pomegranatesandpaper

List Friday - 4ths of July

I really enjoy the 4th of July as a holiday. It has a little bit of midsummer, after dark magic to it. I always remember it as sun-scorched with the need for lots of water for swimming and floating to round it out,  ending with grilling hot dogs, roasting marshmallows and booms of fireworks echoing across the darkened sky.  These are the 4ths of July that remain in my mind long past the last cinder floats down.

• Childhood Independence Days were remarkably similar. We went to a local beach if it was sunny, and then always had a barbecue at home on the porch. The highlight of the day was going with my father to the local fireworks, held at the Twin Lakes in front of our high school.

       

    We walked there with my Dad, about a mile, which was really something because I don't remember doing anything with my Dad by ourselves. My mother stayed home because it meant one freaking hour out of the whole summer when she didn't have 5 kids waiting to be entertained. We carried the scratchy woolen car blanket, applied liberal doses of insecticide, which I'm sure formed mutant cells in all of us just waiting to kill us,  and got there early enough to listen to the band playing. The booms were so satisfying, especially the finale that would reverberate deep inside you as you lay on the blanket looking up at the night sky, swatting mosquitoes from your eyes. And once it got dark, no one could see that you were with your father.

• Of course, we all know you can't go home again. One summer we drove up from Memphis, excited to be home for the 4th. My sister lives a block from the high school and we left early with all the kids to get a good spot. It must've been about 100 degrees with 99% humidity. It was like sitting in the dark in a sauna. My clothes were sticking to places I didn't know I had. We were sitting on a woolen blanket, about 5 feet square, i.e. with less than 6 inches per butt. The bugs were thicker than snowflakes in a blizzard.

• When Mr. Pom and I were dating, we decided to go into the city to see the big fireworks display. Although we'd lived here our entire young lives, neither of us had ever been before. It may even have been the Bicentennial and we hoped to see the tall ships in the harbor. We drove down on the H, bringing our dog, Sparky, and Mr. Pom's mom.  Mr. Pom didn't want to get stuck in gridlock, so we got off the highway north of the city and drove down on Riverside Drive. Of course, not one of us had the slightest idea where we were and god forbid we consulted a map. No, we just pulled off the highway and drove aways until we saw an overpass, pulled over and walked out onto the bridge and we could see the Hudson. Shouldn't we be able to see the Statue of Liberty? We all shrugged and waited. And waited. And waited to see those fireworks, but nothing was happening. Nothing, that is, until a bunch of kids came along and started throwing firecrackers at everyone, including under our dog, who yelped and we all began freaking out and high tailed it back to the car. The next day we looked on a map and realized we were in the most northern end of the city, miles from where the fireworks go off and had as much chance as seeing them as people in Florida. Live and learn. At least Mr. Pom's mother did not have her purse stolen - which was a miracle, because she decided to leave it in the trunk of the car, but failed to shut it properly and when we got back, the trunk was ajar, the purse still there. Only in New York, friends, as Cindy Adams says.

• When the kids were tiny, we lived in a funky, summer community turned year round.  The neighborhood had a lake front beach and small pavilion. We planned a community 4th of July celebration at the lake. The highlight of the day was a roast pig, ordered and purchased in Chinatown, and trucked up by two neighbors.  It was pretty wild to see an entire roasted pig on the picnic table in the pavilion, and not for the least reason that our neighborhood had a strong Orthodox Jewish population, but they were cool about it, coming later for the fireworks. I was squeamish at first, but if you've ever have fresh pork, you'll be astonished at the melt in your mouth succulence. No dried out chops cooked  by Mom here!  After the grown ups had consumed too much beer and the kids were snackered from bug juice and marshmallows, we sat at the lake and watched the various communities lighting fireworks. It was a great place to  live with a young family.

• A few years later, we were off to Fresno. The 4th of July was so hot, hot, hot, but we could cool off in our black bottomed pool. What more could a family from New York, used to swimming in a weedy, murky lake, want than their own pool. I don't think the kids got out of it from April to October unless we wrestled them out, tying their arms together with their noodles. But on the 4th, Mr. Pom, in his cruise director mode, decided  we had to do something special and dragged us out of the pool and into the car, where we headed on the highway to some dusty town in the farmlands of the Central Valley. The  fireworks  were held in a stadium, and after dark, a gigantic moon rose low  in the inky blue sky, looking for all the world just like the paper moon of song. They had an orchestra that played along with the fireworks in a choreographed celebration. We sat next to the farmers and the kids with fast cars and the kids were entranced at the way the music matched the display. It was an amazing night in California's heartland.
  

• The following year, we were living in Memphis and watching the fireworks over the Mississippi River. Our neighbors took us down to the bluffs and we settled on our blankets high above the river. Small boats  gathered in the harbor and the "M Bridge" was lit up with tiny white lights. Right across the river was Arkansas, home of then President Clinton.

The fireworks didn't start until 10:00 and The Young One had fallen asleep and missed them all after being so excited all day to see them. Watching the fireworks under the same moon as the year before, but by the side of the mighty Mississippi was one of the most romantic nights of my life. I couldn't believe that I was sitting literally in the middle of America, watching the glittery lights  reflected in the river that Mark Twain wrote about. We felt as though  we had traveled more than the 2000 miles from New York to California to Tennessee. We felt like we had traveled a million miles through time and space and landed in another world, one that was home to Elvis and Twain and Faulkner and BB King. And we had.

A Very Special List Friday

I know, I know, I said List Friday was going on hiatus to the fall and it generally is. But this is a Very Special List Friday (you know, like those TV episodes that come out in sweeps week?).

Tomorrow begins the 4th of July long weekend. Makes me start thinking about summer vacations, and in particular, places where I've spent the 4th of July. For List Friday, the Pomegranate Household would like to know where you've spent the 4th of July (and if you read this post before I revised it, just move along).

