balanced precariously on the tiny perches and as the feeder swayed under its weight, the purple and black sheen of its feathers danced under the sun. Later on three lemon yellow birds (chickadees, warblers??) were taking turns on the top perch. At one point this morning, every perch was filled as seven birds pecked hulled sunflower seeds from every orifice. Of course, both my sister and I forgot our birds books at home.

The beach, of course, is always the main attraction of the kids’ time on the Cape. Our favorite beach has been eroded to half its width by winter storms. Yesterday we walked about a quarter of a mile up the shoreline to a wider part of the beach and to get past the kelp that had muddied the waters. The kids boogie boarded and body surfed for a few hours. Chris lost his sunglasses after a minute in the water, and Julia stayed in the longest, warm in her wet suit. The kids actually got along without bickering and pleasantly agreed to take the long walk back to the snack bar and back, carrying arm loads of fried clam strips and cups of clam chowder. Unfortunately, as always, food has been the background to every activity! My favorite breakfast so far was yesterday morning when Stan and I got up at seven and drove to the beach. As the sky lightened over the steel gray waters, we sipped our coffee and ate warm muffins from Fancy's Farmstand. We brought back sticky buns for the kids, only to find out that my sister had already been to Dunkin' Donuts and there was a box of a dozen waiting on the counter.

Today we found a restaurant that we wanted to go to last year but never had the chance. The Beachcomber at Cahoon's Beach in Wellfleet has a web cam that I checked all year long, looking with longing at the waves rolling onto the beach. We found it today, and ate outdoors, enjoying nachos and quesadillas and Pina Coladas. Tonight we will eat something light in Provincetown, after we walked up and down Commercial Street and Julia gets the temporary tattoo she tried to get last year, right before a huge thunderstorm made the sidewalk cart close down for the day. Stan and Chris went last night to the Cape Cod League and watched Orleans gets trounced. Stan just finished reading "The Best League Ever", all about the Cape league, and we've been going to the games since the kids were little.

The most remarkable thing about our few days here is how much history this place holds for our family. We started coming here in 1988, when Chris was only two and thought "Cape Cod" was the name of the beach. As we drove all over that year, he kept saying "go to Cape Cod, go to Cape Cod" in that repetitively charming way of two-years olds where you want to pull all the hair out of your head. After telling him for the thousandth time that WE ARE ON CAPE COD, we finally figured out that he meant the beach. Oh. This year, the former two year old drove me to meet Julia and Stan in Wellfleet, taking the rotary yields like a pro, and only making his mother flinch once when he was intent on finding the right radio station and failed to brake gently. Jess arrives on Thursday with a friend and we will all be together till Sunday when Chris and Stan go home. Julia is feeling a little down, the youngest child not ready for the growth that her family is experiencing. With the wisdom of middle age, I understand the need of the older two to stretch their independence as far as they can without snapping the bonds between us, in order for them to go off to college and thrive as their own persons. I know the rubber band will bounce back again and we'll all feel the smarts when we are crushed together at the holidays. But for Julia, each event is a change in the mores of her family, the only family she's known. We've talked about change and growth a lot, but she is has pockets of resistance to the evolution of her family and is taking it on the chin for all of us.

Stan and I spent a bundle in our favorite place, The Brewster Bookstore, yesterday. On Friday morning, Tomie DePaola will be there to sign books and I hope to convince Julia to come with me to meet him. I’m off now, to walk the crowded streets of P’town, admire Julia’s tattoo, and poke into the shops selling silver jewelry and sarongs. Later we’ll eat in a seafood restaurant on the harbor, admiring the sailboats coming in with their running lights on. We’ll drive along 6A, past the cottages lined up like Monopoly houses, and watch the sunset over the bay. On the way home, we’ll go to Sundae School for home made ice cream and real whipped cream. My pants are getting tight and my wallet is getting thin.

I don't know when I'll be back on line. With luck, before the end of the week. If not, get some sun and pretend to be on vacation!


porch6Here I am, having survived the week and almost all packed for my trip. We are loading the cars, putting the carrier on top of one, and managing to get all the art supplies I need in a bag. Okay, two bags. Okay, three bags if you count books.

My sister and I always go to the Cape together. This started when the kids were tiny and we were dying to have another adult to change diapers and run after kids on the beach. Since then, it's been a fifteen year tradition and we couldn't possibly be there without her. This year, however, the big kids and husband are coming and going and the tenor of the trip has changed. We are all adjusting to the changing needs of the kids as they grow, and to our expectations. I no longer expect the two weeks to be an interlude of magical times, filled with bonfires on the beach, picking berries in the woods, and sailing in the bay. We just require a house large enough for us all to have some privacy and quiet space, frequent trips to the ocean, afternoon swims at a lake or bay, and great lobster dinners on picnic tables and newspapers.

The house we are renting supposedly has high speed internet access, so I hope to be able to post frequently. If it's a problem with my laptop, then I can make it occasionally to Provincetown where I know there's an internet cafe. I had planned to scan in pages from vacation journals of years past, but I honestly don't have the energy to sit there and do it, so you may only get words and no images from me until I'm home.

However, I am exhausted because we had so much fun last night! We met friends from Memphis in the city and went to Mario Battali's new upscale pizzeria, Otto (all long "O'"s, as in "No No"), around the corner from Washington Square. I started with a great cocktail, Sardinian Iced Tea, made with prosecco, an amaretto liquer and lime. It was divine! We had antipasti of roasted peppers, asparagus and pecorino, home made ricotta, a salad of goat cheese and figs, corn salad, and crusty bread. We followed that with individual pizzas and pasta. The topper of the night was a trio of gelatos: vanilla with berries, chocolate pudding, and chocolate and vanilla with butterscotch mousse with hot fudge. To die for!

