Housewife's Eye

Switching Blogs

2010-11-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm confused. A few months ago, I killed the email address associated with this blog and the blog seemed to die, too. So I started a new blog, connected with a different email address. Now this old blog seems to have been resurrected, associated with still another email address.

Anyway, if you want to read more recent posts, go to http://dianajill.blogspot.com

The new blog is also called Housewife's Eye. (Just to make it even more confusing.)

Dressing for a Gallery Opening

2010-02-27T21:28:00.000-08:00

When I was an art student, it was exciting to attend gallery openings. We'd dress up the way we thought art students should look --- black tites and dangling earrings were a must. And although we hadn't been specifically invited and were certainly not potential art buyers, we mixed with the crowd, drinking wine and feeling awfully sophisticated.

At a recent Art Walk, it was interesting to see that 50 years later, black tites and dangling earrings are still a classic, especially when paired with black form-fitting, long-sleeved T and a black mini-skirt, though more of the younger artists favor an eclectic look: puffed sleeves with denim and combat boots, or satin with retro wool plaid.

Of particular interest to me is the uniform of middle-aged "arty" women: dark, drapey clothing --- cloaks, capes, shawls and the like are popular --- necklaces with BIG beads, often of semi-precious stones or silver, and carefully tousled hair. Oh, and dangling earrings.

Stepping In

2010-01-23T21:16:00.001-08:00

My sister-in-law and I were comparing notes about the things we do at church. We're both old hands at church life, and in addition to being involved in official ways --- serving on committees, singing in the choir, holding office, and the like --- we also find ourselves stepping in when we see things that need to be done that no one else is doing: watering flowers, washing choir robes, dusting pews, putting fresh water in the baptismal font, turning on the coffee maker.

I've been thinking about this, and wonder if we see the things that are amiss because we've been keeping house for a long time, no longer have kids to distract us, and are still physically able. Is this a phenomenon that happens to women of a certain age? (To be fair, there are men that take care of small repairs around the church, change light bulbs, carry out trash, mow the lawn, and the like.)

However, I'm getting tired of doing these things and am beginning to realize that feeling put-upon is a consequence of competence. If I continue to take care of these little tasks, and do them easily and well, no one else will bother to pitch-in. A good example are the potted poinsettias people donate at Christmas to decorate the church. They require almost daily maintenance --- too much water and they rot, too little water and they droop, and even with just the right amount of water, they continually drop leaves and bracts. In the past, I've made a special trip to church once or twice during the week to take care of these exacting plants. This year I ignored them and several people murmurred, "What happened to the poinsettias?" In the next Worship Committee Meeting, I'll suggest that if we want to have flowers, someone needs to be in charge of them.

When I was younger, I wondered why some of the older women who didn't work, didn't have kids at home, and were still active didn't volunteer for jobs at church. Now I know; they're tired of stepping in and they're leaving it someone else. Now I, too, am ready to retire from stepping in.

Stepping Stones

2010-01-09T08:19:00.000-08:00

Each morning, while making toast, I brush all the crumbs off the counter, but I know they'll soon reappear. The first sip of tea tastes so good, that I drink more. It's good, too, but not as good as the first sip. After eating breakfast, I rearrange my book and the other things that lay on the table, so they're straight, but I know they won't stay that way.

In these very small ways I create islands of order and peace in my day. I think of them as stepping stones, places to set my foot securely for a moment as I am propelled though a day of deadlines, lists, bumping against the needs of other people.

Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, "Peace, be still" in the middle of that storm on the Sea of Gallilee. Our lives will never be as peaceful as we think we want them to be --- if they were, I suspect we'd be bored. It's enough to be aware that we can pause for an instant on a stepping stone.

Hanging Out

2009-09-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

I'll be looking after two grandsons for a few days while their parents are away. Since they're 8 and 10 years old, "baby-sitting" doesn't quite seem like the right term. So I've decided to say I'm "hanging out" with them.

Hanging out, as I understand it, means spending time with other people, but without a definite schedule or agenda except for being together and talking. This past-time can take many forms. My kids' generation hung out at the local mall or recreation center. After complaints from teen-agers of my generation that there was nothing to do (which I never understood), teen centers were created to give them a place to hang out. At other times and in other places, people have hung out in pool rooms and pubs. I suppose you can't really hang out at a library (one of my favorite places to be) since patrons are not supposed to talk.

I've been transcribing a diary my mother kept, starting from the day she graduated from high school in 1930. She lived in a small town where there wasn't a lot to do. There were certainly no teen centers, and I don't think there was even a movie theater. (Though watching a movie may not qualify as hanging out since there's a time factor and a specific activity.) Her version of hanging out was "going up-town". She must have walked the mile several times a week, sometimes to buy some small thing, but often just to have something to do. At least she got some fresh air and exercise.

Now people hang out virtually. That's what social networking websites are all about. We slump down in front of our computers and check in to see who else has checked in. We make brief, often trivial comments, just to make a connection. Crafting very brief, cryptic and intriguing posts can rise to an art form, but multiple reports about people's status in the virtual world of game apps is just annoying. I may eat my words, though. I saw one game app that looked interesting, and I could get sucked in.

Reading at Random

2009-09-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

We don't have a TV and I seldom go to movies, but I read a lot, often two or three books a week.

When go to the library, I try to choose a variety of books: one whose author I've heard interviewed on the radio, one someone has recommended, a mystery (for relaxation), fiction, history, biography, art. But I may also pick up at random a book that catches my eye as I walk through the stacks. (The enormous value of open stacks!) One thing leads to another. When reading one book, if another book is cited, I may write that down and look for it the next time I'm at the library. Thus I often read a short sequence of related books

This summer, "The Fifties" by David Halberstam, was the last unread book in the batch from the libaray. It is very thick, and looked like it might take awhile to read. But once I got started, I couldn't stop. The decade of the 1950s is the first decade I remember well. For the first time, the book provided me with a context for all the names, events, trends and fragments from my teenage years. It verified what I'd vaguely felt, that life in America changed a lot after World War II.

Many aspects of our present-day American culture had their beginnings in the 1950s and are still with us: consumerism, corporate greed, the credit economy (more realistically called the debt economy), energy consumption. Other aspects of the culture have changed a lot since then: much improved (but still not perfect) gender and racial equality, information technology, ecological awareness.

Once started on this sequence, I also read "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan, "How Rich is Too Rich" by Vance Packard, and a biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Then I was ready to change to a different topic, so I picked up "Acedia and Me" by Katherine Norris, a book relating one aspect of medieval spirituality to the author's life. But a funny thing happened. This book had a surprising relationship to "The Feminine Mystique". Friedan felt that all educated housewives should get out of the house, and engage in a demanding, professional career for the good of society. Norris found spiritual nourishment in the daily routine of household tasks. Each author represents an extreme view, formed by opposite personalities living in very different life circumstances.

All this is fascinating to me and provides a certain perspective, but I've lived long enough to feel comfortable with having lived my life on my terms.

Now I'm reading about the Cranbrook Academy, a community of artists, architects and craftspersons whose design philosophy influenced the arts education I experienced in the late 1950s. So I'm inadvertently back to mid-century!

Can You Read Cursive?

2009-06-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

As a summer job, a bright college student friend of ours has agreed to type a handwritten diary from the 1930s into a digital file. The old handwriting looked quite legible to me, but the student remarked that she didn't read cursive very well. I was surprised, and even more surprised when I remembered that another bright college student friend who had done the same work for me last summer, had made the same remark.

I'm in the process of transcribing some old German church records, written in old style German handwriting. This style was taught in German schools until about 1920, so anyone educated after that has a hard time reading this cursive script (meaning not many living people can read it easily.) I can muddle though the records I'm transcribing which consist mostly of names and dates with a few other notations.

Will my grandchildren have the same difficulty reading my handwriting as I have reading the old German handwriting? I asked my grandson about it. He has just completed fourth grade and told me he learned cursive last year in third grade. The students in his school are required to form their letters according to a set pattern and they are graded on the quality of their handwriting when they turn in homework. Apparently, his school (a charter school that emphasizes traditional standards --- everyone takes Latin, for example) is in the minority. Many schools have de-emphasized handwriting skills and the students, even in the lower grades, use computers for their assignments.

When I was a student 60 years ago, we learned a cursive alphabet called Zaner-Blosser. It may have been a variation of the Palmer Method of handwriting. Spencerian script was the predecessor of the Palmer Method. The alphabet that my grandson wrote out for me was a simpler version of Zaner-Blosser, minus all the little loops that I always thought were ugly and silly. Some calligraphers have advocated teaching children an italic hand, drawn with a chisel-shaped nib.

We'll see how the bright college student friend does with the 1930s handwriting. And time will tell if my grandson in his old age is one of the few people who can still read cursive.

Too Many Deaths

2009-06-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday on Pentecost, during the time for members of our congregation to voice prayers and petitions, there were an unusual number of people mentioning sudden deaths. This Sunday, it hasn't been much better.

Although we have not been confronted with an unexpected death among close family and friends, there was the death of the 40-something daughter of a friend, the drowning death of a colleague of my husband, and the separate suicides of two teen-agers from the local high school. This last has affected several of the teenagers we know and their families. Arriving home from church this morning, the answering machine was blinking, and we learned of the death of the husband of a friend. He'd been sick, but we'd thought he was getting along OK.

What's going on?

Slow or Fast?

2009-05-28T19:51:00.000-07:00

They're digging up the street near my house, and for a block there's only one lane of traffic at a time. The workman holds up a sign that says STOP to the traffic going to and SLOW to the traffic going fro.

I understand STOP. But I'm confused when the sign says SLOW and the sign-bearer is whirling his arm frantically to get me to go fast.

Home Again

2009-05-28T19:46:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from a two-week trip to Ohio. We had a very enjoyable time, visiting with several friends and relatives. We talked and talked and then moved on, shifting to another group, another branch of the family, another life-style. It was emotionally and physically intense, and we were never alone.

Now during my first day at home, I'm cocooned with myself, silent, recovering in blessed solitude

Another Kind of Mothering

2009-05-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

Thinking about Mothers' Day yesterday led me to realize that although my kids have been away from home for more than 20 years, and my kids and grand kids don't live nearby, I've recently begun another kind of mothering. It's like this:

I'm now the Street Steward Coordinator for our neighborhood emergency preparedness committee. That's a mouthful, and more simply means that I'm looking after the people in each neighborhood who have agreed to meet with their neighbors and give them information about emergency preparedness. The job includes keeping in touch, teaching, supporting, answering questions, reminding, facilitating, encouraging, thanking --- all the things that mothers do.

In turn, I'm meeting new people and performing a support function that will help everyone in case we experience an emergency; earthquakes and wild fires are our most likely dangers. We hope we'll never need to implement our emergency plans, but if we do, we know that the outcome will be better than if we had not prepared. And we're learning that there's an immediate benefit, too: community building. Neighbors are meeting long-time neighbors for the first time and forming new bonds: neighbors helping neighbors. I might even begin to use the verb "to neighbor".