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Games People Play

Nasty weather, dark, cold, windy, and pouring down rain. Is it March? News reports say this is a "200 year storm". Fluffernutter is beside herself and spent the night pacing from bedroom to hall and back again. I feel sorry for all the mothers home with kids on the first week of "summer" vacation. More like an early spring break and what to do with kids once you've seen the movies and gone to Chuckie Cheese. My older kids will have their hands full as they both work at camps and all the kids will have to be cooped up inside with rainy day activities so early in the session. I suspect there will be a lot of lanyard making.

Over the weekend, my sisters and I were talking about what we used to do in the summer. I remembered marathons of games like jacks, which I still love. My friend, Teri, and I used to sit on her big front porch and play marathon games. You needed a wooden floor for good jack playing. Cement was hard on the hand and carpeting just didn't work. The jacks had to be metal, as plastic was just too lightweight.

Jacks were best played on a porch, so in the rain, we switched to games that could be played laying on the Oriental rug in the living room.  My parents had a wooden, round rack of poker chips and they got more use from us kids than they ever did from grown ups playing cards. The red, white, and blue chips were mixed in elaborate patterns on the rug and traded back and forth among us. If the chips got boring, we could switch to cards. Though I'm sure we played Go Fish and Solitaire, I remember "War" where we threw the cards down as fast as we could with the person with the higher card the winner. And "Match Up", where all the cards are spread out with faces down and you turn over one at a time to match them in to pairs. If there was no one to play with, we made houses of cards, sitting on the rug or at the dining room table, stacking cards one against the other to see how high and intricate we could build them up.

Our kids think we're crazy.

Why wouldn't they - Whit their I-Pods, laptops, DVDs, on line games, X-Boxes and cell phones? In the end though, a long, rainy summer day is a long, rainy summer day and the best way to get through it is with a book. preferably something thick and based in fantasy, accompanied by a bag of M&Ms.

Today The Little One is supposed to go to a Yankee game with cousins. I don't know if the game will be canceled, but at 7:00 a.m., it's not looking too good.  I'll leave a pack of cards on the dining room table before I leave for work. If they are still there when I get home from work, I  may have to whip up a house. 

Sunday Reads

Hours and hours of soaking showers that cancel all plans and strand me in the house, with books, magazines, quilting, and writing. Such a burden! Here's what I have on hand for reading this weekend:

      
       

• Heat by Bill Buford, journalist turned kitchen slave after apprenticing with Mario Batali.The book reaffirms my aversion to working as a cook or chef, though I want to go to Babbo now more than ever. However, I will never order the pasta in any restaurant after 9:00. (As to other nasty bits, I refuse to read Bourdain's latest book because my husband and I already will not from ramekins of butter in any restaurant and I prefer to abide by what I don't know can't kill me.)

       

• The Times: A Year in Nature Notes by Derwent May. A diary based format of nature observations, meant to be read along with the calendar, daily, slowly, and while absorbing the natural world around your daily travels. Writing is first rate.

      

• A Sketch in Time by Jan Beaney & Jean Littlejohn, the doyennes of contemporary  English embroidery with one of their slim books in their series. Gorgeous photos of sketchbooks and studies that will get that journal off the shelf, but to me, it is more interesting because it features a lot of abstract pages that are used as studies for color and texture.  Thanks to LK for this reference.

       

• Esopus  You must see this edition of this twice-yearly arts magazine . You must hold it in your hand and stare at the cover, then open the pages and have the pull outs fall open and stare in wonder as you feel your heart start to jump and your breath get short and your mind start to race with the wonder of it. The size of an oversized school notebook, this special issue is dedicated to the creative process and contains the notes, notebooks, journal pages, sketches, studies, paintings, punch-outs, and more of artists as diverse as critic, novelist, fine artists, comedian, mathematician, "chronologer". I so want to be on the editorial board of this non-profit magazine.

       

• This issue of Fibertarts features artists who incorporate maps, topography, and other elements of geography and memory into their artwork. It happens to be one of my favorite subjects and I'm currently working on an essay about it, so I was thrilled to pick this issue up at Borders this weekend.

So you can see I have reading material for all the senses - taste, touch, and eye candy. I wouldn't mind a little sun, perhaps be able to have Mystery Man's friends sit on the porch for the ribs Mr. Pom is barbecuing, but not meant to be today. I am going downstairs now to char the skins of red peppers, then place them in a brown bag where their own steam will help the skins be easily rubbed off, and the flesh to be marinated in olive oil and garlic. Then I'm roasting frozen corn on a cookie sheet with olive oil, kosher salt, and ground pepper, which I'll fold into the cornbread batter.  Lastly, I have brownies to make, with morsels of chocolate and an espresso base. We're trying to make a nice last day for his girlfriend to cheer them both up. She goes back to Florida tomorrow and they probably won't see each other for another six months. She's a lovely girl but fate and geography are keeping them apart for now. We're glad he's starting his camp job tomorrow to take his mind off missing her, though I know we all will.

Hello Pomegranatians! You may be wondering where are the photos are lately - they are locked up in the digi, which The Young One has taken over and full frozen up with end-of-middle-school photos. I'm waiting for her to upload them on the other computer because I really don't need two twenty minute videos of the last day of bio and Italian. But she'll get to it as soon as she finishes the whirlwind of graduation parties. I think the last one is today unless there's more she's forgotten to tell me about.

Mr. Pom and I have one more event to host before we can fall into a slothful heap of summer exhaustion. Mystery Man's girlfriend is leaving on Monday and tomorrow he is having a barbecue for her with all his friends. Mr. Pom is making his famous ribs, which involves early morning rituals with charcoal and mesquite, tender rubbing with secret spices, mopping with sauce, and  constant tending over a very low fire. By the time we serve them, Mr. Pom is so tired and worried about the quality of the ribs, that he can barely bring himself to eat a morself of the luscious pork as it falls off the bone.