So we are worn out today, but excited to be going on our summer adventure. I'm looking forward to sending you posts from the beach.


porch81>Not a lot of time to post. Work is crazy and I come home exhausted and tumble into bed. So here are some links for you to have fun with while I slumber:

This may the coolest post I've ever read, and not just because I'm in it!

Art for Housewives is a blog crammed with interesting links to art by women from all over the world. It is updated daily and always leads me on a pleasant hour of surfing links.

Barbara DePirro's site was introduced to me by my friend, a great artist herself, Lynette Hensley. Both their sites are filled with luscious painting that will make you want to take up a brush right away. Make sure you read Lynette's blog and click over to her website also.

The Oiseaux Sisters are two friends who live in Florida in the winter and summer in upstate New York. In both venues, they do whimsical, creative art of all kinds.

And check out Daily Candy. It's a daily email with fun facts and finds for either NYC, LA, Chicago, a generic "everywhere" and even for kids. I sub to it mainly for the quirky watercolors that accompany it, real eye candy .


Shameless Personal Promotion

premiereThere's a new arts magazine debuting in October by the publishers of Quilting Arts magazine, called ClothPaperScissors. If you are interested in mixed media art, journals, collages, assemblages, fiber art, and more, you will love this new quarterly magazine. And I'm pleased to announce that I will be writing a column for the new magazine. Check it out and subscribe!


Lost Weekend

porch5The weekend was very low key, which is just what we all needed after last week. I spent Saturday largely on my own, with the husband and Mystery Man up at college and the girls swimming at the pool.

I took advantage of alone time and pruned the overgrown bushes in front of the house. I planted the hydrangea that my sister gave me for Easter, and the new coneflowers and lambs ear we bought a week ago. I refurbished the window box on the front porch, planting some lovely sprawling daisies in bright orange and yellow and a cascading petunia. I also planted two bright green coleus twigs that I pinched from a heavily laden window box on a street and plunked into water until the roots grew. Next year, we're going to turn the area between the sideporch and the back porch into potted garden, planting all the beautiful clay pots going to waste in the garage, and pulling out all the funky stuff we used to do, like planting in teapots and buckets, hanging mirrors in the garden, etc. My friend Carolyn has a lovely garden and weblog showcasing it that gave us the motivation to begin to recreate the type of gardening we used to do. Knowing that it will all be in pots and no weeding involved has greatly inspired those of us who know longer want to spend weekends bent over!

I even had time to pull out some fabric and cut out pillows for the porch furniture. I "found" ,in the mess of my art closet, some gorgeous yards of cotton that look like silk with a watery print of coral geraniums and leaves, very European looking. The afternoon passed quickly as I measured and cut, and now I have little piles of fabric ready to be sewn together. Hopefully, that will occur before next summer.

Sunday we took the little one bathing suit shopping, and then left her with her aunt to see Harry Potter III at Imax. We rented Love, Actually, and after a slow, scattered start, got hooked into it as all the story lines converged. It's just a light, warm, romantic comedy, and the hubby finally put down his book and started watching it after his initial sneering. I loved the soundtrack and intrend to buy it. We ended the weekend at a pizza joint we'd never been to, with each of us ordering a different pasta, and I got to enjoy a plate of broccoli rabe sauteed in olive oil and garlic, something I never make at home because no one likes it but me.

Off to work - have to accomplish a lot in the next five days before vacation. Wish me luck!


Let It Be

I am just a storyteller. I claim to be nothing more. I'm not here to give you the news, or political commentary, or even to provide a true-slice-of-life. All I am and all I ever aspire to be is the teller of tales, a wordsmith who can fashion a mystery out of a hat with a veil and a dried up rose. To ask more is to seek ambiguity where none exists. I am truth and lies, and at times, "sound and fury signifying nothing".

I must remind myself of this when I struggle to find the words to type into the screen. My weeks are not always filled with sunflowers and candles flickering on the porch. I do not spend my every waking moment with brush and scissors in hand. Often, I must wipe the dust off the canvas before I can proceed. The dailiness of life can grind the essence out of a well-intended life.

I wish I could be a more complex version of myself. I want my stories to carry layers of meaning. I want my collages to be adorned with surface design rich in language and pattern. I want my days filled with nuggets of lawyerly wisdom, writerly revelations, and artistic conundrums. I want to be the type of person who knows the best bistro in Chelsea, the best cannelloni in Brooklyn, and the only place to buy pre-War cigarette lighters on the lower East side. I think I should have at least one crystal in the house, wear a red string around my wrist, have attended at least one yoga lesson, at least pretend to ride my bike, and have a book club where we serve each other Middle Eastern food and discuss Sarte.

I've been all those things and more, at one time or another. But right now I am the person who rises on time and drives the same route every day. I am the person who gets her work done on time, fulfilling my job obligations in a competent, but not genuis, manner. I am the person who manages to put a few meals a week on the table, basic fare, sustaining fare, and then indulges in some forbidden chocolate bar or pint of Ben & Jerry's that I hide from everyone else. I am the person who tries to get out of shopping with my kids, who'd rather stay home and write than take them to the movies, and whose projects gather money and dustballs, which my husband kindly overlooks, but then tells me that I'm spending too much time on the computer and too little time with him.

I wish I could end this post with a witty, pithy quote from a much-overlooked, but brilliant writer, astounding you with the depth of my literary knowledge, however despite the thousands of books I've read and my diploma in literature, I've never been able to remember quotes from anything except from Seinfeld episodes.

In fact, if I were to point to a character with whom I most alike, it would not be a personage from a 19th century novel nor a Barthian farce, it would be George Costanza, the guy who thought a perfect night was watching TV during sex.

It is time for a vacation.


At the Beach, But Don't Go In the Water

porch2When we were growing up, there wasn't any money for trips or vacations. Summers were spent at the city beach, where it cost a $1.00 for a summer pass and a dime a day admission for kids and a quarter for adults. The beach was small, but we knew most of the people there and we had a bunch of relatives who kept us company each day.