Other Mothers' Days

2009-05-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

One Mother's Day when my son was elementary school, I spent Mothers' Day morning with him in the parking lot of the medical center, waiting for the doctor to arrive. My son had an ear infection. It was not serious, but he needed an antibiotic. But what seemed like a boring wait in the car turned out to have unexpected consequences. The next day, the police phoned and asked if I'd been at the medical center on Sunday morning. "Yes," I said.

It turned out that while we'd been sitting in the car, the medical center had been robbed of drugs. The police looked at all the appointment books to find people who might have seen the robbery, and although I hadn't realized it at the time, we had been witnesses. I recalled a beat-up car driving away from the medical center at a high speed and was able to give a partial description. I don't know one make of car from another, and thought my son might know, but he was too shy to talk with the police. The police asked if I was willing to be hypnotized to see if I could recall a license number or more details. That sounded like an interesting experience, and I agreed. But I never heard anything more about the case. It only remains in my mind as a memorable Mothers' Day.

The second memorable Mothers' Day was one I spent all alone. The kids were grown up by then, and I was in Cincinnati by myself, doing some genealogical research. I got up on Sunday morning, had breakfast in the hotel, then went to church where I heard the Bishop preach. After a nice lunch, I walked over to Riverfront Stadium and watched a baseball game. Several dad's with young children were sitting nearby, obviously giving Mom a day off at home. The guys were interested in the game, but one poor little girl had no idea what was going on and didn't know what to do with herself. So I talked with her and pointed out things she could look for on the playing field. That helped, but I faulted her dad for not paying more attention to her and helping her understand the game.

Over-view and Follow-through

2009-04-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Five and a half years ago, we said farewell to a long-term and well-liked pastor at our church. While we looked for a new pastor, we had the part-time services of an interim pastor. Then the new pastor arrived and we were impressed with quality of the Sunday morning services and the sermon. There were lots of creative ideas. But it soon became apparent that the every-day functions of the parish were being neglected. The new pastor spent 30 hours a week on the sermon and only six hours a week in the office. When we offered to help with mundane tasks like compiling an email list, we heard, "I'll take care of it." But we soon learned that when we heard that phrase, nothing further would happen.

We have a functional and capable congregation, and we independently carried on with most of the important activities. But things were slowly going downhill. The new pastor was asked to resign, and we once again had the services of an interim, a retired pastor who was experienced and energetic, but only worked half-time.

Then though an unexpected turn of events, our old pastor returned. At first he seemed tense and tired. But now, after nine months, he's up to speed, relaxed and happy, and so is the rest of the congregation.

I've thought a lot about the qualities we want in a pastor. The spiritual and theological functions are, of course, primary. But administrative abilities are also very important. The congregation now benefits from a leader who can delegate but who also knows what's going on, and a person who gently but persistently keeps everyone moving toward a goal.

Over-view and follow-through.

----

There's one more quality that I've recently come to appreciate: constant tweaking. The Pastor is never satisfied to keep things the way they are; he is continually evaluating, molding, and reshaping the way we do things.

The best analogy for this style of leadership is that of a Master Gardener who can make a grand landscape plan, but who can also make sure everything is growing well, is watered, free of pests and weeds. And when a plant doesn't thrive or when it reaches the end of its life-span, it's replaced with something that will do better in that spot. As trees mature and light and shade patterns change, the whole plan is reevaluated and restructured to fit the current situation.

Over-view, follow-though, and tweaking.

Japaspanglish

2009-04-19T18:07:00.001-07:00

Our gardener is Japanese and speaks little English. He hires Hispanic helpers who don't know much English, either. I wondered how they communicate with each other. Now I know: they speak Japaspanglish.

One day after the Japanese gardener had fertilized the lawn, he wanted me to sprinkle it lightly. So he instructed me to "Walla pico."

This week, I asked one of the Hispanic helpers to avoid using the blower. "No blow," I said. He understood, then asked if the alternate method of gathering up leaves was OK. "Rakee?"

"Si."

Grandma's Amaryllis

2009-04-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, sixty years ago or so, Grandma had a potted amaryllis plant. When it bloomed, the dramatic salmon trumpets were the subject of many oohs and aahs.

Years went by. Grandma died. Mom adopted the amaryllis. Mom died. My sister adopted the amaryllis and offered me a baby bulb from the parent bulb. I planted it, fertilized and watered. Let it die back in a cool, dark place in the fall, then brought it into the house in late winter to let it sprout again.

The first year it produced one long, lash of a leaf. The second year, there were two leaves. The third and maybe the fourth year there were three leaves. If you've never lived with an amaryllis, you may not realize that after it dies back in the winter, it looks like a dead onion. Then somehow, without light, it knows that spring is approaching, and sends up a fat, pointy green tongue. If you bring it into the house, into heat and light, it grows at an amazing rate --- about an inch a day --- until there are a few thick, broad leaves two or three feet long.

This year, Grandma's amaryllis surpassed itself with four leaves, but the middle of the crown was empty. Then I noticed something coming up from the outside of the crown. A bud! My clone of Grandma's amaryllis was going to bloom for the first time!

The stem got longer and longer, thicker and thicker. Soon I could see that there were two buds inside a tight green case. The case opened and died back. The two buds separated and swelled noticeably bigger each day. I thought it might bloom on Easter, but it expanded even more without opening. I began to see color. The suspense was was akin to watching someone blow up a balloon and expecting it to pop any second. On Thursday morning, I blew gently on the swollen bud, and within ten minutes, it had opened. Now both blossoms are arched dramatically over the dining room table where I can watch the stamens and pistil engage in the subtle choreography of fertilization.

It takes patience to be the keeper of an amaryllis, but the process is fascinating and incredibly beautiful.

My New Bike

2009-04-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

As kids in a small, flat town, we relied on bicycles to get us where we wanted to go: to school, to the library, to piano lessons. My dad liked to tinker, and bikes were one of his special interests. He had a modest collection of unusual bikes: a tandem, a high-wheeler (in fact, two of them --- one with the big wheel in front and one with the big wheel in back), and a "chainless" bike that he rode for a long time. In addition to regular tricycles, we had an old-fashioned trike with a bench seat, pedals that went up and down, and a steering rod. The summer I was six, I learned to ride a two-wheeler on a small bike made from parts of tricycles. When I first tried my mom's bike, (riding on the pedals since I was too small to reach the seat), I discovered that steering a big bike was quite different, and I rode directly into a rose bush.

Anyway, throughout my childhood, I biked a lot, always on bikes Dad had made out of parts of other bikes. But after I left home, biking ceased to be a part of my life: I lived in a city, or had little kids, or lived in a hilly neighborhood. Then in 1974, there was a gasoline shortage, and I decided to take up biking again. I bought myself an upright, black, woman's Raleigh bicycle, my first new bike.

Since then, I've gone through periods when I biked frequently, followed by periods of a few years when I didn't bike at all. We have only one car, and this spring a situation arose where it would be convenient for me to bike. My dusty bike sat in the garage with a flat tire. I procrastinated, trying to convince myself that it would be quicker to fix the flat myself than to walk it to the bike shop. As is often the case, procrastination took a lot more time and energy that actually fixing the flat, which I accomplished in about 20 minutes. But in the process, I noticed that there was no tread on the tires and one tire had a hole though which the tube bulged. Time for new tubes and tires!

Once again my bike is in good shape and I'm enjoying riding. I've always locked my bike when I parked it, even though I thought since it was old-fashioned, no one would be interested in stealing it. But recently I've been stopped a couple of times while waiting at intersections by other (male) bikers who commented on my "cool" bike. One guy about my age asked, jokingly, didn't I think I needed a new bike. When I turned around to look at him, he was riding a bike of about the same vintage as mine. Another younger guy, riding a recumbent bike, commented that his dad used to have a bike like mine. Suddenly my "new bike" is desirably retro. I don't intend to trade it in; my new bike has become a classic old bike for a classy old lady.

The End of the Story . . . or at least a few more chapters

2009-02-15T20:51:00.000-08:00

This week we received a note from an acquaintance of 20 years ago. She'd met a mutual friend who mentioned us, and she took the time to update us on her life. It was a pleasant surprise to hear from her and reminded me once again that I've lived long enough to learn the end of the story for many friends and relatives. I don't necessarily mean that their lives have ended, but that they've reached the point where they've married, had kids, and pursued a career --- or not.

I believe Phillip Roth, in his novel about a 50th high school reunion, said something about it being a more relaxed gathering than earlier reunions had been. Everyone had done what they were going to do, and most people no longer felt competitive. I compiled a book for my 50th high school reunion that gave a brief biography of all the people who'd submitted their story. There were more than a few surprises, both disappointing and inspiring. When you're 20 it's hard to imagine where life will take you. When you're 70, you pretty much know.

Now we have Facebook, the social networking site that lets people locate and reconnect with lost friends and relatives. I've just joined, and am still figuring out how it all works. Not many people in my generation are members. But I'm wondering if it would be a good way to keep in touch with family members. It appears to be a medium for brief snapshots of day-to-day life, but not place for long, personal sagas. We'll see. Instead of waiting until the very end of the story, it will be interesting to read it chapter by chapter.

Water, Water, Everywhere

2009-02-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

I had no idea!

We were given a plastic drink bottle with a gel freezer stick to keep the drink cold. OK, I understood that much. But along with the bottle there was a mysterious rubbery thingy with a rectangular window and round hole, obviously meant to attach to the enclosed strap. What in the world?

These days, a Google search reveals all kinds of things and I quickly found that the rubbery thingy was an iPod nano holder, intended to be strapped to the bottle and to the user's arm.

But I also found I had dived into the astounding world of the sports water bottle. It was a revelation that there are more than 150 different water bottle designs, not counting the color options. It was not so surprising that there are different sizes or that you can buy bottles made of aluminum, stainless steel, soft vinyl, polycarbonate lite or heavy, BPA-free plastic and generic plastic; recycled and biodegradable. I WAS surprised to learn that bottles come in every conceivable shape; transparent, translucent, clear, or opaque, and that before choosing a bottle, you must decide whether you want to sip, suck, gulp, guzzle, squirt, or spray and then choose the appropriate top: push-pull, snap, flip, screw, slide or swivel.

The bottles that come with accessories like the iPod nano holder also come with a cultural statement. The water bottle, whether the pre-filled disposable kind (bad for the environment and often filled with ordinary tap water) or the high-tech sport bottle (a seldom washed hang-out for who knows what kind of bacteria), is a deemed an everyday necessity by many people. Yes, I know that drinking an adequate amount of water each day is good for us, and I can understand that high-performance athletes and other people engaged in vigorous physical activity in hot weather might need to watch their fluid intake. But in the ordinary course of my day, the fluid I ingest at meals and possibly once or twice at other times, seems quite enough.

The sport water bottle has become a cultural icon; we can't leave home without it. Some of the secondary functions, like an enclosed pill case, make sense. Hooks, straps and carabiners are useful for cyclists and hikers. Bottles that change color with the temperature and include fluid intake calculators, picture frames and Mp3 holders, start to seem a little bit silly. But if sipping frequently at a water bottle has taken the place of sucking on cigarettes, I won't criticize.