Today he and The Princess are going to Old Timer's Day at Yankee Stadium, an event that causes Mr. Pom to tear up profusely. I'm off to lunch with the sisters and mom for the baby sister's birthday. We will probably go to the cafe up the street from the cute quilt store, so I'm sure they'll be some new fat quarters on me on the way home - and in the fabric bag, too! ; > )

List Friday was a bust this week so I am putting it on hiatus until after Labor Day.

List Friday - What NOT to Star In

You will never see me on any TV show uttering these lines:

1. "We see a figger of a man in the corner of our bedroom at night.  At first we wus afraid, but he don't bother us no more, so we  leave him alone as long as he leaves us alone...."
2. "Sex? Sex? I didn't come here for no sex. No, I'm naked and running around a 14 year old's house with a tub of Cool Whip because I'm....hungry."
3. "Before you start redecorating and throw out  all my furniture and   rip out all my rugs, and trash everything that I own so you can redo it all for a thousand bucks,  let me just say that I hate themed rooms and I hate the color pink ....."
4. "Please pass another bowl of  maggots."
5. "Before you put me in the glass box, could I have some tissue to stick up my nostrils so the Hissing Madagascar Cockroaches don't climb inside my nose."
6. And since 4 and 5 are similar, here's a bonus: "You hafta lissen to ma rules cause I am the wife and mothah around heah for the nex two weeks or we ain't gonna get the fifty thousan'."

Waders

When Fluffernutter strolled her way into our life, the first thing that struck me was the fur. Lots and lots of fur. White fur. I was pretty skeptical about the fur, having had a Siberian Husky for 15 years who spent the warm weather months looking like a molting bird with plugs of fur falling out of her and rolling across the floor, sticking to the furniture, and flying out the car windows.

I am pleasantly surprised to say that Fluffernutter so far has had some mild shedding, but despite the heat, her coat is intact. The Little One brushes her and hoses her down when it gets hot, but we've seen no major coat replacement occurring thus far.

Just drool. Mass quantities. Of drool. Drool combined with mouthful of water that she gets from her bowl and then lets drip out of her mouth all over the kitchen floor. The swampy kitchen floor. As in: Don't walk into the kitchen in bare feet without preparing to be grossed out and slip your way under the refrigerator, no easy task. I put a rug under her bowl, which catches the overflow, but there's nothing I can put down to catch the move she makes when she turns her head with a mouthful of water and slobber and lets it fly all over the kitchen floor. Short of a babypool and that would make opening the oven difficult.

We put the water bowl outside when she is outside and she seems to think it is the world's tiniest swimming hole. Put out the bowl full of water, watch her approach, watch her daintily put a paw in it and swirl the bowl around, thereby flooding the back porch and letting anyone walk out risk a trip down the stairs on their butt.

But she doesn't shed much, really. And the kitchen floor is a disgusting ancient brick-patterned vinyl that will someday be ripped up in the great kitchen makeover of 200...and whenever. We just keep towels at the ready. And I'm trying to sew a doggie bib out of a shower curtain for the copious drooling on my leg as I try to eat a sandwich.

Animals. They're such...animals.

Our Day At the Beach

Sunday spent under cloud free bell jar skies of blue. Mr. Pom had us out of bed and ready for the beach, reminding me for another summer of the Baron in the Sound of Music, lining his kids up for inspection. Only Mr. Pom lacks the whistle. (And, no, don't send him one.)

Once there, once the food was all cooked and packed up on Saturday night, and the beach towels found, and the umbrellas and sunscreen and thermos, and chairs and boogie and skim boards, and the two cars loaded and the son given money for tolls and parking (what - use the money we gave him to spend while K. is here??), once we rolled The Princess out of bed, dressed her, and carried her to the car, plied The Little One with suphedrine and checked her bag to make sure she had her Italian with her, and once we went back to get the matches for the propane stove, then, then, we enjoyed ourselves.

We really did. It was a cool, almost chilly morning. We went to the beach where we can park right next to the water and tailgate by the picnic tables and pretend that we have a big boat like all the other people at the dock, but really we just have a car - two cars. I forgot the goat cheese, but we made due with omelettes with scallions, onions, and red and orange peppers, and breakfast sausage, and coffee from the pier. Then, because Mr. Pom gets very cruise director-ish when he is feeling well, he insisted that we 1) pack up and go to another beach that has "less tattoos" and 2) stop at the car show that another beach holds early Sunday mornings.

It was Father's Day and Mystery Man's birthday, so how could we say no. By the time we made it to our favorite beach, everyone passed out for awhile, then the kids were skim boarding and I read Toast (thanks Faith, it was great).  We roused ourselves around 1:00 and ate sausage and peppers on rolls  and barbecued chicken and then we all slunk back into a coma. I managed to get two triangular sunburns at the tops of both arms - very X Files- and Mr. Pom managed to burn his very lovely knees.

I also practiced good beach blanket management by lining our chairs up horizontally, then having the girls place their towels diagonally in front of us, making it difficult for the close-sitters to get too near us. Still, a line up of middle aged women plopped six inches from The Princess's arm and they were even annoying me as they never stopped talking for the entire morning. Across from us was cell phone blonde who lied on her stomach with the phone propped up in her ear and talked, without any hyperbole, all morning long. But, we were spared the trailing cigarette smoke in our faces and had very few screaming child-why-don't-you-take-the-kid-home moments around us. In all, a very pleasurable first beach day.