Since we moved back to the area, we took our kids to see the beach. (My husband grew up a block away and often went to the beach, and we fantasize that we may have sat blanket to blanket, yet never met.)
We drove into the parking lot on the Sound and said to the children:

"This is where we spent our summers."
"Where?"
"At the beach."
"What beach?"
Pointing out car window with impatience:
"There, see that sand, see that big concrete pier?"
"That little thing of sand with the steps coming out of the water?"
"Well, it's high tide."
"Gross. You really were deprived."

Looking at it through my kids' eyes, it did seem a lot smaller and pretty, well, gross. Not much has changed since I was a kid. There's a half-moon spit of sand with concrete steps leading into the murky water of the westernmost part of Long Island Sound. There’s a long, narrow concrete pier with iron railing and, a recent addition, a few tubs of flowers. There are uncomfortable benches, a small snack stand, and I swear, the exact same outdoor showers with the flaking paint and slimy bottoms that were there thirty years ago. There’s actually two beaches, the “new”, forty-year old beach, and the Old Beach, which must be 75 years old. Early photos of the area show the natural, lovely, rock formations that lead down to the water. I assume there were dynamited away to provide a sandy beach and to avoid people injuring themselves if they tried to climb from the rocks into the water.

The swimming area itself is quite small, bounded by a set of ropes. There used to be a float that we swam to, the goal of all kids past seven, and from which we would dive and climb back up about a million times, or push each other in until the lifeguard blew his whistle, because what else was there to do? Even when I was young, the water was periodically closed when we had heavy rains because the waste treatment plant would overflow, or a “red tide”, which I believe were organisms that caused itchiness, was present. Today, there’s actually a sign at the pier that says that from time to time there may be "organisms" in the water that may make swimming hazardous to your health.

I thought my kids would gag.

The other beach-going choice for our city, known as "The Queen City of the Sound" is a county park that boasts a long, narrow beach that virtually disappears at high tide. Before we used to go, we'd check the tide charts and plan our day for low tide so we'd find a place to sit. At least at this park, you could lie on the sand, as opposed to the city beach, where you had to lie on concrete. However, if you didn’t have a pool in your backyard, and I knew no one who did, and if you didn’t belong to a beach club, and we certainly never would, those were your swimming choices, unless you drove the thirty miles to Jones Beach on the ocean, which we did once a year.

There were plenty of beach clubs, beautiful clubhouse with pools and sandy beaches in choice spots all along the coastline. There are also private yacht clubs, many on the small islands that dot our end of the Sound. And there are commercial and industrial uses that block even a view of the Sound for miles.

You can blame the cities and counties of Westchester County for 1) greed; 2) poor civic planning; and 3) greed when it comes to asking why the ownership of the southern coastline of the County is mainly private ownership, industrial use, and land barons. My city, after putting in a marina and a beach, leased out the rest of the cove to a waste treatment plant and energy plant. Isn't that what you'd like to share the water with as you sail out of the harbor? There's a passive use park a mile down the coast, where it struggles to retain its footing amid private beach clubs and now, McMansions shoehorned twenty to a spot. The city is now making noise about cleaning up the harbor, tearing down the industrial and commercial uses, and allowing the end of Main Street to actually look out on the water. Of course, it's caught up in terrific legal wrangling over environmental impact, private use, and money, money, money. I hope my children get to see it, but I doubt I ever will.

This is not out of the ordinary for the rest of the County. The Town of Mamaroneck's large, sandy beach shares a driveway with a county waste treatment plant. The beach was closed for, oh, I think three years, while they tried to figure out how to protect the five beaches on the water from the routinely high coliform counts from spillage from the plant. Read here about Up a ways in Rye, there's a small, pretty city beach next to a county beach, but it's a twenty minute drive from here, and very little parking to be had. There's one or two conservancy areas where one can walk, but very little of the coastline is accessible to the public for any reason.

My "favorite" declaration of public vs. private use is the town of Larchmont's implementation of a chain link fence with barb wire to keep out the riff raff from their town beach. It looks quite charming running along between the shoreline and the million dollars homes. You'll note that in these photos of the town, there are not shots of the fence! And “kudos” to the town of Greenwich, Ct, that has only opened up their beach to non-residents after a local lawyer made it a crusade and went all the way to the Supreme Court to win his case. However, the town still has authority to charge for parking, so they turn away non-residents at the gate, direct them back into town about five miles away to find the town hall where they must purchase a parking ticket for about $35, then drive back to the beach. By then the kids are screaming and crying, the parents are totally fed up, and half the day is gone.

Stan and I were out on Long Island over the Fourth of July. We drove through towns on the North Fork like Oyster Bay and we were impressed as we passed open coast and accessible beaches for mile after mile. Each town has a large beach, and many streets just end at the Sound. Although there were plenty of wealthy, private enclaves, there also were plenty of blue collar beaches, as I call them, and municipal marinas where a family can spend the day and not have to drive forty minutes in traffic and spend $25 to park.

Only in the last twenty years have people woken up to the impact on Long Island Sound and taken measures to stop the pollution, increase public passive use, and to literally try to breathe life into the nitrogen-rich waters that once hosted a grand biodiversity. It is a balancing act to manage the Sound and access to it, but consideration must be given to equal access for the rich and the poor, which nowadays is anyone who is trying to raise a family on less than $100,000 a year in Westchester County.

I love Long Island Sound. It was one of the attractions that drew me back here. But I won't swim in the watersat the western end of the Sound, and couldn’t in good conscience urge anyone to do so. If you live in an area that has public access to water, protect it, support it, and use it judiciously. And become active in your municipality's governance of the waters around you.


