Oh, Dem Bones!

Moving with two busy little boys, ages two and four, was a challenge.  Doing so a few days before Christmas was madness.  Trying to stick to established routines and schedules . . . impossible!

“How will Santa know where to bring our presents?” my older boy worried.

“How will I ever be ready for the holidays?” I worried.

By that spring the new house had grown a layer of dust.  Winter mud had given way to a big hole destined to become our swimming pool.  And the months had given me some perspective regarding the move.

“I’m never going to do that again,” I said.   “Next time I move, it will be feet first in a wooden box.”

That summer, the boys watched in awe as their father built a wooden box.  The container was long, narrow and about two feet deep.  Just the right size . . . for their air mattresses and pool toys.  Whatever the reason, my comment alluding to death didn’t faze the kids.  Their childish bickering played with the idea of burying mom under the redwood trees.

“You have to dig the hole,” little brother said.  “You’re bigger than me.”

“I’ll dig the end for her head,” big brother countered.  “You dig the end for her feet.”

The depth of their concern was shallower than the imagined grave.

Years later, a very dear friend lost his battle with cancer.  His wife followed him three months later after elective knee surgery caused a blood clot.  Shock waves crashed over their family and friends.  Ken and I reached out to the couple’s young adult children, but their grief was beyond consolation.

We resolved to take steps to spare our sons from ever having to make the hard decisions an unexpected death throws at families.  But, we’re frugal.  Strike that.  We’re cheap.  So we checked the classified section of the local paper and bought a second-hand, double-wide burial plot.

It’s not as bad as it sounds.  Let me explain.  A couple  purchased the plot, then decided “to death do you part” wasn’t in their future.  Lucky us!  We picked up the “like new” parcel at a bargain basement price.  The term double-wide means my love and I will rest in eternity beside one another, not in a double-decker berth.  Equality even in death – neither of us will find ourselves in the deeper, damper, darker suite.

I gave Ken free rein to choose suitable boxes for us.  I wasn’t psychologically prepared to visit the sales floor where rows of caskets with open lids displayed satin interior accoutrements in flattering pastels.   Oak, mahogany, steel, copper.  I really didn’t care.

“Surprise me,” I told him.

The cemetery allows patrons to pay up front.  Funds are held in an interest-earning escrow account and the final costs are locked in.  (Not unlike the occupants of the aforementioned boxes.)  To calculate the bottom line, it was necessary for us to choose our headstone.  By this point in the process, the only way I could maintain my equilibrium was to throw in some levity.  I’m not sure the mortuary rep appreciated my humor.

“The bronze headstone you’ve chosen will be created in the next few weeks,” he explained.  “Your names and dates will be engraved and the stone will be stored until the time of need.”

“Dates?” I asked.  “Plural?   Do we get to choose the date of our deaths?”

“Um,” the poor man seemed flummoxed.  “Date of birth engraved now.  Date of death filled in later.”

The stone would be stored?  My mind played with that idea and I turned to Ken.

“Maybe we should keep the bronze plaque at home.  I’m thinking the slab would make a one-of-a-kind coffee table.  You know, add legs and a glass top.  Voila!  Quite the conversation starter.”

We didn’t need another coffee table, and I seemed to be the only one in the room who was amused.

Fast forward to the present.

My dog loves walking through the gold rush era cemetery here in Nevada City.  I try to tell myself it’s the trees full of squirrels that interest her, not the ground full of bones.   We wander through the leaf-strewn area, taking in the less-than-subtle arrangement of burial sites.  The lower level has rows of nameless wooden crosses and markers in various stages of decay and disrepair.  The land at the uphill edge has family plots enclosed by wrought iron fences.  Stone markers cite names and dates going back to the 1850s.

A single monument, the bigger-than-life focus at the heart of the property, marks the final resting place of Aaron Augustus Sargent, 1827-1887.  The back of his shrine  reads “Printer, Lawyer, Senator, Minister, Plenipotentiary.”  Mr. Sargent was the author of  Congress’ Pacific Railroad Act.  But even more noteworthy, according to Wikipedia, he “introduced the 29 words that would later become the 19th Amendment … allowing women the right to vote.”  It seems the senator’s wife was a close friend of suffragette Susan B. Anthony, and quite persuasive.

Standing in the quiet of the deserted cemetery, I memorized the spelling of “plenipotentiary” so I could consult my Funk and Wagnalls back at home.  Turns out, good old Aaron was the US emissary to Germany.  The term refers to such dignitaries who wield the powers of the Federal government while abroad.  How’s that for a word of the week?

I learned two things from the senator.  First, if Ken listened to me like A. A. Sargent listened to his wife, I’d have a very unique coffee table.  Second, I need to find some obscure words to add to the back of my tombstone in order to amuse and inform future generations.  Those words will mean “odd sense of humor” and “annoyingly persistent.”