I don't think we ever got to the beach as a family last year or the year before so it was quite special for us and everyone was happy and pleasant and I was thinking of having everyone's urine checked because it was very blissful. Sorry to have no photos, but a certain young lady took the digi to school to film the last day of middle school and all the batteries were used up filming various boys playing chicken in Italian class and girls screaming into the lens. I tried to buy batteries and ran around CVS asking teen age clerks if they sold Titanium batteries and by the blank stare, I assume they don't. Then I got home and found out it's Lithium batteries that I  need, or just plain Lithium. In any event, I got none and I got no photos.

Today, the heat of summer was upon us. Ah, the first day in court when you are wringing wet, your hair is totally frizzed out, and the courtroom smells like a gym on the last day of school. Note to self: save all vacation time next year and take off six weeks in summer. As if!

List Friday - What NOT to Star In

It's getting hot in here. So take off all your clothes - no wait, that's not what I meant to say. It's getting hot in here, summer reruns are boring us, and we're flipping through all the cable stations and wondering who the hell watches us all this crap?

For this week's List Friday, we want to know if you were going to be on the cover of TV Guide, what 5 TV shows would you NOT want it to be for? ( And anyone who would like to edit my clumsy sentence is very welcome to, damn - another prepositional ending!)

In other words, in plain English, if you had your chance at celebrity of any kind, what TV shows would you never consider,  whether reality, drama, comedy, or news shows?

Don't forget to let me know when you're up so we can read all the lists! (Come on, you know what a control freak I am. Just ask my kids.)

Saturday List - For Me

• write write write
• find replacement basket for new coffeemaker (Mr. Pom lost a crucial part!)
• put away laundry
• cleaners
• return internet shopping (clothes are hard online)
• find cards for Mr. Pom (Father's Day)
• and for Mystery Man (20 birthday!)
• shopping list for beach trip tomorrow
• clean porch railings
• clean porch blinds
• find firefly lights
• wash all porch accessories (in trunk)
• find porch cushions
• take out stuff to grill tonight
• roast tomatoes on grill (Nigel Slater recipe for roasted tomato sauce & cream)
• put away winter clothes laying on studio floor
• put together hexagon package for the beach
• find bathing suit and cover up and don't dare go in front of a mirror
• find coolers for beach
• find umbrella for beach
• buy decongestant for the Little One
• breathe

What's Missing~List Friday

Before I begin my own list, I am writing in a hurry because the AC adapter on my less than six months old #$@@$#$ Apple has stopped working and I only have 2 hours left on my battery. This exact thing happened with the Toshiba. What is it with these power cords? God knows what it will cost but I guess after work I'll be off to the Apple store for a replacement. Damn!

So here is my very fast List Friday:

1. a silver bracelet that locked at the top with two onyx stones. Missing bracelets seem to top the list for so many of us! Where are they all rolling around? In some collective sewer or underground vault filled with the gleanings of many Borrowers?
2. A gorgeous silver hoop earring that I lost during The Princess's Brownie meeting in a kindergarten classroom. We went back and tore that classroom apart and retraced every step from the car and back but I never saw it again.
3. A pair of dangly earrings made by Nina Bagley. They went with the necklace I bought from her at Artfest in 2000. One said "Journal", the other said "Every Day". I put them down with the necklace and just never saw them again. I emptied all the pockets, drawers, purses, and jackets, but they are gone, just gone.
4. Everytime we moved, we would lose something. I could never understand how we could pack it in a box, watch it go on the truck, see the truck opened at the new location, and have an item like a telephone just disappear. The box it was in was there. But no phone. Spontaneous disappearances on cross country trucks? Must google this.....
5. My best friend, Sara Schommer. She moved away in 3rd grade and although it was only about 15 miles away, I only saw her once more and then never heard from her again. I understand that her parents divorced and she and her mother moved away. I think about her more often than you would expect after some 40 years. She was the only friend I ever had as a child who had a pool. And her own room painted a deep red, with a shelf all around it for her dollhouse and miniature furniture.
6. My friend, Grace. We grew up in the same place, and went to the same college, she a few years ahead. Mr. Pom knew her in high school. We became friends after I graduated college and began working with the alumni association, which she had a part in. We became very close, both working girls who could meet for lunch and discuss books and writing. She had a kid and I had a kid and then something just went wrong and she cut me off. I never knew what I said that upset her so and she refused to talk to me about it. I had given her a lot of baby toys that we had outgrown and one day, a box arrived packed full of all the toys. I just started to cry and called her and she was cool as ice. One day, about five years later, I called her out of the blue, and the reaction was the same. It's taken me years to get over it and I have  finally let it go, I miss her even now. I don't have any friends anymore I discuss writing and reading with.  At least not in real time.
7. Our cat, Tiger, who seems to have just left one day, after I was particularly mad at him for some transgression. I believe he knew I was angry, I'd probably showed my delight when he went out for his evening stroll. And that was it. We never found him again. He came into our life the same way, just strolled into the kitchen in Memphis the day we moved in and ten years later, he strolled out. I hope someone is taking good care of him, really, who knew he could be so spiteful?
8. Jobs. Or more specifically, job interviews. I can't count the number of job interviews I've been on where the interviewer has expressed all delight in me, giving me the details of the dental plan for god's sake and then....never hear a word about it again. It's an unsettling phenomenon. Makes one lose all self-confidence and causes one to doubt their common sense or ability to interpret reality. So never ask me for advice on job interviews.
9. Lotto tickets. Well, specifically the lottery I suppose. I'm sick of throwing my dollar into the office pool every week..but then, you know, the week I don't part with the 100 cents, is the week they'll all win and then I'll be the only one there and then I'll have to kill myself...
10. The children's Social Security cards, which I discovered when I had to register them for schools back in NY. I tore the house apart to no avail. I did all the paperwork, took them in person to the Social Security office after procrastinating about it for months, running in the day before school registration began. They came in the mail a few weeks later, and in order not to lose them again, I promptly took the envelopes upstairs, opened the desk drawer, took out the pendaflex hanging folder, opened the pink folder labeled "certificates, open it, and placed them in. Right next to the old Social Security cards. The ones that had been there all the time. The ones that mysteriously were never apparent the fifty times I looked for them over the two months' time. 