Hell Week

bFriday, giddy, happy, sunny Friday, after a very long week of overtime and family stress as everyone comes and goes and the home fires ain't burning. At one point this week, my husband left me a voice mail that he didn't know where our youngest was, and assumed she had slept at someone's house. Not a message to receive as I was speeding to a meeting and knew that the daughter had not slept anywhere but home. After a moment of panic, I recalled that said daughter had slept in the TV room on the third floor, and called suggesting that he climb the stairs and wake her up. Oh. Yes, indeed, she was up there, fast asleep.

So that's the kind of week it's been. But in the meantime, it's only one week till we go to Cape Cod! I am already stockpiling books and art supplies for the trip. I usually end up with one suitcase just for books, paints, pads, stamps, pens, watercolors, pencils, journals, etc. This year I am ripping down a luscious bunch of paper I bought almost a year ago, and making an envelope jacket for them, and taking them as "journal cards" for the trip. And if I get time, I'll sew up a little bag as a slipcase for the whole thing so I can carry it on my shoulder. I ordered two patterns from this company , and I'm going to make the slim shoulder bag, a bit wider, as a journal bag for the trip. I always end up with a bag that is too heavy and too large, and this year I want to travel light.

I'm still trying to do a drawing a day. The one above was done at the beach. You can see that my hand is warming up, but is still pretty tentative. I always work in pen and ink and decided to use the Faber Castell watercolor pencils that everyone loves. They are full of pigment and make a nice line, but I still don't know how to get a sharp image with them. I'll keep on practicing and sharing with you.


Drawing My Way Through the Day

porch9

This is what I consider to be a silly, badly-done little drawing I began with after not drawing for a couple of months. Notice the way the back shelf slants upward to the right. The poor coffee mugs are handing on for dear life! My friend, Roz, got me drawing again by posting her incredible sketches from her latest journal. You know what I love about Roz? She is a professional artist, and on her website, her amazing journals are listed under "fun". She loves drawing and painting and you can see that in every one of her journal pages.

Sometimes I forget about the "fun" part. I go through periods where I draw constantly, then something happens to get me distracted and I let it drop for too long. When this happens, it's hard to get the hand and eye back into sync. The hand starts drawing "symbols", like triangle pine trees and moon-faced people, instead of what the eye actuall ysees. But with a little patience and perseverance, the eyes and hand start commincating again and the marks ont he page begin to resemble something recognizable.

I'll never be a great artist, or even a very good one. I know my limitations. I draw at the level of a romance novel, if I had to compare it to writing. I know I can write well, and I know that I can draw whimsically, and I'm satisfied with that. Drawing is an activity that pulls me out of my head. My attention is focused onto the whiteness of the page and my hand makes marks that are very different from the mechanical act of writing. After a few minutes of beginning a drawing, all that exists in my head is the object and the page. I don't hear what is going on around me, and I am in a pleasant fog of contouring.

You can draw almost anywhere. If you have a piece of paper and something to write with, you can draw. (I admit that when I was in church on Sunday extra early, I was tempted to sketch the altar, but I was a little hesitant.) I've drawn in meetings, on road trips, while waiting for doctor appointments, and even when getting gas. You can disguise drawing by pretending to be making lists, or taking notes, or writing in your journal, which I notice people are more hesitant to interrupt.

This fall, I intend to take a drawing class. I still have trouble with perspective and scale and want to bump my skills up a notch. There are drawing classes offered in so many places, so ify ou are interested, look up your local Y's, community colleges, art stores, etc. I recommend it. It's cheaper than plein air painting, less messy than oils, and far less calories than obsessive eating. If you have a pen in your hand, you can't smoke, can't drink too much or your hand won't be steady, and you can draw what you want to buy instead of buying it and think of all the money you'll save.


Change in the Air

The weather has moved abruptly from summer into fall. We've had heavy rains and temperatures in the low '60's for several days. I feel so badly for my paralegal because she is spending the week at the Jersey shore - I hope they have plenty of videos to watch!

It hasn't felt summery this week anyway. Stan's been working the night shift because they are trying, for the third time, to install a new, massive inventory software. He's coming home just as I'm getting up and we manage to grunt at each other and not much else. Work has been on high volume for me also and last night I worked three hours late on an emergency. I need to stay late at least one more night to catch up on my regular work. So I'm sleepfully fitfully, worried about Stan, worried about work, and exhausted in the morning.

The little one has patched together her usual summer schedule of overnights with cousins and friends. I feel as though I've barely seen her for weeks and that makes me sad. She's having fun, and that's what's important. She's also babysitting a neighbor's hamster, and she's putting on the pressure for me to get her one. What with my guilt about working so much and no parents home, I'll probably give in. The Princess is lifeguarding and giving swimming lessons and out every night. Mystery Man is slowly getting some things done he needs to do and working till eight at night and then out also. My empty nest has arrived with a bang two months earlier than expected.

So no sitting on the porch for the past few days, and none in the next few days as this weather is predicted to go through the weekend. I hope the weather is better and summer is being enjoyed in other parts of blogdom. More interesting posting promised soon.


Porch Matters

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It’s late at night and I am sitting on my screened porch, candles lit and guttering in the breezes that are making me shiver just a little. It is deliciously cool and dark and quiet. I am alone in the house, except for Mystery Man, who is on the third floor, probably engaged in something nefarious on the computer , or innocently downloading music and IM'ing all his friends (I don't know and that's the reason for his alias).

With only the candles and the dragonfly lights to give light, I can pretend I am sitting on a porch in the Adirondacks or Maine, both places I am yearning to visit lately. Who ever would have thought that this roofed patio would be the center of the house for two seasons of the year? When we moved in, the porch was just a raised cement slab with a roof and railing. Stan and Mystery Man got busy the first summer, after a little prodding by The Empress (me) and they screened it in with a kit from Home Depot.

The simple act of adding screening and a door made the patio into a room. We ripped off the ugly aluminum siding around the old wooden door frame and trashed the ugly screen door. We painted the ceiling and installed a ceiling fan. My brother in law added outdoor outlets and Stan strung up the dragonfly lights. We hauled out our wicker furniture that had been sulking in the basement, and Stan nailed up his weather stick in the corner. Stan's pots of flowers on the stone steps and the little dogwood by the garage frame the view.