Race and Gender

2009-01-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

Much has been made this week about the inauguration of Barak Obama as the first African-American president of the U.S. For the past two Sundays, our Adult Forum at church has been examining how race-relations in our country have changed since the 1960s. While it's important not to forget the racist past, and while some voters in the recent election were influenced by Obama's race, I don't know anyone personally for whom race was an issue, either positively or negatively. Most of us saw in Obama a person who seems superlatively endowed with the qualities of an effective leader and we compared him with our most recent former president who has proved to be deficient in almost all of those qualities.

I feel the same way about gender that I feel about race: it's almost always a non-issue. Certainly a female point of view is interesting and of value. But I won't give validation to work just because it was done by a woman, and I'll hold both women and men to the same standards of civility and quality.

Many years ago I was a member of a stitchery guild whose members, by the nature of the medium, were all women. It surprised me to learn that many women were afraid to enter their works in a juried show for fear of rejection. Many sought admiration for whatever they produced whether or not they had exercised any discipline or skill. It was enough that they were women and had made something.

We need to continue on the path toward total gender and race equality, but the time for hand-wringing and finger-pointing is past. Let's get on with our work, whatever that is, and reward those who obtain good results while operating with compassion and efficiency.

Five Principles to Live By in Rough Economic Times (and all the time, for that matter.)

2008-11-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

1. Keep it simple.
2. Use what you have.
3. Buy only what you need.
4. Buy only what you can pay for.
5. Be kind to all living things.

Something I Recently Learned About: CHECKS

2008-11-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

Nobody looks at signatures any more to validate a document. Banks haven't done it with personal checks for a long time --- checks are all processed automatically by machines which read the numbers in the bottom left. How long has it been since a clerk has checked your signature on a credit card transaction against the signature on the card itself? For that matter, many merchants don't even ask for signatures at all, particularly on smaller credit card transactions, say less than $25.

This was all brought home recently when my husband's checking account was fraudulently accessed, both by electronic transfers and by bogus checks. It seems that every check you write exposes your account number and the bank's routing number for all the world to see (and use!) Banks presently insure their customers against losses by fraud; it apparently costs them less to insure than to revamp their security system. But this can't go on for a lot longer.

All of our online transactions rely on secret passwords. In-person dealings will soon require some kind of biometric ID. This has already started: when I renewed my driver's license, I put my finger into a device that scanned my fingerprint. When we re-entered the country recently, US passport control included a camera that may have taken a photo of the blood vessel pattern in my retina. Someday, we may even be subject to a swipe DNA check. I don't find this intrusive since I have nothing to hide, but I feel a little bit sad that we've somehow lost a sense of trust.

Creativity

2008-10-31T11:46:00.000-07:00

I spent four days in bed, recovering from a bout of gastroenteritis. During that time, I didn't even have the energy to read --- mostly I listened to the radio. But my mind was clear and active and extremely creative. I designed all kinds of art projects in my head and composed these entries to my blog. This experience verified what I've long thought: that some kind of deprivation, together with time to think, stimulates creativity. For example, if I read a lot, I don't write as much. If I'm deprived of reading material, I make it up in my head. When I visit someone else's house and find the decor unappealing --- that is, when I'm deprived of a satisfying environment --- I sit and mentally redecorate.

Think of the quilters from Gee's Bend who were isolated in so many ways: racially, economically, geographically. They were almost forced by these deficits to find a creative outlet in the quilts that were a necessity for their families. Many authors, artists and composers overcame physical and emotional handicaps or deficits to create the world's great art. An author I recently read posited that since the residents of the British Isles are geographically confined and no longer have a world-wide empire, no frontiers, they're forced to look inward and have thereby created great literature and theater.

Maybe as we live though a contracting economy and begin to feel deprived of material goods and even security, we'll notice an up-surge in creativity. More about that later.

Something I Recently Learned About: FLU

2008-10-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

Flu, or more properly, influenza, is an upper respiratory disease caused by a virus. Symptoms include chills and fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness, and general discomfort.

What we commonly call stomach flu, is not flu at all. It's properly called gastroenteritis and can be caused by a virus, bacteria, or tainted food. Some of the symptoms overlap with the symptoms of real flu: chills and fever, headache, general discomfort. But the distinctive symptoms of gastroenteritis are diarrhea and sometimes vomiting.

There's no magic cure for either condition: drink plenty of water, rest, take ibuprofin or aceteminaphen to reduce fever and pain. Each disease will usually run its course. You may feel wretched for a day or so and weak and tired after the acute symptoms have abated. But except in the rare case of complications, you'll eventually recover as I have, after a recent bout of gastroenteritis.

Remember, if it's all in your head and chest, it's flu. If it's in your stomach and intestinal tract, it's gastroenteritis.

The Old Women

2008-10-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

One of the staff members at the exercise studio where I work out, was recently married. She's only 19 years old, and seemingly out of the blue, she came to work one day and said, "I got married yesterday." She seemed depressed, (though there may have been another reason for that).

In subsequent conversations, we've learned that her husband is in the Army and will be deployed to Iraq after the first of the year. It also seems that this was not a shotgun wedding.

I've been noticing how the women who come to work out --- mostly older women of grandmother age --- have been encouraging and supporting the young, new wife. We ask about the dress and jewelry she wore, we act excited and hopeful. We share our own stories of early married life. A picture of the bride and groom is now posted for everyone to see, along with a sign that says, "Congratulations!" As days have passed, we continue to speak about her marriage in a positive way. She's happier now.

Of course we have no idea how this couple will fare in years to come, but I'm glad to see that the age-old system of wise old women supporting young inexperienced women is still flourishing.

Grocery List

2008-10-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

We keep a grocery list posted on the refrigerator door, a place where both my husband and I can write down items we've run out of or food we'd like to have in the near future.

This week, the items I wrote on the list included:
onions
bananas
potatoes
orange juice
cottage cheese
milk
bread
rice cakes
chicken

My husband added:
mayonaise
butter
sour cream
Ranch salad dressing

Has he never heard of cholesterol?

All the Lonely People

2008-09-27T05:41:00.002-07:00

27 Sep 2008

In our temporary life here in Oxford, there are no deadlines, no obligations, no worries. I walk around, enjoying myself without a care. (And I don't want to go home!) But as I observe other people, I realize many people around me have anxieties, griefs, and perplexities. There are new students getting oriented to the university and accustomed to being away from home for the first time. There are young people at the point in their lives where they're looking for a loving and lasting relationship. Older people have family troubles, illness, economic woes. I see people at church who are in intense prayer as if they're wrestling with difficult problems that may not have good solutions.

We can see a homeless shelter from our window. Since the weather has generally been nice, the homeless people hang out in the alley-way. Some are too hung-over or damaged to do much more than sit or lie, but frequently arguments errupt among them. We hear shouting and cursing. Sometimes there are fights. But there's seldom serious trouble. These unfortunate people seem like mal-adjusted young adolescents.

Normally there's a gate between the homeless shelter and the parking lot behind our building. Apparently it's not working at the moment, because it stands open. This gives me a convenient short-cut to town, one I especially appreciate when I'm carrying groceries home. But it also allows the homeless people to wander about our building. Don was surprised one night when arriving home after dark, to see a prone figure near the outside door. When I opened the Daily Bin Store (the place where dumpsters are kept), I almost stumbled over a heap of blankets covering a sleeping form. I figured they were less eager to see me than I was to see them, so I went ahead and deposited my bag of garbage. I notice more trash strewn around the place.

I suppose the gate will soon be fixed and the homeless people will be shut out once again. But I don't find them frightening. They're more pathetic than dangerous.

Driving a Bus

2008-09-27T05:41:00.001-07:00

25 Sep 2008

Being one of the first to get on board, I rode the bus from London to Oxford sitting in the left-front seat. (That put me just behind and above the door --- the driver, of course, was on the right.) With an unobstructed view of the road, I could appreciate the driver's skill, manuevering the huge vehicle though heavy traffic. Sometimes it seemed that there couldn't possibly be room to get past another large vehicle on the right,especially since there was a cyclist close by the front left corner of the bus. But we made it without a scrape or scratch or without even killing anyone.

It seems to me that all bus drivers go awfully fast, especially when they get to an unobstucted straight-away. I suppose it's a relief not to be hemmed in, and they have a schedule to meet.

I do worry about the motorcyclists on the highways. They zoom in and out between the cars and busses, and I can only guess that they have a high fatality rate.

The Colors of Habitat

2008-09-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

25 Sep 2008

The big Habitat store on Regent Street in London is featuring dark colors for home furnishings. Set against a background of light black or dark charcoal (however you want to think about it) are dark purple, dark wine, dark rust --- dark shades of all the colors from blue to purple to red to orange on the color wheel. No green or yellow.

Some rugs and upholstery are patterned with large-scale floral silhouettes, usually dark on dark. The only enliving touches are accents of bright red and orange.

Note: on the other hand, Aquascutum displayed clothing in the most intense colors possible, coupled in striking contrasts: a day-glo pink coat over a red-orange-red dress; a BP green skirt and BP yellow top with a red hat; an olive-green coat over a passionate purple dress.

Saturation Marketing

2008-09-25T05:44:00.001-07:00

25 Sep 2008

I walked from Marble Arch to the British Museum along Oxford Street. This is the "high street" or main shopping street of London, where you find the flagship stores of the big retail names, notably Selfridges, and John Lewis. In addition there are many of the smaller chains. What surprised me was the fact that the smaller chains have stores every five or six blocks on the same street. Even Marks and Spencer had two establishments six blocks apart. In what is clearly a high-rent district in central London, I wondered about this marketing strategy. Obviously large numbers of people pass through this district --- it's sometimes hard to walk along in a straight line without dodging through the crowd. Do they provide enough business to justify the multiple stores? Is this practice a left-over strategy of placing stores where people without cars can reach them, or a new strategy of saturation marketing?

The same practice holds true, but to a lesser degree in the high-end shopping districts in the neighborhood of Regent Street and Picadilly. There I saw only one each of Liberty of London, Fortnum and Mason, Habitat, Dicken and Jones and the like. Here also you find the small, exclusive independent shops, places that descreetly advertise "bespoke" services. In King's English, that means custom-made. If you're a gentleman with unlimited resources, you can procure a bespoke suit, shirt, belt, shoes, hat and even an umbrella.

Scones with Clotted Cream in the Crypt at St. Martin-in-the-Fields

2008-09-25T05:41:00.000-07:00

25 Sep 2008

They've cleaned St. Martin-in-the-Fields! I first heard of this church as the home of the orchestra directed by Neville Mariner. From the name, I imagined a picturesque building situated in a green meadow dotted with wild flowers. When I first saw it, I was dismayed to see a dingy, crumbling old church at the edge of congested and traffic-filled Trafalgar Square. In addition to it's music program, the church has an outreach to the homeless and is the center of a ministry to Chinese residents of the neighborhood. The present project has not only cleaned the church, but has also built a substantial undergroud facility for it's work.