          Now we have two sets and I'm watching those suckers. The first time a set         tries to jump ship, I'll be there with the butterfly net.

List Friday - Can You Find It?

It's been a little chaotic at the Pomegranate household, what with the darlings home from college, and the celebratory events, and the celebrations, and the visitors and guests and work work work. We are all more disorganized than ever! Someone whose graduation is coming up (won't name names), can't even find where she put the graduation tickets.

Got me to thinking about stuff I've lost over the years. The kind of thing that I had once upon a time and then the next day, it was just....gone.

So for List Friday, give me 6 things you lost and never found again. Youth and virginity are not acceptable answers.

Tra~la!

Reading Matters

I am reading three books right now.

Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries, which I read about  on Toast and Honey.

 
Slater is England's Alice Waters (or it vice versa) and The Kitchen Diaries is full of pages that descripe broad breans drizzled with garlic and olive oil and orrechiette dressed with roasted tomatoes, garlic, and cream with basil leaves. It is organized by month so I keep it on my nighttable and force myself to only read it by month.

I also am reading Sarah Ban Breathnach's Moving On, her new book.

This book features the transition period in the author's life when she had to move past the break up of her marriage and establish her own household. I was swayed into buying this latest reincarnation of simple abundance because it supposedly focusing on setting up house. But after buying it, I wish I had considered the negative review in Amazon more strongly. The book is long on quotes and commentary and short on actually being about ....anything. There are parts that are enjoyable, but for the price, I didn't need to have another book to skim.

Lastly, I am reading Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert.

The book is a cross between the Slater's and Ban Breathnach's and ties together a lot of ideas on travel, writing, cooking, and eating. I've only read a few pages thus far but like it very much and it is an example of the type of book I'd like to write someday.

The three books make an interesting tutorial on writing about daily life, writing about cooking and eating according to the seasons, and about what not to do when you are writing a personal book and frankly, trying to wring yet another bestseller out of a proven formula.

But for me it is more about learning again and again how to write crisply and vividly about the details and particulars that grounds good personal writing and separates it from meandering, soft paragraphs full of theorizing and commentary. If you want to write right, drop all the quotes, the fanciful metaphors, the reaching for wisdom, and write about what is in your heart and what is in your pantry - your personal pantry, your personal life. People are more interested in what you plucked from your garden and sprinkled sea salt on than they are in your thoughts on Truth and Passion. Because, simply, Truth and Passion is in the vivid particulars of your life. Yours.

Saturday was sunny but blustery and a few times we were afraid that a tree would fall. I think it  was the Spirit being raised up in so many young people. The confirmation was the nicest I've ever been to, a perfect combination of ritual, song, and love. The Young One was very happy and we enjoyed a supper back at our house of antipasto and grilled steaks, and told stories of mischief and camping adventures when the kids were little. We were just the imemdiate family, the grandmothers, one of my mother's brothers, and his daughter, The Young One's sponsor. It was a welcome intimacy after last week's big party and I enjoyed being able to spend time with them around the table, breaking bread and just hanging out.

In a lovely bit of synchoronicity, the Bishop's homily concerned Evelyn Glennie, a percussionist from Scotland, who is profoundly deaf, and yet has made a Grammy-winning career as a musician. As he began to speak of seeing her documentary "Touch the Sound" , our eyes widened and we exchanged glances because she was the Commencement speaker at The Princess's graduation. On that day, we'd never heard of her, and as she spoke with a beautiful, rich Scottish accent, it took us a few minutes to understand that the deaf musician she was speaking of was herself.

Glennie was training to be a musician when she became deaf at age 12. At that point, she decided to become a percussionist and trained herself to feel the sound through her body, thus "touching the music". The Bishop used her experience as a metaphor to urge the young people to look past the artifice and problems of the church and to "touch the Spirit" and feel it touch them through the sacrament and  their daily lives.

Book Meme

Via  Lazy Cow's secret book blog (ok - secret to me) and

I don't do many memes, but I had to do this one - or turn in my women's literature major card! Just BOLD those you've read, ITALICIZE the ones you've been meaning to read and ??? the ones you have never heard of. Add your own comments at will.