The porch is our sacred space. We drink coffee out here, read the papers, and take naps with our feet propped up on the new wicker ottomans. The kids stay up late and entertain friends out here, their voices echoing in the night air. The porch is the DMZ of the household. There's no TV, no radio, and usually (except for tonight) no computer. Reading is the main preoccupation, or eating, and we can't discuss anything too urgent or emotional because our voices carry into the neighborhood.

The weather has been very cool at night and on the porch, we pretend we are camping. I make strong coffee and we sit with our legs under blankets and talk about watching the Perseids meteor shower through our tent flap in Maine twenty years ago, and again ten years later on lawn chairs in our backyard in Fresno, when the sky was filled with fireballs so large and fast that the kids thought we were being invaded by Martians. porch7

All the cool air and strong coffee make our thoughts turn to donuts (doesn't yours?) and we toy with the idea of driving down the hill to the Dunkin' Donut but we are either 1) too lazy, or 2) wise enough to know we'll regret it in the morning, and we stay put. When night completely fills in the spaces beyond the screen, we could be in a forest or in the mountains or any place where night is gentle and dreams come with a soft hand that raises the cotton blankets up against our cheeks and plumps the feather pillows to support our sleepy heads.

I was raised in a house with a big screened porch. It ran the width of the house, accessible through French doors off the dining room. Its proportions were elegant, framed in each corner by a thick, round column topped with a decorative cap. It was large enough to contain the big round picnic table at one end next to the barbecue grill, and have an area for seating at the other. Friends of my parents gave us a set of sturdy, aluminum chairs with cushions as thick as upholstered seating. They were so sturdy and well made that they've lasted about 35 years and I'm sitting on one of the surviving chairs as I type this entry. We slept on the porch in the heat of the summer; we ate breakfast, lunch and dinnerfrom May to October; celebrated graduations and my parents' August birthdays; and had glasses of lemonade and platters of cookies when our relatives came to visit on Sunday afternoons. Hands down, it was the favorite room of the house. My mother hung on a wall a collage of baskets she'd collected over the years, and my father drilled holes for brackets to hang all the houseplants that summered on the porch in macramé hanging baskets.

The summer after my mother sold the house, word spread through the family that the new owners had enclosed the porch into a year round room. One by one, we all made our way past the house and we dumbfounded to see that they had basically torn the porch down and replaced it with a regular room addition, with two double-hung windows. That autumn, we took the kids trick or treating to the house on Halloween and the new owner insisted we come in and look around. We hid our disappointment after we saw that the new, plain Jane box of a room with a large TV and dinette table had replaced our romantic columned porch. My fantasy is to buy back the house some day and replace the porch and have everyone over for a barbecue when the azaleas and hydrangeas are in bloom.

If we had the money, we'd probably enclose this space, but make it into a sunroom lined with windows. It would make a fantastic art studio, with pretty of light and a view of the birch trees and laurel bushes. Of course, we'd have to give up the screens, add walls, windows, heating, and a new floor. We'd be able to get the TV out of the living room, double our seating space, and give everyone a little more elbow room on the holidays, something we dearly need with a large, extended family. It would make a lot of sense and increase the value of our house. But in exchange for more room and year round use, we’d lose the romance of sitting in the dark with candles lit around us and only a thin mesh of screening making us feel cozy against the night. We'd have no reason to lower our voices as night fell, and could switch on a lamp instead of lighting a candle. We’d shut the windows instead of piling on afghans pulled from the trunk. In the morning, we’d have no place to go to avoid the mornings news channels, and we couldn’t eat pizza with only napkins for dishes because we'd have to worry about the upholstery and the carpeting.

So for now, I'm glad we don't have a penny to play with. I'd rather keep our cabin in the city, our tree house under the stars.


App0134My favorite bloggers are posting about meals well eaten. Susan entertains us with her neighborly meal and Wendy at Earthly Delights, delights us with her very hot description of a sensuous meal being prepared for her by a sensual man. Damn I'm hungry!

I used to cook. I have a beautiful collection of cookbooks spanning the last twenty years. My first, given as shower gifts, were The Joy of Cooking and Better Homes cookbook. Joy was perfect for looking up everything from how do you make hard boiled eggs to what exactly is seven minute frosting to ouef en gelee (you know how it is when you first learn to cook and decide to make some exotic dish....)I still have it, although the cover on the spine has come off. I refuse to get rid of it and buy the new edition because each stain on it is a dish I prepared for a meal which may have included my Dad, my grandmother, my aunt, all now gone.

The Better Homes cookbook seemed like a throwback to the 50's, even in the early 80's. It was filled with lurid color photographs of hams spiked with pineapple toothpicks and seven fruit Jell-O molds. But it also had charts that told you what temp to cook the meat to for rare, medium, etc. and I referred to those many times.

As my tastes grew more sophisticated, I discovered the Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukin, two New York City gals who ran a "celebrated gourmet food shop". My book is falling apart and its pages are heavily stained. It wasn't so much a cookbook but a lifestyle guide. Would I ever have a party elegant enough to make gruyere straws? Would I ever have the patience to make gruyere straws? I did make the cornbread-sausage stuffing with apples for Thanksgiving and it is a family tradition now, but I substitute chestnuts for pecans. This cookbook turned me onto salmon mousse, brie en croute, aioli, the now ubiquitous but then unheard of layered salad with tomato and fresh mozzarella, spicy sesame noodles, and pesto. Ah youth! It all seems so "gourmet deli" now, but then it was so cutting edge in a family whose idea of party food was onion dip and chips and a bowl of M&Ms.