A Fish Story

     Each year during breakfast on the day before Christmas, my Dad would announce that even though his office was closed, he needed to go in for a while.  Mom nodded, and hours later he returned with boxes, bags and a satisfied smile.  One might think Dad was a natural procrastinater, but I actually believe he liked the hustle and bustle of what used to be the busiest shopping day of the year.  Whatever the truth, Dad’s routine was predictable and his gifts were not.

     When I was in college, he took my breath away with an aquarium kit: ten gallon tank, filter, heater, decorative gravel.  The whole shebang.  Even a gift certificate redeemable for  fish.  I’d had lots of half-dead carnival goldfish as a child.  Generations of fan-tailed male guppies and their plain Jane female counterparts had even taught me a little something about multiplication.  And once, Grandma sent away for a pair of mail-order seahorses.  But the package arrived with two desicated corpses and a  disagreeable odor, so I’d never had tropical fish!  I assembled the tank and exchanged my certificate for schooling neon tetras and a pair of “glass” catfish (their transparent flesh makes the skeletons visible).

     Maybe Dad was trying to augment my education, because I learned more from his gift than many of my classes.  First off, the pH of aquarium water matters.  My Chem 1A prof at Cal can be forgiven for not mentioning this fact.  But the owner of the pet store should’ve let me in on the secret.  If he had, he could’ve sold me a pH test kit.  Since he hadn’t, he got to sell me a batch of replacement fish.  Method to his madness?

     One hard lesson followed another until I eventually had a pretty good handle on how not to kill fish.  I even learned to select fish that wouldn’t kill each other.  The tank moved with me into a cozy apartment when I got married.  My groom discovered he liked having an aquarium, too.  Just not in the bedroom.  Something about the constant burble of bubbles . . . . 

     Our nights on the town often included visits to aquarium shops.  We invested in a succession of ever-larger tanks, elaborate stands, aquatic plants and exotic fish.  Red tailed sharks were always a favorite.  The hobby followed us into our first home, then our second.  Our children delighted in their “pets.”  Eventually the challenge of keeping the tank clean and healthy became a chore and when the carpet needed to be replaced, the set-up was stored in the attic.

     Five years passed.  Son Number One caught a crayfish at Clear Lake and brought her home.  [You can read about "Garbanza" in my November 2012 post, "The Birds and the Bees (and Crayfish, Too)"]  The old tank was resurrected and our son fell victim to aquarium fever.

     His freshman dorm at San Jose State allowed small tanks, so it wasn’t long before his favorite oscar moved on-campus.  My son has always had a knack for  — hmm, the word “scams” seems so harsh — entrepreneurial schemes.   This oscar preferred live food and would actually eat feeder fish (young goldfish) out of my son’s fingers.  By buying ten feeders for a buck, and charging his fellow dorm dwellers a quarter to feed the oscar, my son had a lucrative side business and his fish grew  fat and sassy.

     A change of colleges (his decision, not the administration’s) brought this young man back under my roof.  Somehow or other he ended up with a second, considerably larger tank to accommodate an arawana, an eel-like creature native to the Amazon basin.  The fish’s iridescent scales shimmied as it swam the length of the tank, trolling  the water’s surface non-stop with two feelers in case an errant fly or jungle snake might have fallen within reach.  As the fish increased in size, the tank’s lid had to be weighted down with books (the only real use my son had for his courses’ required tomes) to prevent this 16-ish inch-long, leaping arawana from landing on the bedroom floor and thrashing about until it could be re-captured in a towel. 

     “Larry” moved with my son to his first house.  A tank built just for this denison of the not-so-deep (eight feet long by only about a foot deep), was created.  But that wasn’t enough for my son.  He dug a koi pond in his backyard and adorned it with a waterfall.  Then he knocked out an interior wall and built an aquarium viewable from two rooms  in the void.  Truly, he was a man possessed.

     My youngest son was only eight when he succumbed to the aquarium bug.  The same symptoms Ken and I experienced as newlyweds manifested themselves in this little boy.  His first ten gallon tank was quickly outgrown.  He couldn’t spend enough time in the shops that catered to his cravings.  Yes, the oscars his brother enjoyed were interesting, but lion fish. . . .  Oh, lion fish!  They were hypnotic with their poisonous quills and insatiable appetites.

     My twelve-year-old had no use for a closet, since his clothing was happiest on the bedroom floor.  So, the sliding closet doors went into storage to make space for the biggest tank the kid could afford.  Thanks to a winning Bingo card, that tank was humongous.  I couldn’t really complain, though.  My boy was so happy.

     As a young man, this son realized he could support his habit by working for an aquarium store.  He drove to businesses and homes servicing other people’s tanks and saw wondrous things.  Wondrous, salt water things.  Wondrous, expensive, salt water things!  And the corals.   Ooo, the corals sang to him like those fabled sirens of the ancient mariners.  He’d found his calling. 