Allcott, Louisa May--Little Women
Allende, Isabel--The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya--I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Atwood, Margaret--Cat's Eye
Austen, Jane - Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade--Salt Eaters??
Barnes, Djuna--Nightwoodde??
Beauvoir, Simone--The Second Sex
Blume, Judy--Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances--The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte--Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily--Wuthering Heights
Buck Pearl S.--The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.--Possession
Cather, Willa--My Antonia
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Christie, Agatha--Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra--The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary - that would be a no.
Cooper, Anna Julia--A Voice From the South??
Danticat, Edwidge--Breath, Eyes, Memory??
Davis, Angela--Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita--Clear Light of Day??
Dickinson, Emily--Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois--I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne--Rebecca
Eliot, George--Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi--Second Class Citizen??
Erdrich, Louise--Tracks
Esquivel, Laura--Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie--Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty--The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne--Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins--The Yellow Wallpaper
Gordimer, Nadine--July's People
Grafton, Sue--S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith--Mythology??
Highsmith, Patricia--The Talented Mr. Ripley ( does the movie count?)
hooks, bell--Bone Black??
Hurston, Zora Neale--Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet--Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl??
Jackson, Helen Hunt--Ramona
Jackson, Shirley--The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica--Fear of Flying (as in: who coined the term "the zipless fuck"..)
Keene, Carolyn--The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
Kidd, Sue Monk--The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica--Lucy??
Kingsolver, Barbara--The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong--The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella--Passing??
L'Engle, Madeleine--A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.--The Left Hand of Darkness?? (If this is SF I won't ever be reading it- me neither!).
Lee, Harper--To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris--The Golden Notebook (the book that changed my  life)
Lively, Penelope--Moon Tiger??
Lorde, Audre--The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.--The Babysitters Club Series (any of them)(I’m too old)
McCullers, Carson--The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry--Disappearing Acts.
Markandaya, Kamala--Nectar in a Sieve (read as part of 9th grade Honors Social Studies – I am such a nerd)
Marshall, Paule--Brown Girl, Brownstones??
Mitchell, Margaret--Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy--Anne of Green Gable
Morgan, Joan--When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost???
Morrison, Toni--Song of Solomon (read it, didn’t understand it)
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu--The Tale of Genji?
Munro, Alice--Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris--Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria--Mama Day?
Niffenegger, Audrey--The Time Traveller's Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol--We Were the Mulvaneys.
O'Connor, Flannery--A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge--Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi--My Sister's Keeper (I  will never read another one)
Sylvia Plath, Sylvia--The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne--Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie--The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn--The Fountainhead
Ray, Rachel--365: No Repeats (Why is she on a list of women WRITERS?)
Rhys, Jean--Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne--Housekeeping
Rocha, Sharon--For Laci (how did this make the list?)
Sebold, Alice--The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary--Frankenstein
Smith, Betty--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie--White Teeth
Spark, Muriel--The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (saw the movie)
Spyri, Johanna--Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth--Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle--The House (read one of hers – so forgettable, don’t know which)
Tan, Amy--The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah--You're Wearing That???
Ulrich, Laurel--A Midwife's Tale
Urquhart, Jane--Away??
Walker, Alice--The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora--One Writer's Beginnings (required reading for all writers!)
Wharton, Edith--Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls--Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary--A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia--A Room of One's Own
 

Come Saturday Morning

The flowered drapes are blown up like spinnakers as the early morning wind races through the French doors of my bedroom. I see a patch of blue over the trees but the air is cool, downright chilly in fact. After I stumble to the bathroom, I click off the ceiling fan that I turned on last night in the deep humidity that finally broke with yet another lashing of thunder and rain. Poor Fluffernutter. All loud noises disturb her, whether the Young One's drumming, or my shouting downstairs, or the thunder that has rolled across the heavens each night, it seems, for weeks.

The months of May and June have been blustery, more March gales than sweet spring rains. We've run from car to place in fancy clothes between the rain drops several times now as our little river of celebration docks at each port of call. This afternoon  is the the Young One's confirmation, the night before last was the awards ceremony at her school. In six weeks' time we've clicked the shutters, bought the flowers, decorated the cakes, and kissed and hugged with enough benefice to bless out family ten times over.

I am trying hard to see it all in freeze frame, instead of the blur of work/party/sleep that blinds us in our usual daze. In between, we've studied for this and that and written essays and finished projects and bought review books and tended to the dog, the house, the cars, the grandmothers. I want to feel the weight of each event in my heart and give each its solemnity and its joy and not mark it off in my head as one more tickler on my list now accomplished.

So today I give over to the Lord, for it is His due. I am grateful for the cool weather that will keep the young people from sweltering in red robes. I am leading my heart into gladness that Mr. Pom is able to sit through another milestone in his children's lives. I am happy to pick up the grandmothers and bring them into the circle of family and worship. And I am proud that my other two children still sit as family with us, and can be counted on for silly elbows  in the ribs during an overly long service.

I am  amazed at my lovely cousin who will be the Young One's sponsor. I am amazed and joyous that we have become friends in our grown up lives, she who took some of her first steps  in our house, and that our families have become so close and refer to each other as our  "Cape Cod Cousins". It's no surprise that my daughter chose her as her sponsor - who else there will have a sponsor there that will be both a role model for leading a Christian life and for boogie boarding with her kids in the waves on a rainy, cold day in Eastham? 

And the Young One? She is wholesomely and thoroughly herself, with no artifice about her whatsoever. She neither complains nor asks for more, and is content wherever she is. Smetimes I feel as though she is years older than I in her understanding of herself. Of course, she is a teenager, and and we have our moments over the usual bits and pieces of homework and studying. But when the pressures of school give way, she navigates her own waters, always able to amuse herself,  is easily pleased, and approaches her day in easy mood. Today, the Bishop will bless her and welcome her into the church as an adult and we will have brought three children up in the eyes of God.

List Friday - Rescue Me!

So the house is burning, there's an earthquake, tidal surge, hurricane, blizzard, or bird flu, and I have five minutes to grab ten things I can't leave behind:

1. I have a big vintage suitcase bought at a garage sale in Memphis and it is full of all our photographs from 1984 onwards. I have some other small albums filled with photos, but this is the mother lode. I'd also grab the scrapbooks I made for The Princess and Mystery Man when they graduated high school.
2. The collage I made of photos of my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and aunt that was published in Somerset Studio and now hangs by  my front door - convenient to grab.
3. On the way down the stairs, I'll also grab my Cape Cod artist journal, The Name of the Rose artist book, and my Faith artist book. I'll count those as one.
4. The framed photograph of my backyard gate in Memphis. My dear friend pat painted the mat with hydrangeas and all our friends signed it on the back at our going away party.
5. My great-grandmother's crystal wine glasses.
6. My grandmother's pottery urn with the bee design and the two blue vases my uncle brought back from Dresden during the Korean War.
7. I have a few folders in the desk with pertinent bank, Social Security, birth and marriage certificates.
8. the large silver thimble that my parents gave me as a gift and I use as a vase for nosegays.
9. my grandmother's cranberry  cut glass glass lamp
10. Wah - I'm at ten already?? What about the books? Hell, I guess I'd better take some clothes. Nah, I'll just buy all new, right? My fabric collection? The English tilt-top table Mr. Pom gave me for our first anniversary? My favorite pillow. For sure the dog leash. My laptop!! No, screw all that, I'll just take the big basket under my desk that has all the baby dishes from my babies.  Oh, and the ceramic jointed bear clown that my aunt and uncle gave Mystery Man.