Their second cookbook was mainly reading material for me. By then I knew I would not be having, nor attending, any "opening night parties" where I would prepare and consume "pale almond gazpacho" or persimmon and figs draped with proscuitto (though I did stuff figs with gorgonzola and broil them and I do still want to make the apple and onion tart). I've come a long way from my first dinner party, where I stuffed artichokes with dry seasoned bread crumb, thinking that somehow it would mysteriously become moist and cook in the oven. I remember quite well the look on the face of my friend's husband when he tried to eat the sawdust filling of dry breadcrumb and not choke to death.

Now we mainly have cookbooks on the shelves and take out on the table. I still buy them, and I've been eyeing the Barefoot Contessa's new one for some months now. Reading cookbooks is like being invited to a friend's house for dinner, without the calories. It is a fantasy of what might be, and a peek into a cupboard that is always filled with condiments and spices. Even Stan has succumbed to buying cookbooks over the years, mainly Italian and books on grilling and barbecue, in self-defense since it appears these days that I consider the kitchen mainly a source for art supplies and a place to store bottled water.

I cooked a lot in Memphis and California. There wasn't much else to do. In California, we were heavily into grilling and vegetables, preferably combining the both. We discovered that if we stuck a tomato plant in the ground out there, it grew into basketball size tomatoes. And there were no bugs to devour them, no heavy rains to burst their skins, and no battling the shade trees for a few weak rays of warmth. Things GREW out there. So we planted and grilled. It was very simple.

In the San Joaquin Valley, the cut of meat preferred for barbecuing is "tri-tip". It has an earthier flavor than an eye round, and it's thicker than a London broil. We used mesquite to smoke it and sliced it warm on crusty bread with fresh tomatoes and goat cheese. Or just ate it with a giant salad.

In Memphis, Stan came into his own and became King of Barbecue. We were surrounded with barbecue: The Rendezvous, The Commissary, Corky's, and dozens of by-the-side-of-the-road smoker stands. I won't even pretend to get into the great debate of Texas brisket vs. Tennessee pulled pork vs. Carolina ribs. I'll leave that to Stan (when he gets his own blog). Soon after landing in the mid-South, we had a gas grill, a charcoal grill, a charcoal/wood smoker that looked like an oil can on its side and split lengthwise, and an electric smoker. I held the line at the oil drum deep fryer, since our friend had one and they'd have us over for deep-fried turkey at any time.

We have most of the same equipment here, just less time to use it. On Memorial Day, Stan made thirty pounds of ribs, which pretty much burned him out for the summer. I've managed to throw a chicken on the grill and do some salmon a few weeks ago. Our mid-week meals are usually some one dish wonder I throw in the oven, take out at least once, and maybe pasta and leftovers another night. Cereal has been consumed more than once this summer as a faux dinner.

So I'm hungry, as in Hungry Man Hungry. I need some grilled red meat, vegetables brushed with olive oil and herbs and seared with those succulent grill marks, and the sweet taste of fresh, ripe tomatoes, sharp garlic, and shreds of licorice basil dumped onto steaming pasta. I want to roast corn over charcoal, cut if off the cob, and mix it with hot pepper flakes, butter, and kosher salt. I intend to start the meal with skewers of briny shrimp, sweet scallops, and roasted red peppers. And finish with chocolate angel food cake studded with walnuts and drizzled with chocolate sauce, my Aunt's specialty.

Actually, we will have London broil marinated in red wine, roasted corn, and bruschetta made with seeded Italian bread, fresh mozzarella, and tomatoes lightly broiled. And I bought a chocolate Entenmanns for dessert. Tomorrow I can get fancy and do some seafood. In the meanwhile, I've pulled Silver Palate I and II off the bookshelf and I'm getting some ideas for baby veggies and summer soups. Ideas that I hope I can convince someone in this house to make. Besides me.


Fahrenheit 9/11

I wrote the other day about watching movies in my teens and twenties and how I remember some of them as clearly as I did when I saw them. I enjoyed all the comments and suggestions of other great movies, all of which I agreed with. When we were dating, my husband and I went to the movies at least once a weekend. We were not club people, and he wasn't and still isn't a dancing guy unless he's had a few too many, so going to the movies was our chief entertainment. I miss the anticipation of waiting to see a really fine film. The whole experience of looking up the movie times, waiting in line for a ticket, deciding on what size popcorn, and then the rush to find the perfect seats, neither too far nor too close, preferably on an aisle for quick escapes to the bathroom or candy stand.

I haven't felt that way about seeing a movie in a long while. I didn't expect Fahrenheit 9/11 to be great cinematic entertainment, but I didn't expect to be so depressed afterwards. i expected to be revved up, like when we marched in moratoriums to end the war. Instead, I felt extraordinarily sad and ashamed. I've never felt such bitter remorse over being an American in my life. I wonder how and when we will ever repair our relations with the rest of the world. How did we go from candlelight vigils around the world after September 11th, to the travesties in Iraqi prisons?

I didn't know the extent of Bush's involvement with oil and the Saudis. I thought Moore overdid Bush's reaction when he was in Florida reading to the childrenand I thought some of the shots he took were cheap and juvenile, but honestly, who could resist when he had such a target? I was amazed that the Secret Service questioned Moore while he was interviewing outside the Saudi Embassy, but not half as amazed as Bush flying the bin Ladens out of the country.

I can't add much to the firestorm that's already been said. I just have my personal reaction to express. I am saddened, revulsed, depressed, overwhelmed. As we were watching it, my oldest daughter turned to me and said, " I don't want to vote for Bush, but I don't like Kerry much either." I saw Kerry stumping way back in September in the Bronx. He was very wooden and artificial. He didn't give off a lot of energy and just struck me as a professional politician. I feel a little heartened by John Edward's selection, but I'd rather have him running as President than VP.

At this point, I will actively do my part to defeat Bush's reelection. But that's only a tiny step in reversing the path we are on. I certainly don't know the answers, or understand the complexities of the furor that greets our image in the Middle East. I turn to prayer at times like this, for discernment, and for hope that an unseen hand can work miracles.