     Son Number Three has limited himself to three aquariums in his home.  But he now has his own business selling, setting up and maintaining fresh and salt water aquariums for individuals and businesses around the San Francisco Bay area.  He is also on the board of a “Coral Club” which brings members together to share and trade all manner of beautiful corals raised domestically, not ripped from the Earth’s endangered natural reefs. 

     He recently took Ken and me on a personal tour of the new Steinhart Aquarium in Golden Gate Park‘s Academy of Sciences.  While there, I thought about the hours I’d spent with him in shops, reading labels on row after row of tanks, teaching him what little I knew about fish.  That day he repaid me many times over by pointing out the intricacies of his favorite displays, helping me see them through his informed view of the aquatic world.

     Dad couldn’t have known what he was starting with that one Christmas present all those years ago.  How could he have foreseen the impact of his gift on generations not yet born?  And yet I know without a doubt, he would be very pleased to see my sons’ passion.

In the Name of Progress?

Maintaining the small town ambiance of a rural, foothill community is hard to balance with satisfying the needs and wants of the citizens.  Sometimes ordinances are passed to help draw that line in the forest.  For example, in Nevada City, diners can choose from an abundance of non-chain restaurants featuring vegan, organic, farm-to-table and even international fare.  We have everything from intimate coffee shops to dress-up-and-bring-your-American-Express-card haute cuisine.  But fast food establishments are verboten

Bumper stickers encourage us to patronize our hometown merchants rather than driving “down the hill” to the big box stores or spending our money online.  I get it.  People need to be able to make a living before they can afford to live here.  And by choosing to live here, we are choosing a certain lifestyle not found elsewhere.

That’s why I’m flummoxed by the County Supervisors’ decision to hire a construction firm from Minnesota to trench and lay the conduit for a modern fiber optic system which, if you believe the hype, will be a boon to local businesses.  Excuse me?  Last time I looked, Minnesota was waaay out of the neighborhood.

Considering the inherent expense of driving an armada of construction vehicles something like 2000 miles each way – wear and tear, fuel, labor costs, lodging and meals — how could that firm have out-bid California companies and still made a profit?  And, doesn’t the buy local slogan apply to our civic leaders when they’re spending our tax dollars?

I must admit to a moment of giddiness when I learned the caravan of interlopers had to re-route through TEXAS on its way to the left coast.  Something to do with severe winter storms in the Rockies.  I believe “it serves them right” was the phrase that came to mind.

Had the imported workers provided stellar service, I might not be so agitated by the whole situation.  But considering what I observed up-close-and-personal along the perimeter of my property, I seriously doubt we paid for anything we couldn’t have obtained closer to home.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  These Minnesota men were friendly to a fault.  (Although one of them actually told me he used to be a logger and was salivating at all the trees here.  No way to make friends.)  But they just weren’t always keeping their eyes on the, um, world around them.

At the height of construction, I picked my way across our very narrow street to get the mail.  Being a quick study, I immediately noticed something was different.  Oh, yeah, the mailbox was in the dirt and the splintered post had a distinct list to port.  Hmm.

“Excuse me,” I  said to the nearest worker, “would you please point out the guy in charge?”

“That guy,” the man in the ditch said, “the one with the white hard hat.”

“Sir,” I said, “there’s a problem with my mailbox.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir.  Last time I looked the box was attached to the post, which stood tall and straight.”

“Yeah.  The local cement company’s truck backed over it.”

“Are you sure?  The tire marks in the mud look pretty close together to be from a cement truck.”

“Uh, well, someone backed over it.  I dragged the box out of the street.”

“Okay, then.”  An awkward silence.  I’m thinking this guy has something to hide and it’s just a matter of time before he rolls over on the culprit.  He stares at me, waiting.  “So, how do I get your company to do something about repairing the damage?”

Our mail delivery person had prudently decided not to leave our letters in the grounded box, so I walked Shadow instead of paying bills.  A hundred yards downhill we came to a soaring 120+ foot tall cedar standing beside the road.  A section of the external “cork cambium” eighteen inches wide and eight feet high had been skinned clean off the tree, exposing the moist “living phloem” beneath.

I called my husband to alert him to the newest issue.  A different White Hat assured Ken his company was as concerned about the environment as we were.  Steps would be taken to mediate this unfortunate accident.  Ken got the man’s card and took the issue to the county.  Should the tree die and need to be removed (it towers over power lines), we don’t want to cough up the price.

Heavy rain the next day prevented further trenching, but White Hat showed up to correct the mailbox problem.  He faced the scene of the crime, boards in hand, scratching his head.  A new 4 x 4 post and a bag of concrete mix were visible in the bed of his pick-up.  He had no shovel, no saw, no idea what the original installation had looked like . . . .

“Tell you what,” my detail oriented husband told the man.  “You dig out the old post, get rid of the old wood and concrete, and set the new post.  I’ll do the rest.”