I did this for fun, but now that I'm really thinking about it, this would be an incredibly difficult task. Basically, I'd only want my most meaningful artwork and the items that have great sentimental value. I'd make sure I had my wedding rings, the necklace Mr. Pom gave me for our anniversary, and a pair of shoes so I could run down the street carrying the lamp, the wine glasses, and the baby dishes, and run fast enough that Mr. Pom couldn't grab me and make me put it all down, for sure that I'd lost my mind.  When you come right down to it, I'd probably grab that suitcase of photos, ride it down the stairs like a sled, and then push it out the front door.

And in this year of world disasters, I am grateful that I have not had to put this into effect and wary enough to really consider making a disaster plan.

List Friday - Rescue Me!

Okay, so it's cold, rainy, midweek, and I'm bored.

My thoughts turn to what I would do if.....

As in what would I do if the house burned down/I heard the tornado sirens/there was a natural disaster....

Doesn't your mind turn to obsessively morbid thoughts when you're bored?

No?

Well then, you may not want to play:

List ten things you'd grab from your house in a natural disaster. And they cannot include your family or your pets. We know you'd grab them (though those turtles in the basement don't stand a chance in hell if the house is one fire....)

Back to ruminating about things over which I have no control.

Rehearsing My Past or Deja Vu All Over Again

Last night, the Young One  had confirmation practice. Because her sponsor lives over a hundred miles away, I stood in during the rehearsal.

We were told to line up in height order. This is a touchy subject in our household, as the girls are petite. The pastor, school principal, and religious education director determined that The Young One was was the shortest, and thus the first in line for  the girls. She was none too pleased.

Another young lady came in late and to me, she appeared smaller than The Young One, and we moved back, but she protested and the school principal weighed in with her opinion that the other young lady was just a hair taller than The Young One. The pastor was looking rather critically at me as I eyeballed the height of the two girls.

As The Young One and I led the girls line through the school from the gym to the church, the smell of floor wax and cleanser and the hurried two step behind the pastor and principal plunged me back decades to my own grammar school.

Suddenly I was back in 5th grade and walking with my class all the way down 3 steep flights of stairs to leave for the day when some kid talked  and our teacher, Sr. Ann Bernadette, made us walk all the way back up, go into the classroom, regroup, and walk back down before we could be dismissed.

The memory reaffirmed our decision years ago to send the children to public schools.

[Thinking back on it, that nun must have been in great shape if she was willing to walk down 3 flights of stairs and then back up and down again because someone (me) talked on the very last step. I swear she seemed to be about 80 to me back then. She was probably younger than I am now.]

And frankly, having spent some time as a substitute teacher, I can't say that I mind the discipline. I'd like to have some of that authority in my life today.

But what's with the need to line people up according to size? What does the sacrament of Confirmation have to do with people being in height order? Would they line them up from thin to fat? Or from palest skin to darkest?  What is wrong with seeing the variety of heights, weights, shades of skin, and all the diversity of the young people as they process into church? What is this need with order?? And why do I bristle so when the 58 year old priest in street clothes starts telling my kid that she's the shortest in the room?

Really, it made me itch, then I wanted to sound off, but one look at The Young One's face made me shut up quickly, and I spent the rest of the rehearsal feeling like the pastor was narrowing his eyes at me. In the front seat. Of the first row.

He knows he hasn't seen us lately in the communion line.

He knows he doesn't know our names.

He wonders whether he'll see us again after the sacrament is received.

He knows I was pissed that my kid was singled out against her will.

He knows I'll forget to tell her sponsor when to stand and sit and what hand to put on The Young One's  shoulder during the service.

He knows I've shopped around for a new church.

He knows that I'm a sinner.

It's amazing how much emotion wallop can be packed into a 45 minute confirmation rehearsal.

Is it a coincidence that today is 6-6-06?

I think not.

The Party Continues

The Big Party. Pouring down buckets of rain, we pickup friends, grandmothers, cakes, balloons, gifts, and cookies, and make our way up flooded parkways, some of us missing exits and going off into the wilds, but eventually all ending up, here, where the main questions was: "Where should we put the umbrellas/brollies/bumpers?" (Note politically correct international translations.)

The place looks great, but I am more concerned about getting the giant cake into the restaurant without it falling into the gutter full of rushing muddy rain water and melting into an expensive mass of pink sugar and chocolate shells.

The generations mingle, young and old.

Boys are held aloft by gentle giants.

And others wait their turn.

This was the cool table.

After antipasti, pizza, chicken fingers, salad, veal marsala, sole stuffed with crabmeat, and cake, all washed down with copious pitchers of Shirley Temples, there was nothing left to do but attack the balloons.

The party continued at our house afterwards, where all the kids went outside and played softball in the rain, and the grown ups sprawled on the sofas and complained they were about to burst but if there were any more cookies from the bakery and if someone made a pot of coffee, they could eat.

The women ended up in the living room, discussing how much we missed the cookies our aunt used to make for every family occasion and now we had to resort to bakery cookies at an obscene amount per pound. Then the cousins, aunts, mothers, and grandmothers, began comparing the recipe that they'd all been given from the dear aunt, and the analysis led to revelations that  certain versions of the recipe did not contain all the ingredients or all the correct proportions and was it possible, yes it was true, that those recipes may have been doctored, and finally it was agreed that she had indeed taken the the original recipe with her to the grave. Which is sad, but for me, not so bad because I am willing to sample all the experimental batches until one of us, one day, gets it right. Or one of them, actually, because I tried to make them once and they were like hockey pucks. 