I had tea in the old crypt, an underground area with many brick arches. Arriving warm and thirsty, I'd hoped for an iced drink; but eight ounces of a cool but not iced bottled soda just wouldn't do it. So I ordered hot tea along with a scone and clotted cream. Then at the table where I picked up a knife and a napkin, I spied a bucket of ice! So I filled my cup, sat down and poured the hot tea over the melting cubes. Ah! A satisfying draught of really cold, strong tea!

I sat in the company of the Misses Oliphant, spinster sisters who has died in the 1830s. Their grave marker was embedded in the floor at my feet. I felt they wouldn't mind that I was alive and enjoying my tea on top of them. Someday, I'll be dead, too, and I hope someone from the future can think kindly of me as I was thinking of them. There was a jazz concert scheduled for that evening in the crypt. Will the music wake the dead?

Now I Know a Little Bit of London

2008-09-25T05:39:00.000-07:00

25 Sep 2008

I've known isolated neighborhoods of London from past visits, but this time I finally connected them. Now I know an area of central London bounded by Marble Arch, King's Cross Station, St. Paul's cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Victoria Station. Of course I don't know the area in detail, but well enough to find my way around and know which direction I'm going. My sense of orientation has been delayed by the Underground map. It's a great map and the Underground is the best way to travel any distance in the city, unhampered by congested surface traffic. But because it's a schematic map, the real relationships between various neighborhoods are distorted. Only by walking and traveling by bus, can you understand the geographic reality.

Yesterday, I had a ticket for entering the Queen's Gallery at 4:30. I found myself in Trafalgar Square with 20 minutes to get there. I soon realized that I couldn't make it by bus because of heavy traffic and because the bus routes don't go there directly. Instead, I remembered a pedestrian staircase that led directly down from the end of Regent Street to The Mall. I made it to the gallery on foot, only ten minutes late, and still in time to enter and view the exhibit.

Last and First

2008-09-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

21 Sep 2008

We went to church this morning at St. Barnabus in Jericho. It's an Anglo-Catholic church in a dramatic Italian-style building with a grand square tower. It must have one of the most highly decorated interiors of any church in Oxford, if quantities of gold leaf count for anything.

The sermon text was based on the parable of the vineyard. Laborers who began their work at the beginning of the day had agreed to work for a penny. But they were angry when they learned that workers hired near the end of the day were also paid a penny. The priest pointed out that if the full-day workers had been paid first, they would have gone away without knowing that the late-comers got the same wage. But the first were paid last, making the point of the story: that grace and forgiveness are available to all believers in equal amounts no matter how good or bad our lives have been. We can't earn grace.

I commented to the Priest afterward that this was a good sermon for us Lutherans since Martin Luther had stressed the free gift of grace in opposition to the Roman Catholic practice of selling indulgences. Then the Priest pointed out that the Sunday School children had unexpectedly demonstrated the point very well. At the end of the service, the school-age children explained their Sunday School project: a vine hanging with paper leaves and bunches of grapes, bearing names of good qualities and names of people for whom they wished these good things.Then the pre-school children showed us their Sunday School project: they'd "picked" paper bunches of grapes and put them into paper baskets they'd colored. It was revealed that they'd each been "paid" two Smartees for their "work". When the older kids heard about the Smartees (pieces of candy) they cried, "It's not fair!"

Life often isn't.

What the Wedding Guests Wore

2008-09-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

20 Sep 2008

As I walked past Town Hall this afternoon, a wedding party was just coming out. I stayed to watch and made the following observations:

There were 60--70 guests. Only five or six of the older women wore lamp-shade hats. The most dramatic was that of one of the mothers who was noticable in what looked like a leafy cabbage in an intense shade of yellow-green. The other mother and five or six younger women wore net/feather wisps. Older women wore transparent stockings in flesh or dark tones. Younger women, even in very mini-skirts, had bare legs. Older women wore classic pumps, younger women wore chunky heels with straps high over the instep.

The bride wore white: a strapless dress with shirred bodice, and a smooth skirt and train. There were tiny buttons all the way down the back. An abbreviated shrug of white lace covered her shoulders. She wore her blond hair swept up with a narrow, bejeweled headband.

A couple of 30-something guys wore kilts.

General fashion notes: Young women wear short, little-girl dresses or flippy skirts --- fitted at the hip, flared below --- over opaque tites. The dresses are usually made of a soft fabric and may be trimmed with limp ruffles. Skirts are often decorated. There is an interesting mixture of patterns and textures. For example, a heavily textured, tweedy or knit jacket or coat over a soft dress.

The form-fitting, low-necked, layered t-shirt look with push-up bra seems to be going out.

Things are Not as Far Away

2008-09-21T12:29:00.002-07:00

19 Sep 2008

We're in Oxford now. This is our 11th visit to our flat, North Light. Before, it has seemed like a mild effort to walk uptown, and it took at least a week to get used to four stories of steps up to the flat (especially when carrying luggage or groceries!) But for some reason, even though I'm seven years older than I was when I first visited here, things don't seem so far away. The center of town is just a stroll and although I still wish our flat was one story lower, I can make it up 56 steps with only one pause. By the end of the week, I'll be able to make it all the way without stopping.

Am I in better shape physically or is it less of an effort psychologically since it's now familiar?

Sky Mall

2008-09-21T12:29:00.001-07:00

16 Sep 2008

I hadn't looked at a Sky Mall magazine for several years. This is the catalog in the seat pocket of most airlines, offering all kinds of mostly useless, but often expensive gadgets: kitchen ware, health-care, safety and fitness equipment, ugly personalized items.

As I'd expected, there were more electronic items than there used to be. But I was surprised to see how many pages were devoted to pet supplies. Pet needs are now almost equivalent to baby needs. There are several kinds of beds: krypton beds, beds for hot weather, beds for cold weather. There are training aids to keep you pets OFF the furniture and steps or ramps to help aged animals get ON the furniture. Electronic devices keep stray animals out of the flower beds in your yard. There are grooming tools. What about a decorative litter box to insure privacy for your cat, or a special tray with plastic turf for the relief of your dog? (I wondered how this one was emptied. I can't imagine carrying a shallow tray filled with two liters of urine, the advertized capacity.)

If you have an indoor pet, there are all kinds of gates to keep it from going into forbidden parts of the house. Most amazing was an end-table that also served as a cage. Under what circumstances would you want to cage your pet in the living room? If you have guests who don't like dogs, put the animal in another part of the house! If you travel with your pet, you may need a barrier to keep them in the back seat of the car or a harness (like a seat belt) or a booster chair so they can see out the window. If you're walking, take your pet in a special stroller. But then the darling might need a special diet to keep from gaining too much weight!

The people who write the descriptions of the items in the catalog must be encouraged to use adjectives in the titles. Some describe a functionality of the item: wireless, telescoping, configurable. Other adjectives describe a superior quality: corrosion-resistant, unbreakable, reusable. But most of the adjectives have no direct relationship to the item they are supposedly describing and are employed only to create a desire for the object: genuine, original, superior, natural, ingenious, exquisite, understated, serious, stylish, luxurious, collectable, unique, magical, exclusive.

The wording in the descriptions of personal care items went far beyond using meaningless adjectives. It was very carefully crafted to AVOID any claims about what a particular device would do. Instead, if you bought the device, YOU would be empowered to promote, improve and support well-being, and to relieve, chase and eliminate whatever problems plagued you.

I suppose people buy things from the Sky Mall catalog, or they wouldn't continue to print them. At best, they provide some ironic amusement for bored passengers.

BMI, Where are You?

2008-09-21T12:28:00.001-07:00

16 Sep 2008

I had booked our flight to England on British Midlands Airline, or BMI. I knew this airline flew routes within the United Kingdom, and perhaps a few from England to the continent, but I was surprised that they had service to the U.S. Anyway, I got email confirmation with the flight number, time and terminal of departure. When I tried to print boarding passes at home, I constantly got error messages. That was a bit disconcerting, but sometimes for international flights, the agents want to see you in person, check passports and the like.

When we got to the international terminal, there was no sign of BMI. It was not listed on the directory, and the man at the information desk knew nothing about it. Then I spied a United Airlines flight departing for London at exactly the same time as our BMI flight was scheduled to depart. So on the chance this was a code-share (though there was not a word about such an arrangment in the information BMI had emailed,) we got in line at United.

When we got to the front of the line, I handed over the information I'd printed from BMI. The agent hardly glanced at it, handed it back and asked, "London?"

"Yes," we replied.

"Passports please," she demanded. She never batted an eye or gave us any explaination about BMI. We received boarding passes and proceeded to the gate for the United flight.

BMI is known as a discount carrier. I have a theory that United, which does not want the reputation as a discounter, sells excess seats to BMI. That may be why we were seated in the middle of the very last row of the very large plane. But we got to London a half hour early.

Note: If you Google "MBI" you'll get several sites about body mass index before you'll find British Midlands.

Nail Salons

2008-09-21T12:27:00.001-07:00

16 Sep 2008

While riding on the bus to the airport, my husband said, "I'll have to get my nails done." He was not serious, but the remark was prompted by all the nail salons he was noticing along our route. I educated him to the fact that many women have their hair done every week and their nails done every couple of weeks or so. I do get my hair cut about once every three months, but I've never had a manicure or pedicure. However I know women who consider the services of a nail salon and a hair dresser essential to their well-being. And they're often women who don't appear to have a lot of money and who seem to struggle to make ends meet.

That led to a discussion of luxury goods and services. I've noticed that since the economic down-turn, places like beauty spas are suddenly offering specials. Marginal businesses are closing. This will hurt a lot of people in the short term, but maybe it's time we re-evaluate and figure out what's really essential for a good life: simple shelter and clothing, healthy food, exercise, love, freedom.

Waiting for the Bus

2008-09-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

16 Sep 2008

At the beginning of a trip after doing all the things that need to be done at home, I feel keyed up and unnatually alert. That's why waiting for the bus to the airport this morning was a bit of an adventure.

First of all, I was surprised to see that the taxi that picked us up at home was a brand-new Prius hybrid, painted bright orange. The Yellow Cab company seems to have shifted one step on the color wheel.

When we arrived at our town's Transportation Hub, the new name for the bus stop and train station, we were accosted by a little woman with a red roller bag. I thought she was also headed for the airport. She asked us in a very friendly way where we were going. Then she pitched her appeal for money supposedly to support a non-profit organization that publishes photos of missing children. I told her I didn't give money to charities I knew nothing about. She persisted, telling me what a good cause it was, how she'd been kidnapped and raped as a child and how worthwhile this work was --- for the children.

I responded respectfully. But she wasn't about to give up. I replied that maybe she was more suited to another kind of work. She said Women didn't get any respect. I proposed that she try to figure out why people did not make contributions when she asked. She said it hurt her feelings when people didn't respond to her appeal, how everyone else who worked for the group gots lots of contributions (not donations, she informed me) and she didn't understand why she didn't. Older people like her didn't get any respect.

She finally simmered down when I asked if her organization had a website. She gave me a brochure with the URL and wrote her name and ID number on it so if I made a contribution (not a donation) later, she'd get credit.