The rain turned to intermittent showers and the crew returned to fight another day.  Their trenching machinery snagged our up-hill neighbors’ irrigation water line, sending a flood of muddy water, gravel and miscellaneous flotsam down the road.  Next, the drilling team charged with tunneling under our driveway to connect the trenches on either side nicked an electrical conduit.  Just like that six families were without irrigation water and four homes lost power.  Another interesting day in paradise.

Several weeks have passed.  The trucks and men have left the room.  Mail delivery has resumed but our tree is still naked.  There are places where the ends of the tubing which will eventually hold those all-important fiber optic cables have not yet been connected.  I suspect the guys who left the mess are thinking, “Not my problem.”

Really?  The Nevada County supervisors couldn’t have found a local contractor capable of such mayhem?

Maybe I’m just wicked, but I do take solace knowing the Minnesotans left a spanking new $7500 drilling bit, the attached transmission and many feet of metal driver buried on my property,  twelve feet down and wedged between three huge granite boulders.

You betcha.

The 2013 Big Sur Writers Workshop

This may be hard for young readers to believe, but there was a time when cars did not come equipped with flat screen TVs. We had cigarette lighters but no jacks for MP3 players. The concept of satellite connections for “e” gadgets like iPads and iPods was pure science fiction. Texting didn’t exist and phones were not even mobile, much less smart.

Road trips in that dark age depended on radio, cassette tapes and conversation to pass the miles. When my family tired of listening to Bert and Ernie sing “Rubber Ducky,” and didn’t feel like hearing the soundtrack from Disney’s “The Rescuers” for the 57th time, I often read to my sweet little boys, thereby short-circuiting their verbal and physical outbursts of sibling rivalry.

As the boys grew, so did their taste in reading material.  We graduated from picture books to Stuart Little and Ramona the Pest.  Then we moved on to pretty much anything written by Roald Dahl.  (All these years later I can still do a reasonable rendition of the Oompa Loompa song.)  Somewhere around 1985, traveling the looong road from San Francisco’s East Bay Area to Truckee in the Sierra Nevadas, an important truth dawned on me.

This world needs more contemporary, realistic adventure books for boys.

We passed a cement truck emblazoned with the slogan, “Find a need and fill it.”  The possibility of writing what I would come to know as ”middle grade” novels jarred me like a blow-out in the fast lane.  But, I ask you, how long can a woman hit her head against the same wall before wondering, is the hope of becoming a published author really worth the pain?

Twenty-eight years of rejection letters, writers club meetings, rejection letters, conferences, rejection letters, workshops, rejection letters and critique groups have delivered me to the era of self-publishing – a new-ish wrinkle in the fabric of the literary world.   I’ve asked myself,  do I want to go it alone with neither agent nor editor to help me navigate the pitfalls and typos of the do-it-yourself world?  For me, the short answer is, no.

Or, should I dust off that pair of tap shoes hiding on the top shelf of my closet and re-visit an old hobby?

Enter the Big Sur Writers Workshop, co-sponsored twice annually by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur and the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.  In December the BSWW is held in Big Sur; in March the venue shifts to the Embassy Suites Monterey – Seaside.  I’d heard rave reviews of this workshop for years, but was intimidated.  REAL writers attend the BSWW, paying big bucks for the privilege.  What if I applied and wasn’t accepted?  How embarrassing would that be?  Even worse, what if I was accepted and made a fool of myself?

A friend’s encouragement and my husband’s support tipped the scales.  The friend and I loaded up and headed south at 7:30  Friday morning with fingers crossed and manuscripts packed.  The workshop began promptly at 2:00 that afternoon.  Once schedules, name tags and critique group assignments had been distributed, Andrea Brown herself (an impressive personality in a petite body) admonished us to make the most our time.  This was Writing Boot Camp, not a three-day two-night vacation.

My friend and I took Andrea’s words to heart.  We abandoned our comfort zones and reached out to introduce ourselves to the thirteen agents, editors and published authors who comprised the faculty.  We stayed up late revising critiqued pages.  We never left the confines of the hotel, ignoring the lure of Carmel, Monterey and, hardest of all for me, the Pacific Ocean.  These temptations must have been even harder to ignore for those among the 55 attendees who traveled to the workshop from faraway places like Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, Kansas and Arizona.

Four wannabe authors and one faculty member comprised each critique group.  Each of the groups’ four sessions lasted two short hours.   The serious mindset of my fellow students made for productive interactions.  But the humor inherent in some stories also led to riotous bursts of laughter.  Some of my new friends’ phrases and scenes have stayed with me:  an eighth grade couple “cupcaking;” a sock monkey refusing to behave for the crown prince; boys at a public pool “drowning in love” to capture the female lifeguard’s attention.

Panel discussions, one by the editors and another by the agents, were informative and entertaining.  A group session to share and evaluate query letters shed light on that mysterious art.  Magnus Toren, curator of the Henry Miller Library, shared Miller’s own words about writing and even serenaded us with a song about why Marilyn Monroe’s picture is not in the library.  (Hint: Think Arthur Miller, not Henry Miller.)