Only two more events before this celebration of life passages are over. next week is the actual confirmation, end of June is the Young One's actual graduation. The party is over, but you know we'll have to have everyone back after the confirmations at least for burgers, and after the graduation, go out for dinner, and Mystery Man's girlfriend will be here for 2 weeks from Florida for his birthday, which happens to be on Father's Day.....

Mr. Pom and I are planning to go away for the Fourth of July, alone, separately, to caves where we will sleep and eat roots and berries, and not spend any money. Don't expect pictures. 

Special Bonus List Satuday!

Day:                 Saturday

Time:               6:27 a.m.

Mood:              Hyper/OCD

Reason:            Day of girls' grad and confirmation party

To Do:             pick up cake and 2 platters of cookies
                       buy balloons and flowers
                       get clothes out of cleaners
                       wash hair dry hair spray hair with cement*
                       get family assembled in clean clothes by 1:15
                       get grandmothers picked up

*see below

Weather:            last weekend:

Weather:            this weekend:

Decision to have at a restaurant and not in my backyard:

Priceless.

List Friday: The Muses

I found my  muse, I can't say where or how, but I found her again and you'll be happy to know it's not Bitch Lawyer, (tho she can be fun) nor is it I(nner) C(ritic) that drunken whore, (tho I heard from her and she's definitely coming for a summer visit, so lock up the vodka, your husbands, and male friends).

In no particular order, here's what I need to sample in some form each week in order to avoid bedhead - i.e. that flattened back of head hairdo I get when I've spent all waking hours after work watching sitcoms and crime shows instead of doing something:

• books - you  know that song from South Pacific: "There ain't nothin' like a dame" - well, there ain't nothin' like a book (please sing along in your falsetto). Good writing makes my mind race and my fingers itch to write and before I know it, I've filled a journal page with idea sor broke out the laptop and started afresh (again) on those novels....
• Broadway show albums - see above reference to South Pacific, add West Side Story, and anything sung by Ethel Merman. Ask Mr. Pom. He's seen the entire Pomegranate sisterhood break out in song around the living room without a karaoke machine in sight. Just play us "There's no business like show business" and we will soon morph into playing all the characters in "The King and I".
• Company in the studio. Sometimes I need absolute silence and isolation to get the work done. But when I want to play, or get inspired, or just futz around, I like to have someone else there to play off of. My dream is a studio with space for two. Right now There's space for one to work and one to sit and look through my stuff, but one of these days, I'm moving up to the third floor and putting in dormers with giant windows and those white curtains blowing in the breeze.
• Salt water. Preferably with an inland breeze. The blue expanse of Long Island Sound. The limitless horizon of the Atlantic off Nauset Beach, even the turquoise of a swimming pool. I am not an Aquarian for nothing. Water heals what sun can't cure.
• Balance. I've been seriously out of whack since Christmas. Too much sturm and drang at work, at home, in my head, and in my gut. Something shifted inside me this week, and after a stressful day with issues at home, and coming off of a disastrous month at work, I somehow just let it all go a day or two ago. I almost felt the "click" that my yin and yang were back in sync.  The longer days and the evening light have garnered me a little space.
• Let the outside in. Walk after dinner, a drive down to the water, A quick pull of all the weeds along the front walk, and sitting on the porch.
• Handwork. I used to piece and quilt by hand. Then I learned to strip piece and quilt by machine. Then I dropped it all to draw, paint, and immerse myself in mixed media. Then I started knitting. And now somehow, I am hand piecing, using all new fabrics, but with my aunt's old threads which are surprisingly still sturdy. god, I've forgotten how much I like to sit in a crowd and just work on my stuff, listening to others talk, chiming in once in awhile, but keeping myself centered on what's in my hands.
• And of course, chocolate, coffee, coffee-flavored chocolate, and then more coffee and bittersweet chocolate.  Chocolatinis. Kalhua. Mudslides. It's all in the endorphins, and in my mouth, and on my thighs. And I really don't give a damn!

A Fresh Breeze

I am eagerly waiting for all your suggestions for creativity block  busters, and just thinking about it has revved up my enthusiasm and so I bring you a fresh summer look for the old pomegranatesandpaper. Just an aside, but y'all do know that it is pomegranates and paper, righty-o? I've had more than a few people write and ask me, "exactly what is pomegranate sandpaper - some kind of art supply?"

Eh, no.

When I started this blog, it used to have a tag line that said:
"We all have stories to tell, and mine are of the beautiful necessities:
paint, paper, pen and ink, and the weight of a red, ripe, pomegranate in my hand".

So that's how it started.

And that's what it's going back to.

I started this blog as an outlet for me, as a way for me to practice my writing each day, and to record the beautiful things in my life. Over the two and half years, it has evolved me into a "what I did today" blog and I've had more than my share of bitching and moaning and shaking my fist at the heavens. I'll never pretend that being an artist and writer is all that I do, nor will I ever pretend that I don't have a full, stressful, hectic life, but I will return here to sharing all of the joys of being an artist and writer and how that has enriched my life - some may even say, saved my life - or at the very least, my sanity.

If I don't get back to what drew me to blogging in the first place, then I  may shut it down altogether. If it's become a habit, a duty, a drag, if I feel that there is always more that I can't say than I can, then what is the point?

I think the answer is in refocusing, shifting back to the paradigm of writing about the beautiful necessities - with a little salt and pepper to spice it up.

So today I bring you a new look, a fresh start, and a return to all things that nourish and entertain and cause us to slow down and take a second look.

After all, it's porch season - time to light the candles, brew the coffee, pull out the the wicker table and watch the fireflies come flit through the birch trees.

Relax, pull up a chair, and join me.