While this was going on, a police car pulled up behind us. I could hear a big dog bark, and when I turned around to look at the patrol car, it was marked K-9 Unit. The officer was checking out a sleeper on the bench behind us. He woke the guy up, looked at his ID and asked some questions: Where did he live, where did he sleep, where was he going? There have been three day-time muggings in our town this week. Maybe the police are stepping up surveilance of suspicious people. Apparently this guy seemed OK, and the policeman told him he couldn't sleep there and directed him to move on.

Another waiting passenger asked if we were waiting for the airport bus. When I replied affirmatively, he said we'd just missed it. I countered that we were actually early for the next bus, which was true.

Once our bus arrived, we had an uneventful journey to the airport, in company with a Chinese couple about our age. They were headed for Hong Kong, we were headed for England, and when we got off the bus at the International Airport, we went our separate ways.

Powerless

2008-08-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

It was a sunny, calm, clear morning when the electrical power went out shortly before noon. I continued to work at my lap top until the battery ran out, then I ate lunch. We still had phone service (on a simple phone that didn't need electricity) and I learned from the electric company that the power would be restored between 12:30 and 2:30 pm. I took a nap.

The electric company reported that power would be restored between 2:30 and 4:30 pm. I made several long phone calls, catching up with family news.

The power company reported that power would be restored between 4:30 and 6:30 pm. I read. Then my husband and I ate an early supper. He had a movie date with a couple of friends. I read some more until the daylight faded.

The electric company reported that the power would be restored between 6:30 and 8:30 pm. I went to bed, listening for awhile to my battery-powered radio. The neighbors across the street had a very noisy generator running. If I had been quite tired, I probably would have slept in spite of the noise, but since it was earlier than my usual bed-time and I was restless, the noise was annoying. Why couldn't they graciously accept the situation and go to bed like most of the rest of the people in the neighborhood?

The electric company reported that the power would be restored between 8:30 and 10:30 pm. It finally came back about 10:00. There was another glitch sometime in the night, but this morning everything seems back to normal.

We're so dependant on electricity for every activity, it's hard to think of activities that don't rely on it. Here's a list of things to do when the electricity goes out:

read
write (letters, for example)
sketch little things from around the house
reorganize drawers and cupboards
clean and re-pot house plants
weed the garden
mend: buttons, ripped seams, loose hems
polish shoes
sew, knit, crochet, embroider
take a walk

Of course, all these depend on having light. When the sun goes down, go to bed. When the sun comes up, get up.

There was one positive, unintended consequence of this experience: When I opened a seldom-used drawer to retrieve a long-disused simple phone, I found a stash of items I've been looking for for several weeks. I still haven't figured out why in the world I put them there in the first place.

Critters: Possum

2008-08-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

When we first noticed the smell several days ago, I thought to myself, "It's probably a dead bird or possibly a dead squirrel." But as the smell got stronger and lasted longer, I realized something bigger was decomposing. Gathering up my courage and holding my breath, I poked around in the bushes between the driveway and the pond, and found a very large, very dead possum.

What to do?

The carcass was too big, too rotten and too tangled in the bushes to scoop up neatly with a shovel. So we tried an old remedy, used for centuries to hasten the decomposition of flesh: we covered it with ashes from the wood-burning stove. The smell diminished almost instantly and the effect seems to be holding now, a day later. According to a chemist friend, the protein --- that is everything but the hair and bones --- will soon be reduced to its elements and go back into the soil. The ashes also kill the bacteria that produce the smell.

It looks like this critter was injured near-by --- perhaps hit by a car --- because there is a trail of blood on the driveway. It may have been seeking water and came as far as the pond, where it hid in the bushes and expired.

The possum, along with the coon and the skunk, are North American animals. To European visitors, they are a curiosity. We were once asked by Norwegian friends who were here for the year, to look at the strange creature in the compartment next to the fireplace in the house they were renting. The box had both an exterior and an interior door through which to pass fire wood. A mother possum had found this protected spot ideal for birthing her babies. When people unaccustomed to these creatures ask about them, I need to remember to use the full names --- opossum, raccoon --- in case anyone wants to look up more about them.

Later - I just realized my previous post was about ashes, too.

Scattering Ashes

2008-08-07T16:41:00.001-07:00

My sister-in-law phoned this morning to say that her daughter-in-law's father had died. This wasn't unexpected, but there are logistical problems about who can get there when. I asked if he would be cremated, since this would give everyone more flexibility about when to hold a memorial service. She didn't know, but said his mother had been cremated and this got us talking about the scattering of ashes. Although the grandmother had died some time ago and most of her ashes have been scattered, some of them will be taken someday to her native Scotland.

My sister-in-law asked what my husband and I wanted done when we died. I'd asked my husband that question a few months ago. His parents are buried together in a church cemetery along with many relatives from several generations back. That gives my husband a lot of comfort, but he said he wanted to be cremated.

“Where do you want your ashes scattered?” I asked.

“Around the campus,” he replied, the place where he has worked for over 35 years.

This will probably need to be done secretly since I'm not sure it's legal to scatter human remains just anywhere. We kept my mother's ashes for five and a half years until my Dad died. I asked the funeral director if it was OK to scatter the ashes near the house. He didn't answer my questions directly, but said, “I think you should be able to scatter them anywhere you want.”

So we scattered Mom and Dad together under a big spruce tree that my Dad had planted more than fifty years earlier. But we saved a few of Dad's ashes. My sister said, “Maybe this is crazy, but I'd like to put some of Dad's ashes on Grandpa Rees' grave.” Dad had always had a close relationship with his Grandpa Rees who had been more of a father to him than his actual father.

My daughter has named her first child Rees, after his ancestors. When we all arrived at the country cemetery where Grandpa Rees was buried, she was surprised to see her son's name, Rees, on 20 or 30 tombstones. “Are they all ours?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied. So there's comfort in looking at the grave markers of our ancestors and thinking that a little piece of their DNA lives in us. But, like my husband, I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered.

Later: Where do I want my ashes scattered? Anywhere that will be a comfort to my survivors.

L.A. Without a Car: Day One

2008-05-12T11:54:00.001-07:00

The photos that accompany this journal were taken with a low resolution camera. Click on each photo to enlarge. Use the back arrow to return to the text.

It was a 17 minute walk from the house to the shuttle bus stop. At 7:00 am, on a cool, bright morning, I was embarking on a trip to Los Angeles, a journey I hoped to make entirely by public transportation. That was a secondary purpose, however. My primary reason was to be a tourist, to visit museums, see interesting architecture, and revisit places we had known when we lived in the Los Angeles basin from 1961 to 1968. I expected to see many changes.

The shuttle was several minutes late and conveyed me to the Caltrain station in a round-about way. But hey, it was free. It was only $2.00 (senior fare) for an express ride on Caltrain to San Jose where I would board the Megabus to Los Angeles. Megabus advertises "Los Angeles from $1(plus .50 reservation fee)". My round-trip ticket was not quite that cheap; it had cost $18.00 (plus .50 reservation fee.) But that was still only a quarter of what it would cost for gas to drive, not to mention parking.

I was traveling light: a nylon day pack with one change of clothes, one extra t-shirt, mini toiletries, scarf, sun glasses, hat, rain jacket and small pillow. In a tote bag I carried a small notebook, map, and my XO computer that includes a camera. On my body: money, credit card, driver's license, ATM card, cell phone, pedometer and wrist watch.

The Megabus was a big, new, blue bus with a luggage compartment under the seats, small overhead bins for carry-ons and a toilet. With about 20 passengers occupying more than 50 seats, we each had two to spread out upon. Terrance, the driver, was in an angry mood. He announced the rules --- no alcohol and no smoking --- then went on to relate his experience with the previous run when some of the passengers were drinking mini bottles of liquor, then got sick all over the back seat, then clogged the toilet by trying to secretly dispose of the empty bottles. It was up to Terrance to clean up after them, and understandably, he did not want to repeat the experience.

I phoned my husband to report that I'd made it OK to the Megabus, and we were about to depart, shortly after 9:00 am. But I also wanted to let him know that he should eat the lunch I had packed and forgotten. Instead, I'd had time to pick up some snacks at the train station in San Jose. As he said, launch successful, lunch not.

Our trip was peaceful. Many people slept. I watched the scenery. The rounded hills of central coastal California are loosing their fresh spring green. Now instead of looking like they're covered with smooth green velvet, there are rubbed spots of brown. But there are still plenty of spring flowers: orange poppies, blue lupine and large areas dusted with yellow mustard.

We traveled south on route 101, then east across the coastal range on 152, over the Pacheo Pass and down into the flat San Joachin valley on I-5. The coastal range was still visible to the west. Far across the valley to the east, the Sierras merged like phantoms with scattered clouds. The valley was dry and desert-like until one of the major irrigation canals appeared parallel to the highway. Then we passed farm fields in many shades of green and many orchards.

The Sierras disappeared. We stopped for a half hour break at 11:00 am. I had a Big Mac and a drink. We resumed. I dozed.

When I awoke, the landscape had changed. We were entering the mountains to the north of the Los Angeles basin. These are more angular than the rounded hills of central California. And the vegetation was less familiar. There were carpets of bright orange flowers I did not recognize, and swaths of something low-growing and dark sky blue. The hills looked like they'd been touched with a watercolor brush. Nearer the road grew something that looked like a relative of yellow mustard, but the flowers were much smaller

I could not have brought a visual image to mind, but once seen, the terrain and vegetation seemed familiar. It was what I had known 45 years ago when we lived in this area. I've had a similar experience when revisiting other places where I've lived but have been absent from for a long time.

I'd thought we might continue on I-5 into central L.A. But the bus took what seemed like a more round-about way. Maybe there was less traffic. At one point we were near Pasadena and I kept looking for the smoke from the Sierra Madre fires that had started a couple days ago. I finally spotted the smoke plume, but it wasn't where I'd expected it to be. My mental map will need some adjustment.

Shortly after 3:00 pm, we disembarked at Union Station, that grand, Art Deco/Mission style complex and I took a few minutes to walk around and pick up a Metro map of all the area bus and train lines. Then a short-cut through the historic district of Pueblo de Los Angeles to the Metro Plaza Motel where I had reserved a room for the week.

I was tired, hot and hungry and the rest of the day was not a happy experience. It took a couple of hours to connect to the free internet access advertised by the hotel. The "non-smoking" room smelled like cigarettes and it was not until after I'd slept for awhile that I finally figured out how to work the air conditioner to cool and freshen the room. At midnight, the phone rang --- some kind of glitch in their system. But after all that, I slept well.

Oregon pedometer reading for the day: 9833 steps

L.A. Without a Car: Day Two

2008-05-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

Up early, bath, breakfast. Then I was relieved to be able to sign on to the hotel wireless without trouble. But I was mildly dismayed to discover that in the process of fooling around last night, all my previously saved files had been deleted. It's not a big loss, except for the photos I took yesterday. I have a flash drive with me, but I've forgotten how to use it with the XO computer. Until I figure that out, I may not be able to post these daily accounts on my blog.