Exhausted and exhilarated, my friend and I drove the 250 miles home Sunday.

Was the BSWW worth the price?  Oh, yeah.  Every penny.  Will I break out the tap shoes?  Maybe some day, but not yet.  I’m anxious to begin yet another revision of my manuscript, armed with new insights and a pinch of self-confidence, giving the process my best shot.

A number of the writers I met over the past few days are sure to succeed.  Their stories and talent are too special not to win acclaim.  I look forward to seeing their volumes gracing the shelves of my local book stores in the near future.

It’s Only Hair

    Once upon a time I knew a man who had a hair salon and more opinions than all the women of The View combined.  Social and political commentary washed over his patrons like shampoo.  I, for the most part, let him rant because he had a unique talent for coaxing my unruly hair into submission.  My tangled locks entered his domain as belligerent as Medusa‘s snake-snarled mane and exited an hour later as obedient Rapunzel‘s golden tresses.

Alas, our fairy tale relationship was not meant to be and ended abruptly.  The local newspaper held my hairdresser’s rapt attention when I arrived one day.  An article about Planned Parenthood, high school students, picketing parents and the town’s police had him in a rage.  I had read the same article with interest that morning and was not surprised the two of us took opposing stands on the issues.

Never argue with a man wielding well-honed scissors.  The more we talked, the less we agreed.  The longer he worked, the shorter my hair became.  By the end of my final appointment with this man, I looked as though I’d fallen head first into a hay mower.  The sheer horror (perhaps I should say shear horror) of my reflection in the mirror sent me scurrying home via back roads in hopes of not being recognized.

“It’s only hair,” I reassured myself.  “Hair grows.”

Born bald, tow-headed as a two-year-old, by my teens my hair had faded to American mouse brown.  At thirty, strands of gray proved Mom’s genes had triumphed over dark-haired Dad’s.  I tried to return to my blond roots for a time, but realized I was too lazy and too cheap to keep the gray roots at bay.  I used to think of myself as “pre-maturely gray,” but at this age I’m just plain gray.

It’s only hair.

I remember my tenth grade English teacher, a lovely but corpulent lady, carrying on the morning after the Beatles‘ US debut on the Ed Sullivan Show.  She shimmied and squealed in front of the class, shaking her head to an unheard rhythm as she imitated the group that would come to be known as the Fab Four.

“Their music wasn’t bad,” she said, “but couldn’t they afford to get their hair cut?”

Two years later I summoned the courage to prepare my father to meet my prom date.  Dad was a straight arrow, a no-nonsense kind of guy.  He knew what he liked, and it wasn’t long-haired hippies.

“Dad,” I paused, groping for the right words, “he’s very smart, even if his hair is a little longer than yours.”

     My youngest son has never been one to worry about what others think of him.  At the ripe old age of eight he decided it would be fun to have a mohawk.  I shaved the sides of his head the same afternoon second grade recessed for summer vacation.  I tried to ignore the stares as our family walked into church the following Sunday.  The next day my boy began swimming lessons at a community pool some miles from our house.  No one there knew us.  I settled into a plastic chair to watch the lesson, positioning myself in the shade behind a group of mothers clustered in the hot afternoon sun.

“Who is that?” one of the woman screeched, pointing at the water.  ” Who’s the boy with the mohawk?”

I took my shaver to the final class and offered free haircuts for all takers, but not one mother took advantage of my largess.

“It’s only hair,” I called over my shoulder as we left.

Same son, fourteen years later.  His hair was shoulder length, wavy and dark brown.  Picture him with facial hair and a win-or-die attitude and you’ll understand why his Ultimate Frisbee teammates nicknamed him “Evil Jesus.”  Sitting in the bleachers at his final UCSB game, bursting with pride at his on-field performance and off-field mentoring of the younger “Black Tide” players, I had no trouble showing other parents which player was my son.

I’ve learned much from my kids over the years.  Baseball terminology.  How to belch on demand.  When to bite my tongue.  And yet I still have trouble ignoring bad hair days.  One good thing about winter is nobody stares when I wear a knit hat pulled down over my ears.

Bald.  Blond.  Brunette.  Gray.  Thinning.

It’s only hair.

Rockwell

     Prolific.  That’s the first word that came to mind  after visiting the Norman Rockwell exhibit on display at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, California, through February 3rd.   Three galleries are devoted to Rockwell’s work, and even so there is only space for a small fraction of his thousands of pieces. 

     All 323 of Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers are hung, arranged in chronological order.  My friend and I merged with an impressive crowd on a weekday morning and took our time enjoying each and every illustration.  Many made me laugh out loud: boys in various stages of undress, looking over their shoulders as they race away from a “no swimming” sign; Willie Gillis, Rockwell’s iconic WWII soldier, holding a package from home, surrounded by other soldiers of every rank and description, all hoping for a share of the booty; the frustrated husband and wife facing off across their kitchen table, each holding campaign literature for opposing politicians.  