Labyrinths

Have you ever been on a diet that restricts you to certain foods, maybe one that is all carbs, or all protein, or all grapefruit? Or one where you can't eat anything after 6:00 at night? did you find that despite the weight you were losing (or not losing), all you could think about was the container of yogurt that was outlawed, or the red meat you couldn't eat, or spent the whole time after dinner feeling obsessive about getting something, anything in your mouth?

Well, that's what writing a novel is like for me. Strange, but true. The entire time I am writing, I find myself thinking about the other two novels that are sitting in the drawer. Or I get bored with the tedium of trying to connect all the characters and plot lines when all I want to do is jump in and write the juicy, red meat, lemon meringue pie chapters.

So this week, I decided that I should just go ahead and write those luscious, fluffy chapters. To hell with how the characters got there and who they're related to, and what happenes before and after. If I can just get down on paper the visions that drew me into the fantasy in the first place, and all fiction is fantasy, then the rest will fall into place.

It's been fun. I've been staying up late, typing away, and find it flowing onto the screen. I'm focused as I write, and not dithering about the background and plot progression and who is related to whom and why do I have two characters who names begin with the letter "A"?

I realize as I work through this, that it is my method of getting the first draft outline down on paper. I can't do it any other way. There's no possibility that I can sit and write an outline, it's just not the way I work. Both with art and writing, I work from the inside out. I don't know where I'm going till I get there. It takes a long time to get anywhere when you don't know where you're going.

Wave to me on the journey - I'm finally out of the corkscrew.


Errata:

My sister,who asks to remain nameless on the blog, queries in a comment whether I meant "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Ghostbusters". Yes, dear sister, but only as to the latter, I meant Ghostbusters, not Ghosthunters. Ah, what a difference a mere five years can make in memory recall between sisters.

As to "The Fifth Of July", I did not mean "Born on the Fourth of July", by which I assume you are referring to the Jimmy Cagney movie, and I'm not sure that is the title, but in this post I was only listing movies from 1970 to 1985, so despite the cinematic highlight of a singing and dancing Cagney, I was not referring to that. [NOTE: further clarification reveals she meant what she said, the movie with Tom Cruise.]

However, I had to Google Fifth of July to make certain that I was not mixing it up with something else and lo and behold it is a movie based upon a play by Lanford Wilson (very cool) with Swoosie Kurtz (cool) and Richard Thomas (not cool) who will forever be John Boy for me and until he gets rid of that mole on his face, never make it onto any of my lists.

However, it is not the movie I was thinking of, which is Coming Home, the movie with Jane Fonda (before aerobics and Ted Turner) and Jon Voight (before Angelina Jolie and his paternal rantings). Both movies, however, concern paraplegic Vietnam veterans, so I am not entirely off my rocker. I can't say what's in Fifth of July because if I saw it, I don't recall it, but Coming Home has one of the most erotic sex scenes I've ever seen and I'll stand by that.

Thanks for clearing this up, sister, or at least leading me to check the facts. (Of course you could have told me this one of the ten times I talked to you today and then I would not have movie egg on my face for all to see , but hey, that's what sisters are for, right?) And this is why I would never post anything about song titles or whether a certain actor or actress is alive or dead, because she knows every damn one. Note her quick correction of my assumption about the Jimmy Cagney faux pas. (I think it's a Rainman kind of thing...and yes, I mean the Dustin Hoffman movie, not Singign in the Rain with Gene Kelly....)


5th of July

Where are those movies that left an indelible mark in our American consciousness? My husband and I tried to go to the movies over the weekend while we were away. Our choices, in a large megaplex, were Spiderman 2, Dodgeball, Shrek2, and others too mundane to remember. Now, I've seen Shrek2 and it was cute. I may even see Spiderman2, but I doubt that I will remember either in ten years. I can, however, remember seeing the greatest movies of my life, all probably from 1970 to 1985, and not too many after that.

This is a list of favorite Boomer movies, but with the clarification that they were made during the Boomer era, so I don't include movies like Sabrina, anything with Carey Grant, etc., although I love those movies. So this is the list of the movies that formed the years of my teens and twenties, the movies that influenced my expectations of life and love. These are the movies that I still remember lines from, and my husband can tell you the movie theaters where we saw them. So they may not be cinematically or artistically the best movies, but they are the backdrop to the first half of my life. Who can argue with that?

The Great White Hope
Reds
Serpico
Apocalypse Now
5th of July
Ghosthunters
Close Encounters
Godfather I & II
Klute
Romeo and Juliet (with Olivia Hussey)
Jaws
The Thomas Crown Affair (the original)
Annie Hall
Sleeper
Two for the Road
Bonnie and Clyde
Chariots of Fire
Secrets and Lies
Cinema Paradiso
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Clockwork Orange
Chinatown
The Sting
All the President's Men
Patton
The French Connection
Cabaret
Young Frankenstein (what knockers! thank you doctor! - Stan's commentary)
Star Wars
Saturday Night Fever
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Kramer v. Kramer
The Turning Point
A Woman Under the Influence
Breaking Away
Dog Day Afternoon
Deliverance

I invite other boomers to add their own in the comments. I'm sure I've missed some.


App0138a
It is very quiet in blogland. Everyone is getting ready to go away or escape work and go to the beach. I added an extra day to my long weekend and have four days off. The little one is away with friends and the big ones will entertain themselves, so the hubby and I have three days free. We thought of going away, but decided we couldn't afford it, so we're just planning to do luxurious nothingness. La dolce niente.

In anticipation of some reading time, I ordered several books from Amazon through their used program. I picked up copies of favorite authors for as little as $1.65. The shipping doubles the price, but it is still a bargain. I've been wanting to read Clementine in the Kitchen by Samuel Chamberlain for about two years, and now I have a used, library copy. I also picked up another book by Kathleen Dean Moore, Holdfast: At home in the natural world. I also have the latest copies of Glimmertrain and Tin House to peruse at the beach.I didn't get this one used, but I've been waiting for the paperback to read The Book of Salt by Monique Truong. It's a novel about a Vietnamese chef who cooks for Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas.