I walked toward town, downhill then up to the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. It's on a hill overlooking the downtown, aggressive points and angles, faced with stone the color of dirty orange creamcicles. The interior is more successful. The altar is at the east, as is traditional, but this is also the downhill side of the site. The architect has taken advantage of this by creating dark, upward-sloping entry halls on either side of the sanctuary. The worshipper is then released at the top into a big, softly lighted open space, sloping down-ward to the altar. The tone is cool and muted, with light coming through alabaster panels. The baptismal font at the back is a cross-shaped immersion pool with continuously overflowing water.

Twenty-five tapestries decorate the side walls of the sanctuary. They depict saints from throughout the ages intermingled with images of contemporary children and young people of all races. The faces are portraits where the likeness of a particular person is known, or modeled after real people for those figures from the more distant past The tapestries must have been made on a computer-controlled loom; they are much too large and complex to have been woven by hand.

Walking back down to the center of town, I passed by the Music Center. The Mark Taper Forum and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion seem more closely surrounded by other buildings than I remembered. The Disney Music Hall is a typical stainless steel confection by Frank Gehry.

A senior day pass ($1.80) took me out 3rd Street to the Farmers' Market at Fairfax where I ate lunch. The place is still comfortable with its 1950s ambiance. It's a good place to engage in people-watching. There are tourists and locals, and it's easy to imagine that some of the people eating there are from the entertainment industry. I'm particularly fascinated by the elderly glamour girls. One was wearing a sleeveless, leopard-printed t-shirt, brown skirt and a pert, brown straw hat --- definitely not a sun hat. Another in the Lady's Room, was giving her face a complete cosmetic make-over: foundation, bright red lipstick and black eye-liner and mascara to go with black dyed hair. One bleached blond was wearing lots of gold: large pieces of jewelry, belt, bag and shoes. They all wear fancy, high-heeled shoes and walk as if their feet hurt. I can fantacize that they're former mover stars, but it's more likely that at most they once had a few bit parts and years later are still hanging around, hoping for a break, and maintaining the look that was popular 50 years ago. Today's glamorous young women are buff and burnished.

The Grove, an up-scale shopping area in the style of a town street, is right behind the Farmers' Market, in what was probably a parking lot. Out of curiosity, I browsed the two-story American Girl store. Each American Girls doll has a specific character; some are historic. There are many combinations of hair style, hair color, skin color and eye color. Each character has a book about her, a wardrobe, and many enchanting (and expensive) accessories. The real-live girl who owns a doll can even buy clothing that matches her American Girl's outfit, usually nightgowns that look like costumes. Then there are mini American Girls, toddler dolls (think twins) and baby dolls. It's all a market-driven enterprise with a doll hair styling salon with miniature beauty parlor chairs, a photo studio for having your portrait taken with your American Girl, a lunch room and more. And once you own an American Girl, she'll need a best friend.

A short bus ride took me to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a complex of buildings presently in a transitional stage. This part of Wilshire Boulevard was known as the Miracle Mile, but it's now in need of a miracle. Some buildings are boarded up and many display For Rent and For Sale signs. Fortunately the LACMA has purchased the old Macy's department store building, which has architectural significance, and will be renovating it. The collections are spotty --- second rate pieces by first-rate artists, and first-rate pieces by second level artists. Most of the work is 20th century American and many of the collections have been acquired by private collectors then donated to the museum. It's worth a visit.

The buildings in the complex are in a variety of architectural styles, not always in harmony with each other. To unify the site visually many of the exterior details --- stairways, walkways, elevator to the underground parking lot --- have been painted bright red, an enlivening touch. I was particularly delighted with an outdoor installation of old street lamp posts, tall and stately, all painted gray and clustered together in ranks and rows --- maybe 300 of them. At night they all light up.

With my bus pass, I rode out Wilshire Boulevard. I'd hoped to disembark at the Santa Monica Pier, but the particular bus I was riding went only as far as Westwood Village. That was OK. I ate supper there, and then rode back into central L.A. The last, short bus ride to the motel was something of a thrill. The vehicle was apparently having mechanical problems --- maybe transmission troubles. Sometimes after a stop, it wouldn't go again. So the driver tried to avoid stopping, racing through stale yellow lights, honking his horn, and clicking his fingers to will the next light to turn green. At least we made it as far as I needed to go.

After yesterday's record breaking heat, it was fresh and pleasant today. In fact by evening, I could have used a sweater, and I'll wear one tomorrow.

Oregon Pedometer - 9602 steps

L.A. Without a Car: Day Three

2008-05-12T11:36:00.001-07:00

To Pasadena today. The Gold Line, part of the electric rail network, originates at Union Station and runs through Pasadena to the adjacent town of Sierra Madre. We lived in Sierra Madre for seven years in the 1960s. I've been back only three or four times since then, and on some of those trips we passed through quickly. My challenge today is to reorient myself. I got off at the Memorial Park station and immediately found myself in unfamiliar territory. I knew the street names and I knew which direction I was going, but I could not remember seeing any of the buildings.

I walked by an indirect route to the Norton Simon Museum which I have previously visited, though it had not yet been built when we lived here. This museum, which houses works collected (incredibly) by one man, has a good selection of European masters from the 14th through the 20th century, with a particularly impressive collection of Impressionist painters and 20th century sculptors. Some of the sculptures reside in the enclosed garden, a serene lake surrounded by a magnificent variety of plants and trees. This is where I ate lunch.

Several school groups were touring the museum, each with a tour guide. One guide was explaining a self-portrait of Rembrandt. She asked the student how they could tell if a person was intelligent. By his eyes, of course. And the intense gaze of the artist showed how intelligent he was. Poppycock! Obviously she'd never stared into a mirror while painting a picture of herself.

Colorado Avenue is the main east-west street in Pasadena, the route of the Rose Bowl parade. The western end is now filled with high-end stores, one after another. Alleyways between old brick buildings have been made into charming pedestrian walks with small shops and colorful plantings. When we lived here, I didn't frequent this part of town. I have a vague memory that it was a neighborhood of auto dealers and run-down stores. I recognized City Hall and a near-by church, but they seemed to have been reoriented by 90 degrees.

As I continued east, I scrutinized each building carefully. Many have obviously been built in the past 40 years, but even the old ones kindled no memories. Growing tired of walking, I caught a bus. We passed a Target store, and I suddenly recalled that 40 years ago the building had been a nice department store. Robinsons? I shopped most often at the Broadway; I think that building is gone.

Transferring to a Lake Avenue bus, I started to feel a few glimmers. There was the place that had been a conditori where my cousin and I stopped for pastry. I left my infant daughter with him to take my toddler son to the bathroom. While I was gone, a passer-by admired the baby and asked my cousin, who seemed to be the father, how old the baby was. He replied, "I have no idea." The building that is now Macy's was an elegant department store whose name I have forgotten.We lived in the adjacent town of Sierra Madre for seven years in the 1960s. I've been back only three or four times since then, and on some of those trips we passed through quickly. My challenge today is to reorient myself.

Wild Oats was then Jorgensen's, a gourmet grocery store. When I turned onto California Street, there was Pie and Burger, a favorite haunt of Caltech students. The Caltech campus, where my husband had been a grad student and then an assistant professor, was finally familiar ground. His old building is still there and so is the faculty club where he rented a bed in the open-air loggia the first year he was a grad student. Since he had an office, he only needed a place to sleep, and he couldn't resist the price of $12 per month.

Having succeeded at last in synchronizing my memories of 45 years ago with the reality of today, I took the Gold Line back to Union Station and the motel.

I have not figured out how to upload photos from my XO computer to this blog. And I don't quite understand why several pictures I took with the XO disappeared. I may add pictures after I get home, so check back next week.

Oregon pedometer -11,086 steps

L.A. Without a Car: Day Four

2008-05-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

A day of long bus rides! I had a 10:00 am ticket for the Getty Villa in Malibu, which turned out to be more than 20 miles from my motel. It involved only two buses, but the first one was 25 minutes late, so I missed the ideal connection with the second bus. The relatively new and efficient light rail system doesn't extend in that direction, so the bus competes with all the rest of the traffic on the congested streets and freeways.

The Getty Villa, a reproduction of a first century Roman villa, houses the Getty collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan art. There is also a research institute and a conservation institute on the site. Admission is free, but you need a ticket, and cars pay $8.00 for parking. I'd assumed that the ticketing process regulated the flow of people into the villa, but my being a half hour late didn't seem to make a difference. I'm not sure they really looked at our tickets.

Those of us who arrived on foot where shuttled from the entrance up the hill to the villa. It's on a magnificent site, perched on a hill high above the ocean. The villa itself is extensive, with an entry atrium and an inner peristyle (garden and pool) surrounded on all four sides by two story galleries. The outer peristyle features a very long pool, statuary and landscaping. In addition to the villa, there's an entry pavilion, a cafe, a store, an outdoor theater and an indoor auditorium. The whole site is beautifully planted with varieties native to the ancient Mediterranean world.

I felt like I'd entered a high-brow version of Disneyland. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic place and well worth the visit. It's very well staffed, efficiently and pleasantly run and spotlessly clean. And it's free. Even the food in the cafe was fairly priced. There's a separate section for school buses and picnic tables for students to eat the lunches they've brought with them. I enjoyed an elegant lunch in the cafe: brusccheta mista and a glass of white wine. However, the wine was not good for my concentration while viewing the rest of the exhibit.

The ancient art collection is beautifully displayed with plenty of descriptive labeling and there are orientation films and tours. The gardens are perfect. Maybe that perfection is the reason it all seems a bit sterile. As one critic wrote, you expect to see Roman architecture in ruins, not all new and pristine.

One temporary exhibit touched on this issue. We admire Roman and Greek sculpture for its purity. The bare stone allows us to see the subtleties of surface modeling, and admire the skill of the sculptor in realizing living flesh from cold marble. In ancient times, many or most of these sculptures were painted in realistic colors. Reproductions in the temporary exhibit demonstrated the sometimes garish effect. We have not been acculturated to this aesthetic. I think the same disjoint was influencing my feelings about the villa as a whole. Some weathering, visible repairs, a few crumbling bits and maybe even some noise and smells would make the place more alive, more "picturesque".

Anyway, don't avoid the place on this account. A visit is emphatically worth the effort.

My second visit of the day to the house of designer Charles Eames and his wife, Ray, was a completely opposite experience. First of all, I approached the house by a steep climb up a heavily trafficked road with no sidewalks, nothing like the smooth shuttle up the hill to the villa. I was the only visitor for a self-guided, exterior only tour. One staff member of the Eames Foundation was in the office. She greeted me in a friendly and informal way, and opened doors so that I could see into (but not walk into) the house.

The house, built in 1949, consists of two cubes, mostly glass, nestled into a hillside. The larger cube housed the living quarters, the smaller cube was the office. The interior is furnished with Eames' simple contemporary furniture and cluttered with interesting objects arranged here and there: a collection of glass candlesticks, a stack of tea cups and saucers, curious objects artfully arranged on a low table, lots of books, worn furniture, and many, many potted plants, still watered and maintained. In fact, the house was a little dirty and looked like the residents were not expecting company and had just stepped out for a moment.