     I’m struck by how many words it takes me to even begin to describe any of Norman Rockwell’s paintings.  A brief documentary at the museum quoted the artist as saying, “I love to tell stories in pictures.”  And tell them he did, without a single caption.  “The Post could expect to sell an extra quarter-million copies of every issue with a Rockwell cover.”  [Judy Goffman Cutler, American Illustrators Gallery, NYC]

    Although the Post covers may be Norman Rockwell’s most well-known illustrations, he pursued many other artistic adventures.  A series of four paintings helped sell war bonds.  He illustrated ads for raisins and toothpaste.  He created the poster for ”Stagecoach,” a successful 1966 western, and even had a cameo in the film, playing  Busted Flush, a luckless gambler.     Portraits of presidents, world leaders and stars of stage and screen looked more like photographs than paintings. 

     Rockwell often worked with models, posing them just so.  He would demonstrate facial expressions and physical positions for them to imitate.  Sometimes a person’s leg or arm would have to be propped up with a stack of books or held in place with ropes and pulleys as Rockwell strived to get everything just right.  Only then would he have his photographer take the pictures from which he would later work.

     Normal Rockwell chronicled an idealized image of American life for decades.  His first Post cover appeared in 1916, his last in 1963.   He presented common themes with uncommon insight.  His audience never had to wonder what a picture meant.  Social issues and politics were fair game, but everyday events were more typical subjects of study.

                                  

     The subtle details Mr. Rockwell included in each of his scenes added such depth.  The longer I studied a piece, the more I noticed.   And even then, sometimes as I began to move on to the next display my friend would lean over and point out something I hadn’t seen. 

     I’ve been told poetry demands thoughtful word choices, every syllable matters.  If so, poetry must be the literary equivalent of Rockwell’s art where every brush stroke serves a purpose.  If you’re planning to be in the area of the American River Parkway or Old Town Sacramento and have the chance, I encourage you to see this exhibit.  Norman Rockwell won’t disappoint, nor will he waste a moment of your time.   www.crockerartmuseum.org

Resolutions

     Conjure up a mental image of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Throngs of people dressed to face the frigid elements, New York City’s posh multi-laned streets, precision marching bands, elegant floats, the iconic, building-sized balloons….  Now, imagine that parade’s polar opposite.  Got it?  Scotty, beam us down to Lakeside Drive in the City of Clearlake to witness the annual Fourth of July parade.

Neighbors who have spent summers at Clear Lake every year for decades, entered the parade several times back in the 1990s.  We tried our best to entertain the assembled gawkers, and succeeded at amusing ourselves.  We recruited a cast of thousands for our first effort, portraying all the characters from Peter Pan.  Sadly, many of the children lining the parade route failed to recognize Peter, Wendy, John, Michael, Captain Hook and Smee in their pirate ship, Tinkerbell, the hand-severing crocodile, the Lost Boys or the Indians.

Our final effort found us acting out a scene from Robert McCloskey‘s picture book, Make Way for Ducklings.  I was the policeman who stopped traffic so mother duck and her hatchlings could find safe passage from their nest to the pond in the Public Garden.  Adorned in web-footed shoe coverings, duck-billed baseball caps and paper mache tails, our quackers waddled down the road in a row.   A few onlookers actually believed me to be a member of law enforcement and heeded my decree to “Make way, make way for ducklings.”  No one was able to identify Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack or Quack, even though their names were stenciled on their shirts.

     My favorite entry came the year “Movies” was the parade theme.  In 1994, Forrest Gump won Tom Hanks an Oscar.  You’ll remember the film’s tag line:  Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.  In 1995, our group of mis-directed miscreants wondered what the sound bite for a Gump sequel might be.   Hmm….

We removed the bottoms from large boxes and attached suspenders so we could wear the shells while walking.  Each box was decorated to resemble a common product.  A boat trailer preceded us down Lakeshore Drive  sporting one of our more mature neighbors who sat on a bench, suitcase at his side, holding an empty box of chocolates.  Bunting along each side of the trailer proclaimed “Life is like…” and we marchers carried signs filling in the blank.

Life is like a box of pretzels, full of twists and turns.  Life is like a box of raisins, we end up dry and wrinkled.  Life is like a tackle box, full of hooks and lures.  We had a million of ‘em.  (A few R rated suggestions had to be discarded:  Life is like a box of tampons, there are always strings attached.)  My then fourteen-year-old son made the front page of the local newspaper wearing a Metamucil box: Life is like a box of Metamucil, it’s wasted on the young.  This was before the age of smart phones and digital photos, so I wore a box of Kodak film:  Life is like a box of film, it comes with an expiration date.