Other than reading, working on a new series of collages that I started this week, and eating - a lot - we plan to go to Robert Moses State Park. Our favortie park of the trip is riding over the causeway, which is eight miles long and very close to the water. In looking for sites to show you about the park, I ran across this. It's a "clock" that shows you when the skies will be the clearest over Robert Moses for the next two days for astronomical viewing. It's giving me the idea to go out there later in the day with my son who has gotten into stargazing lately. We have large, bulky telescope, but nowhere around here to escape the trees or street glare. He tried to go to a park, but he and his friends got tickets for being in the park after dark, even though they had the telescope and a laptop with star charts. (The police are lovely around here. )

Whatever you are planning to do this Fourth of July, I hope part of it includes sitting under the stars and watching a fireworks display, and having a swim. Happy Fourth!


John Grisham Lived Here

We moved to Memphis the year after John Grisham's book, The Firm, was released as a movie. Our realtor proudly told us that she was an extra in the rooftop party scene at The Peabody Hotel, and took us by the street, Cherry Street, where they filmed the house scenes. Later on, we met the sister of the family that owned the house where they filmed the movie, and a friend who lived down the street and spent about a month on her front porch allowing movie crew members to use her bathroom, and waiting for a Tom Cruise sighting. We tried in vain to spot these familiar faces in the movie, but we never could.

I've also tried in vain to enjoy his books and I never do. Maybe it's the legal setting, which I generally avoid since I am immersed in it otherwise, or maybe it's just plain ol' envy that he began as a lawyer and now has had an unparalleled literary career, and owns gentlemen farms all over the South.

If you live in Memphis or Mississippi, you wear John Grisham on your sleeve as a good ol' boy who hit the big time. They even put a plaque on the building where Tom Cruise jumped out of the window into the cotton bale. The filming of The Firm in Memphis was the biggest thing to happen to the town since Elvis, and it is a town in desperate need of a new image.

But I don't know a "serious" writer who doesn't smirk when Grisham's name is mentioned. Forget the fact that The Firm spent 47 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, serious literary writers, and those of us who lust to become one, wrinkle their noses politely when Grisham is mentioned, or just flat out sneer. We all debated his story that he wrote it on the train to and from work each day. I'd been a train commuter. It's not exactly conducive to creative writing, what with the jolts and bumps, cell phone conversations, bagel and coffee eating all around you. We were not about to allow Grisham into our mental fold of Welty, O'Conner, and Faulkner. There are too many other incredibly talented Southern writers languishing on the midlist.

Yes, I thought The Firm had an interesting plot twist, but any of the other of his books that I picked up were plot driven boiler makers filled with average to clunky writing. I smugly replied to people who enquired that I did not read "Grisham" and left them wondering why. For God's sake, my mother and mother in law lined up to get the latest volume - he was definitely a mass market hack.

I felt secure in my snobbery over this issue. My degree in literature and a lifetime of reading and writing were my credentials for my disparaging remarks and disgust when he took over Oxford American Journal. Money, we all intoned, cannot buy good writing.

Then a crack in the wall appeared. My friend Peggy wrote - and finished - her mystery novel. She'd been talking about it for several years. The plot was to be based on feng shui, a funky theme that would attract the commercial audience without forsaking her literary vision. Peg was the first person I knew that had actually started and finished her novel. She brought it over to me to read on a sultry August morning. I sat at my desk, cleared away the mountains of pages from my own sprawling, unruly mess of a novel in progress, and sat down to read her mystery novel.

Peg's novel was funny and populated with quirky, interesting characters, but it just wasn't there yet. It was a good first draft, but it needed the interleaving of narrative and description and twists that would make it a sensuous read. Right then it was A=B=C. Peg knew it and was already starting her second draft. She was closed up in her house, refusing to go to lunch, to go to the garden place, to join us for our weekly tag sale and junk store foraging. She wouldn't even come over to swim when the temps hit 90's. She just stayed in her house and turned the a/c up higher.

She came out a few months later, a pale and thinner version of her usual buoyant self. She'd put the novel away. She felt she needed some distance from it, and had already begun thinking of another project to do in the meantime. She threw herself into fixing up her house, making gorgeous chintz curtains on a pole covered in velvet for about ten dollars, another of her special talents. I came over to admire them and our talk, as always, turned to reading and writing. Grisham had just published another of his string of hits and I was on my way to Borders to pick it up for my mother in law. I made my usual flip remark about him, and she paused. "He makes it look too easy," she said. "He makes everyone think they can do it. It's hard, really hard." "Oh, please," I replied. "You need to get out more. His stuff is schlock." "No," she insisted, "It's really not, and even if it is mass market, it's good mass market and it's really, really hard to write good mass market." She looked tired and worn out and I dismissed it as writer burn out.

But now, a few years and several started novels later, I hear her words in my head every day when I sit down to write. It is hard, very hard. And anyone who has the facility to write a book almost every year has a gift that I have not received. Whether the book is an example of literary genius, or just a formulaic plot gussied up with new characters, it is incredibly difficult to write a string of words that stand on their own and turn into a publishable work of fiction that someone wants to read. It's goddamn difficult to do it, near impossible I am finding. It requires tremendous discipline, like getting up at 5:00 a.m. and writing on the train on the way to and from work in a solitary, single-mindedness of vision. It requires sacrifice and passion, transformation and drudgery. No matter how rich you are, no one can sit down and write it for you, unless you employe a ghostwriter but we're not talking about that here.

So here's to you, John Grisham. The Painted House got good literary review and showed real growth in the writer. I promise not to sneer at your books anymore. I may not read them, but I do respect them.