The only "landscaping" outside the house was a huge collection of potted plants arranged in the two patios and along the path on the up-hill side of the house. Very 1950s. Otherwise, the yard was left wild, primarily meadow grass under old eucalyptus trees, and a big patch of orange nasturtiums.

A Santa Monica Big Blue Bus took me to Wilshire Boulevard and it was a LONG ride starting from from within sight of the ocean into central L.A. Fortunately I had a seat all the way. Passing Pershing Square, I heard police helicopters overhead and saw security people in bright purple t-shirts, walking bicycles. A few blocks further, and we encountered a rank of riot police with bullet-proof helmets and vests and big weapons. I think they were still on duty following the May Day labor and immigration demonstration, though most of the people had dispersed.

It was the kind of day where I felt hot in the sun, but needed a sweater in the shade.

Oregon pedometer - 9911 steps

L.A. Without a Car: Day Five

2008-05-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

I figured out the Dash bus system, which is separate from the county-wide Metro system. Dash buses operate in city centers (of which there are many in the Los Angeles basin) and run routes through the most congested parts of town. They're for quick trips and the fare for seniors is only ten cents.

Dash B stops near the hotel and took me to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) across from the Disney Music Hall. The present show at MOCA is called "Collecting Collections" which puzzled me a bit until I watched the explanatory video. As seems to be true of all the Los Angeles art museums, the collections are acquired when private collectors donate their collections to the institution. I think this is true to a certain extent for all the major art museums in the country, but other, older museums also have had an active acquisition program; they watch the art markets and go out and buy pieces that fit into their particular collection.

MOCA's collection features work from the mid-20th century to the present, with a special emphasis on Los Angeles artists, but including pieces from all over the world. What I saw represented a wider variety of both artists and media than what I saw at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the work seem somehow more serious or significant. I particularly noticed many more photographs and large works on paper, particularly with graphite (pencil). I realized that in none of the collections I've seen in L.A. are there many prints or drawings; maybe those media are out of fashion. Much contemporary work seems to me to be made for shock value or simply to be "different'. It's interesting or amusing or shocking at first glance, but doesn't pull the viewer back for a second look.

I had lunch at MOCA in spite of having a vague memory of a bad lunch there in the past. My memory was correct. The museum is located on Bunker Hill where there are many newer office buildings that include beautiful outdoor plazas, walkways and mini parks. It is very pleasant to stroll these pedestrian throughways, separated from traffic. I happened on to the California Plaza, a very large, multi-level landscaped area with a water feature. This is at the top of Angel's Flight, the old inclined plane railway that lifted people up and down Bunker Hill. It has been restored but is presently closed for repairs. I took a modern elevator down, instead.

After MOCA, I visited MONA, The Museum of Neon Art. It's in a temporary location and was a small collection of both neon advertising signs and art work that includes neon lighting. They are looking for a permanent home, but rapid development in Los Angeles has driven property prices up. It remains to be seen if the present credit crunch will have an effect. Since I was the only visitor, I had a pleasant conversation with the lady on duty. She told me that most of the central city warehouse spaces, which are the kinds of places they'd need for their exhibits, have been converted to residential "lofts". But these are not the kind of lofts you think of when you think of starving artists. Instead, they're selling for millions of dollars and offer all kinds of luxury and prestige. A very large new development has just begun construction next to the Disney Music Hall and MOCA, and I read about a proposed 30 story tower in Hollywood. L.A. has the reputation for being pro-development. Maybe some of the tycoons will collect art with the millions they make, and enrich the city's museums.

I took a short stroll though part of downtown L.A., stopped at Starbucks for break, then headed back to the hotel. Had supper down the street at a place called Phillipe's which has been there for 100 years. They feature "French dip" sandwiches; there's a choice of several kinds of meat: chicken, pork, turkey, ham, beef. I had beef along with a glass of draft ale, both of which hit the spot. The place was busy, clean and efficiently run since most of the items on the menu (which is extensive) are ready to serve. I saw several people in Amtrak uniforms --- they must have just gotten off work at Union Station down the street. I large Amtrak employee ahead of me in line ordered two bowls of stew, two dishes of strawberry ice cream, and two glasses of lemonade. I assumed he was also ordering for a companion, but he ate it all himself!

Weather was ideal today, and I wore a sunhat.

Oregon pedometer - 8009 steps

L.A. Without a Car: Day Six

2008-05-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

Today, the other Getty. But first I took advantage of the DD or Downtown Discovery. This is a route taken by the Dash buses on weekends. For the full price of ten cents (senior fare), I hopped on right outside my hotel for a tour of downtown L.A.: Little Tokyo, Civic Center, Pershing Square, the library, Macy's, and south to the newly developed Staples Center. Then back again past Bunker Hill and the Music Center. Of course I'd already visited several of these places, but the ride gave me a good overview. Passengers could get off at any point, but I stayed on until I was nearly back to the hotel (thus missing Chinatown), and boarded a bus on Sunset Boulevard.

Sunset is another of Los Angeles' LONG streets, running from downtown, more than 20 miles to the ocean. At first we passed through an Hispanic neighborhood, Silver Lake, then Hollywood, which is still somewhat seedy. The houses grew bigger and the gardens more lush as we passed though Beverly Hills and past the pink Beverly Hills Hotel. "Sunset Strip" is an area of very posh shops in Bel Aire where the houses are protected by high walls and high tech security systems. The few people who got on and off the bus at this point were mostly Hispanic, and I assumed they were hired help in the Bel Aire mansions.

After having ridden buses all week, I must comment on how civil most of the drivers and most of the passengers are. Many disembarking passengers thank the driver, and many drivers go out of their way to help passengers make connections. It occurred to me that the infusion of Hispanic and Asian cultures has possibly mellowed the sometimes arrogant Anglo manner and the occasionally belligerent Afro-American attitude.

A transfer at UCLA and a short bus ride up the hill took me to the Getty Center. This is the second Getty complex, built to house the "rest" of J. Paul Getty's fantastic personal art collection, the "rest" being everything but the ancient Mediterranean art. Like the Getty Villa, the Getty Center is an experience as well as museum. Visitors are lifted up the hillside on an air-cushioned tram to the multi-level cluster of pavilions. The gardens and the water features are as much a part of the architecture as the white marble and glass buildings.

There were offers of tours and orientation videos which I bypassed, and instead, headed for lunch on the Garden Terrace. Then I wandered at will through the galleries of European paintings from the 14th to the 19th centuries. There were galleries of sculpture and decorative arts --- furniture, tapestries, and ornaments, mostly too ornate for my taste, but much admired by many visitors. The only disappointment was the absence of a gallery for illuminated manuscripts. I know there are a large number in the Getty collection, and I think a subset is on display at times. But I guess they're not as spectacular as damask-covered royal beds and gold-trimmed china figures.

Since this Getty is also free, many people take advantage of the opportunity. The crowds are well managed, and the many security guards have their work cut out reminding inexperienced museum-goers to follow the rules: no eating or drinking in the galleries, no flash photography, no tripods, and no touching the art work. I was dismayed to see adults climbing around the outdoor sculpture and through the water features to have their pictures taken. I overheard a conversation between an irate guard and a person I took to be his supervisor over what to do about someone who had been indecently clothed (or unclothed).

I didn't stay long enough to observe the sunset which is reputedly spectacular from this vantage point. I reversed my bus route, getting off this time at Sunset and Vine. A walk along the star-studded sidewalk brought me to Hollywood and Vine where there had apparently been a bad fire --- several fire trucks and a Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms investigative van surrounded the building on one corner. I think the fire was completely out, but firemen were hanging around to prevent people from entering the site.

Tinsel Town lost it's sparkle some time ago but there are signs that it's coming back. There are still vestiges of the old glamour; at a small theater for gay and lesbian films, there was a minor celebrity happening. A big black limo pulled up in front of the building, the passengers were photographed as they got out of the car and one curvacious blond was wearing a long, skin-tight gold lame dress.

After a hamburger and shake at "Original Tommy's", I took the Red Line of the light rail system (this branch is a subway) back to Union Station and the hotel, and fell into bed.

Shirt-sleeve weather. Wore a sunhat.

Oregon pedometer - 10,793 steps

L.A. Without a Car: Day Seven

2008-05-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

I almost rented a car today, but happenstance kept me to my goal of using only public transportation on this trip. There was a convenient transit schedule for reaching our old church in Pasadena in time for worship: Gold Line from Union Station to the end of the line, then a bus that delivered me across the street from Faith Lutheran ten minutes before the service began.

We attended this church when we first came to California after our marriage, and our two children were baptized here. I've kept in touch with Sylvia, who was a long-time member but now attends a different Lutheran church. I'd emailed that I was coming to the Los Angeles area and would like to stop in and see her. She graciously invited me to lunch and found out the time of the service at Faith, alerting several other older women who remembered us and were still members there. I had to adjust my thinking about the ages of these old-timers. Since I'd always thought of them as considerably older than me, and it's been 40 years since we moved away from southern California, I wondered that they were still around. Now I realize they're about a half generation older than I am --- in their 80s or early 90s. So I sat with Betty, Bess, Lillian and Dorothy, our old pastor's widow.

The church has fallen on hard times, due in part to demographic changes in the neighborhood, in part on a controversy (which I was unable to understand) that split the congregation, and on the general demise of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. There were 17 people in attendance, including the pastor, the organist and me. The pastor is a retired man who for the past five years has come just on Sunday to preach. I don't know if they have anyone in the office during the week. A pre-school may rent the facility and provide enough income to maintain the property.

I didn't stay long for coffee hour since I was due at Sylvia's for lunch and she had to leave home in the early afternoon to attend a concert. It was a short walk up the hill to her house, she was waiting, and we enjoyed a good lunch and conversation. I know from her periodic emails that she spends a lot of her time working on her house, and it looks wonderful: spotlessly clean and fresh, unlike the homes of many older people which become tired and cluttered. Sylvia looks good, too. She also takes care of herself.

Leaving Sylvia's house, I trekked up the hill on Michillinda to Fairview, our old street. (I seldom walked up when we lived here --- it's a steep climb!) I knew that our old house was gone, and saw that more than half the houses on the block have been rebuilt. The only thing I recognized on our former property was the sycamore tree that was outside our kitchen window; it's now a grand old specimen.

It was an easier walk down Sunnyside to Sierra Madre Boulevard. I knew where the little town library would be, though I'm not sure it's the same building. Arnold's hardware store is still there. It was a wonderful store. I could always get repair advice from Mr. Arnold himself. When we arrived in Sierra Madre in 1961, the Welcome Wagon delivered gift certificates from various merchants in town. Arnold's gift was a big stainless steel mixing bowl which is still my favorite mixing bowl. The little Sierra Madre hospital, where John's finger was stitched after I accidentally clipped it with the hedge shears, is now boarded up. I recognized the diagonal street configuration in the center of town at the intersection of Sierra Madre Boulevard and Baldwin, but none of the shops were familiar.