That expiration date joke has come back to haunt me lately.  Time’s a-wasting.  If I’m ever going to do XYZ , I’d better get with the program soon.  Life’s uncertain, eat dessert first.

I’ve made my share of New Year’s resolutions, and broken most of them.   Okay, all of them.  Some more quickly than others.  But, with luck, this year will be different.  I resolve to stop worrying about the future and instead look for the joy each day brings.  Rain or shine, hot or cold, at home or away.  There’s a silver lining out there somewhere and, damn it, I’m going to find it!

Blessings

Religious people the world over spend much of December preparing for their various holidays.  Rites and traditions are repeated.  Friends and family are re-united.  One could be forgiven for expecting the year to end on a peaceful note.  Expectations are not always met.

A young man opened fire in an Oregon mall a few days ago.  This morning, another lost soul went on a rampage in a Connecticut elementary school.  Innocent children were slaughtered.  I listened to the news thinking the world has run amok.  The crazies are in charge.

Weeks ago, before anyone could have foreseen these mind-numbing events, I picked up Joan Allen‘s recording of Anna Quindlen’s best-selling book, Blessings, from hundreds of options on my local library shelf.  I don’t know why.  Thrillers and mysteries are more likely to grab my attention.  And yet, this chance selection turned out to be just what I needed.

Blessings is a gentle story with a bucolic setting.  Quindlen weaves an intricate plot with characters so human I couldn’t help but care what would happen to them.  We writers are often warned to use “back story” with caution as it tends to slow down the action, and yet under Quinlen’s talented touch, such musings enrich as they inform.  Her characters’ thoughts swim from the present to the past and back again as smoothly as a dolphin breaks the surface of calm water for a breath of fresh air.  Each day I have looked forward to finding time to listen to the next chapter.

This afternoon, as my heart ached for the families who lost children in Connecticut, I listened to the final chapter of Blessings.  The ending satisfied as few books do.  The good guys did what good guys should even though they faced challenges and set-backs.  For a brief time Blessings allowed me to believe in a safe and sane world.  And that was just what my heart needed on this most tragic day.

Italian Dessert Torte

Pasta Frolla

Here is my Christmas gift to you – an authentic recipe brought to America from the Italian alps in 1916.   Handed down through the generations, my husband’s family enjoys this “torte” on special occasions.  But to fully appreciate the rich pastry, before you savor the dense,sweet goodness, you need to know the history.

Madalena Bugna traveled by horse-drawn wagon from the neighboring towns of San Nazaro and San Bartelomeo (north of Lake Como near the Swiss border) to Italy’s Mediterranean coast.  There she boarded a steamer, sharing quarters with three women whom she had never met before, and crossed the Atlantic to New York.  After passing through Ellis Island, this brave young woman rode a train west.  Transiting the North American continent turned out to the hardest leg of her journey.  The herky-jerky motion of the passenger car was rougher than what she experienced at sea, resulting in motion sickness.  When Madalena arrived in Sacramento, California, a telegram was sent to her betrothed, Augusto Rossi.  Augusto had emigrated earlier and sent for Madalena once he had opened a dry goods store in Kennett, a copper mining town the remnants of which are now deep below Lake Shasta.  Trusting and patient, Madalena waited in the train station three days for Augusto to make his way to her, marry her, and take her home with him.    The following recipe shared every inch of her adventure.

PASTA FROLLA

3 C Flour                                                    2 Eggs                                                                 2 tsp Vanilla

1-1/2 C Sugar                                           Rind of 1/2 Lemon, minced                     1/2 Lb Butter

3 tsp Baking Powder                             1 tsp Lemon extract

Sift together:  flour, sugar and baking soda.

If you don’t have your English grandmother’s sifter, a whisk should do the trick.

Madalena didn’t have a food processor, but that’s no reason we can’t use one.

Place sifted dry ingredients in the bowl of processor fitted with metal blade.  Add eggs, lemon rind, lemon extract, vanilla, and butter.  Mix until dough begins to come together.  The dough will be very crumbly at this point.

Knead dough on lightly floured surface until it pulls together into a smooth ball. This shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes.

Reserve about 1/3 C of dough.  Pat remaining dough into an ungreased 9″ spring form pan.  If you don’t have your grandmother’s (well-used) pan, you’ll need to find a new one.  Roll chunks of the reserved dough into 1/2″ diameter ropes.  Place these end-to-end around the inside perimeter of the pan.  Spread apricot jam on top of the torte.

If desired, flatten the last of the dough and use a cookie cutter to make a festive shape to adorn the cake.

Place a cookie sheet on the bottom shelf in  a cold oven just in case your spring form pan leaks.  This will catch melting butter from the dough before it mucks up the floor of your oven.  Trust me, it’s cheap insurance.

Bake your Pasta Frolla on the next shelf up for 1 hour and 45 minutes at 300 degrees.

The dessert can be served warm, but it will cut more easily if allowed to cool in the pan on a rack.

Pasta Frolla can be made days in advance of need, and it travels beautifully.  I recommend you set manners aside and eat slices with your fingers - the cake is pretty hard and you won’t want to waste any crumbs.  If you’re a coffee person, be sure to try dunking.  Mangia bene.

The Birds and the Bees (and Crayfish, Too!)

      One of the great things about having sons is their father was responsible for handling “the talk.”  That division of labor seemed fair to me.  Had we borne girls,  I would have shared feminine wisdom from the ages with them.  But we didn’t and I was off the hook.  Or so I thought.

     As a young teacher, I attended an in-service program presented by representatives of the San Diego Zoo.  The gist of the day-long seminar was that peer pressure can be used in positive ways to encourage children to try things from which they might otherwise shy away.  An opaque, plastic gallon jar held the proof of this pedantic pudding.  Back-lighting revealed eight longs legs and a bulbus body inside the container.

     “Tarantulas are fascinating, gentle creatures,” the speaker said, unscrewing the lid.  “Charlotte, here, has visited countless schools.  We find children willingly hold her when they see their classmates doing so.”  He handed the hairy arachnid to the poor soul in the front row’s aisle seat.  “As Charlotte is passed around the room this morning, take time to notice….”

     I went to stand at the back of the room, fighting to control my trembling hands and rising bile.  Spiders, eww.

     Fast forward several years.  My first-born is something like six months old and squealing with joy, splashing in the bathtub.  I’m drenched, kneeling on the floor to support his wobbly body.  A largish spider, possibly dislodged from her web by all the steam and noise, drops into the bath water.

     I scream.  My son takes a dive.  Ken dashes in fearing the worst.  That evening I vowed not to imprint my fears on my children.  I didn’t want to raise timid youngsters, afraid of the harmless creatures they would meet. 

     The decision emboldened me and I discovered an inner courage.  One day, I allowed a garden spider to crawl across my gloved hand as my toddler and I marveled at her nimble progress over the uneven terrain.   When this male child was five, we found a spectacular shiny black spider with an almost spherical body.  The boy brought his bug jar outside so we could corral the treasure, and he took her to kindergarten the next day for show-and-tell.

     “Mrs. Brown,” his teacher met me at the door after class, “sending a black widow to school was not a good idea.”  She held the jar at arm’s length.  “Don’t do this again.”

     Black widow?  Oops.  Guess there’s a difference between lack of fear and lack of smarts.  

     Over the years, my sons enjoyed all the typical pets.  But the most unusual critter to share our home was Garbanza, a crayfish we scooped up at Clear Lake and relocated to a 30 gallon aquarium in the oldest son’s bedroom.  He must have been about twelve at the time – the son, not the crayfish – and our family learned much from the diminutive crustacean.

     One morning we awoke to find two crayfish in the tank.  Garbanza had molted her exoskeleton during the night, creating a perfect carbon copy of herself.  She then ate her shadow.  Fascinating stuff.

     Crayfish can migrate a significant distance overland.   This became clear when son number two stubbed his toe on Garbanza while they were both walking down the dark hall.  She had escaped her sanctuary by climbing up the filter intake tube and, in what must have been a tremendous leap of faith, threw herself to the floor three feet below to begin her walk-about.

     Then there was the time all three boys rushed into the kitchen.  “Mom, Mom!  Garbanza’s going to have babies!”

     They dragged me to the aquarium and pointed out a mass of gel-encapsulated eggs cupped between the crayfish’s abdomen and tail.  Garbanza had been our celibate guest for well over a year.  This development clearly belonged in Ken’s domain.

     “Guys,” I said, “you’re right.  Those are eggs.”  Where was Ken when I needed him?  “But I’m afraid the eggs won’t grow into baby crayfish because, well, you see….”  Maybe their father could come home from the office if I called him.  Six worried eyes pierced me.  My sons weren’t about to be stalled.  “Garbanza doesn’t have a, um, husband.”

     My G rated version of the birds and the bees had a sad ending.  The boys would see  Garbanza’s eggs disintegrate over time.  Instead, we learned female crayfish are special.  Let’s just say those girls don’t need a blue dress to hold onto evidence of male companionship.   When they are good and ready to become mothers, voila!  Eggs materialize, fertilized at the factory.

     Garbanza’s brood hatched in an explosion of life.  Hundreds of infants swarmed their mother and the artificial aquatic plants, filled the water and covered the sand.  Garbanza feasted on scores of her little ones, sending my babies into hysterics.  We spent hours netting miniature crayfish and removing them to preditor-free, water-filled bowls.  I’m pleased to report Ken was home when the boys questioned this miracle of birth.  I have no idea what he told them, but it’s probably just a coincidence we don’t have any grandchildren.

     One last lesson from Garbanza:  There are worse mothers than me.   I’ve never eaten any of my offspring.  Not even under the influence of peer pressure.