On the train ride to Pasadena and Sierra Madre, I'd had the idea of renting a car for the afternoon and driving around the area, covering more territory than I could do on foot or by bus. But when I phoned Enterprise from Sylvia's house, they were closed for the weekend. After my walk to the center of town, I realized I'd seen enough. So much has changed in the 40 years since we'd left that it would be like driving though any town. So my resolution to use only public transportation has been kept.

After a rest at the hotel, I walked across to Olvera Street, the center of El Pueblo de Los Angeles historic park. It's the weekend of Cinco de Mayo, and there's a carnival set up at one end of the park. The place has been quite crowded the whole weekend. I waited until after 7:00 pm, when the crowds had thinned a bit, and stopped in for a few minutes at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. Then I ate supper in one of the restaurants: taquitos and a marguerita.

The first part of the day was overcast, but by noon, I wished I'd brought my sunhat.

Oregon pedometer - 13,200 steps

L.A. Without a Car: Day Eight

2008-05-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

After breakfast, I packed up, checked out and left my backpack at the hotel desk. Amazingly, the carnival in the park near Olvera Street was totally gone!

I took a Dash bus into central L.A. and walked around. The Macy center is a big indoor shopping mall, anchored by a Hyatt Hotel and Macy's Department store. The library was my next destination. As I'd hoped there were many 1920s interior murals and painted ceilings; the new additionis also architecturally dramatic. An exhibit of the kinds of items in Special Collections, included menus and fruit crate labels, as well as the more usual rare books, maps and old photos. Of course there was a big collection of Hollywood material: posters, stills, ads.

Having passed Wolfgang Puck's L.A. Bistro, I returned for lunch. It was not especially expensive and very tasty.

One more ride on Dash with a brief stop in Little Tokyo and another in Chinatown, just to say I'd been there. Then back to the hotel to pick up my bag, and on to Union Station for relaxing wait.The Megabus for San Jose and San Francisco left promptly at 4:00 pm. Again, it was only about one third full, mostly male college students. I was probably the oldest passenger and one of the few females. The ride was uneventful, and even with a half-hour break mid-way, we arrived in San Jose at 10:00 pm, about a half-hour early. I'd been able to phone Don and he picked me up. So I ended my journey by car, not by public transportation.

L.A. Without a Car: Reflections

2008-05-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

Would I do it again this way? Yes! The ride on Mega Bus was entirely satisfactory. The Metro and Dash bus and rail systems in Los Angles work well. It probably takes more time to travel this way than to drive, but not a lot more, and it's certainly less expensive and more restful. The Metro Plaza hotel near Union Station was OK, but not luxurious. The price of $90 per night was higher than a comparable motel would have been, but much less than a luxury hotel, and the location was very convenient.

I carried my XO little green computer with me all the time, thinking that if I was tired of walking, I'd sit down and blog. That never happened, but I used the camera that's part of the computer. That is the only thing I'd change --- I missed my good camera and will certainly take it with me on the next trip. The OX computer was convenient and adequate for internet access when I wanted to check a bus schedule or the opening times of a museum; for that I could have left it in the hotel room and lightened my backpack.

I felt safe in all the neighborhoods I visited and on the buses. I walked a lot. I visited five of the six major art museums in the Los Angeles area, missing only the Huntington in San Marino. I made a final and satisfying pilgrimage to the place where we had lived 45 years ago. And most of all, I have now renewed my acquaintance with a great American city.

Going Back

2008-04-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

After five years with little effective leadership, our church called a pastor who seemed to be ideal, and the implication from both the call committee and the candidate himself was that it was a done deal. The official call was extended --- the candidate declined!

The call committee got back to work, and this past Sunday announced the name of a new candidate --- the pastor who had served the congregation five years ago!

This was a big surprise to most of us, and my first reaction was that we can't go back to the past, even if that was good. This pastor was with the congregation for a long time and was successful and well-liked. When he left, many of us felt a bit abandoned. We got over it and moved forward though a year of an interim pastor, two+ years of a pastor who had many brilliant talents but no administrative ability, and now we're near the end of a one and a half year interim pastor. When our ideal candidate turned us down, we felt rejected all over again, and the prospect of spending another year, with a third iterim pastor, going through the search for another candidate, was very discouraging.

What the call committee and the church council have come up with looks good on paper. Our old pastor is nearing retirement age. He has brought his present congregation to a point where they need an energetic long-term pastor to guide them through a massive building project (a high-rise, city-center building in collaboration with a developer). We need a short-term, experienced pastor who can stabilize the congregation, begin to move us forward again, and help us to find the right long-term pastor. It looks like a good fit.

But I have negative feelings I can't quite understand. It may be the realization that we can't go back to our previous relationship. Both the pastor and the individuals in the congregation have gone through independent experiences, and none of us are the same people we were five years ago. Or maybe I am disappointed that we won't have the exhilaration of getting to know a brand new pastor and having high expectations --- at least for awhile. Or maybe I'm still nursing a tiny grudge that this pastor left us five years ago.

My mind tells me we can make this work. There will be adjustments on both sides, but at the moment, everyone is open and flexible. We'll see what happens.

I have a couple of trips coming up that are also about going back. The end of May, I'll return to Ohio for a sentimental journey. Since we sold our parents' house last summer, this will be the first time I'll visit my home town without a home to go to. Next week I'll be in Los Angles, visiting places we knew when we lived in the area 45 years ago, but also exploring new places. I plan to blog that trip, so stay tuned.

Vegetable Subscription

2008-04-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

I recently signed up for a four-week trial subscription for a weekly batch of vegetables. This is CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, providing locally grown, in-season produce. I support the concept (and the stuff is fresher), but I also felt we were not eating enough vegetables, and having them on hand --- greens I'd already paid for and didn't have to choose at the supermarket --- would allay my diurnal anxiety about what to cook for supper. l'd subscribed to a similar program several years ago, but having to drive several miles to pick up a basket of mostly unfamiliar plant material, was not a success.

This time, I pick up my bag of veggies less than a mile from our house, and so far, though the quantities would really be more suitable for a family of four, I've been able to use most of it. We can always eat lettuce, spinach, celery, carrots, and radishes. Cabbage and beets are on the list for this coming week, and zuccini, broccoli and several kinds of potatoes will be coming later in the summer. Although it hasn't been mentioned, I'm also hoping for really good tomatoes. But maybe they only grow in Ohio and New Jersey.

Then there are the more exotic items. Cardoons are thistle stems, related to and tasting something like artichokes. I added them, chopped, to scalloped potatoes. Arugula, mixed with slivered leeks, sauteed with bacon, sprinkled with balsamic vinegar and grated cheese, was good over pasta. The "mystery bag" contained a few shitake mushrooms which were yummy in scrambled eggs. I think I've eaten agretti in Asian restaurants, but I didn't know what it was. It looks like pine needles and tastes a little like spinach. Purple carrots, while interesting looking, were not as tasty or tender as ordinary orange carrots. Parsnips were a pleasant surprise --- actually sweet. I'm afraid two big bunches of fennel will go unused; my husband doesn't like the licorice flavor.

So, on the whole, the experiment has been a reasonable success. I'll probably continue the subscription. And while I can't say we're feeling noticeably healthier, I'm feeling better psychologically for eating my vegetables and eating them locally.

The Japanese Dollar Store

2008-04-08T21:13:00.000-07:00

We arrived a few minutes before opening time, and I asked another woman, also waiting for the door to open, if she'd shopped at the Japanese Dollar store before.

"Yes,." she replied with a smile. "It's like shopping at an old dime store."

I hadn't thought about it that way, but I realized she was right. For those of you who only know K-Mart and WalMart, they were preceded by the dime stores: Kresge's, Woolworth's, Grant's, Newberry's, McCrory's, Ben Franklin. The dime stores, also called 5-and-10 cents stores, originally sold a variety of items that cost about five or ten cents. By the time I was a child in the 1940s, prices had increased a bit, but it was still possible to buy many things for less than a dollar.

In our small town there were three dime stores. With a weekly allowance of ten cents, I spent many hours browsing the merchandise and deciding how to spend my dime. Toys? Jewelry? Nail polish? Stationery? I still have a very small, pink glass elephant, with a sticker that says, "Made in occupied Japan." Most dime stores included a candy counter with many kinds of candy displayed in glass bins. It was possible to buy ten cent's worth of chocolate-covered peanuts or whatever sweet took my fancy. The clerk would scoop up a little more than I'd asked for, then shake it, piece by piece into the pan on the scale, watching the weight until there was ten-cent's worth. (These spring scales were not computerized, of course, and I suppose the clerk had to mentally calculate how much ten-cent's worth of candy would weigh, given the price per pound.) Then the clerk poured the candy from the scoop-shaped pan into a white paper bag, twisted it shut and exchanged it for my dime.

Later, when I started a part-time job at fifty cents an hour, I'd treat myself to Saturday lunch at the soda fountain which was also a feature of the dime store. I'd order a bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich, toasted, and a coke for less than a dollar. Drugstores also had soda fountains, and once, for a brief time, my aunt worked at one. She'd serve us cherry cokes and phosphates, drinks made of brightly colored, flavored syrup and carbonated water.

Although the Family Dollar Stores and General Dollar Stores of today don't have candy counters or soda fountains, I still like to browse among the items costing a dollar or slightly more, and occasionally I find a bargain. But the Japanese Dollar stores are something else.

A few years ago, I encountered Ichiban Kan by accident, and was fascinated by the merchandise, apparently manufactured in China for the Japanese market. Many of the labels are written only in Japanese, and it can be difficult to tell what some of the more esoteric items are for. There are eyebrow razors and nose hair removers and other inscrutable tools for personal hygiene. I find the array of small plates and bowls in many shapes and colors very attractive, though I wouldn't like to wash or store so many pieces of dinnerware. You can buy plastic storage boxes for all kinds of food, and many specialized kitchen gadgets like rice paddles and molds. I always check the stationery supplies for unusual pens, portfolios, notebooks.

Ichiban Kan also has a good assortment of Japanese snack food, including "Remonade", the Japanese transliteration of "Lemonade", a carbonated soda in various fruit flavors, bottled in a unique glass bottle with a marble inside. The marble is pushed into the rubber-rimmed mouth of the bottle by the pressure of the carbonation and thus creates a seal. To break the seal and open the bottle, you push the marble down into the specially shaped neck which captures the marble so it won't go into the body of the bottle or come out into your mouth.

Ichiban Kan is a half hour from my house, and I don't get there very often. So I was delighted a few months ago to see that Daiso was opening a very large store in a near-by shopping center. Daiso, it turns out, is more accurately a Euro store; everything costs $1.50 unless otherwise marked. It's a lot larger and has a lot more stuff than Ichiban Kan.

There are many kinds of bags: handbags, cosmetic bags, cell phone bags. I buy a zippered foam envelope for my laptop. Browsing the housewares, I see colorful drinking straws, pleated paper cups and napkins, perfect for kids' birthday parties. The attractive plastic lunch boxes have inner compartments for various kinds of food. There are even several kinds of tiny squeeze bottles for meal-size portions of soy sauce. But I am puzzled by the lack of a catch or fastening on the lids of the lunch boxes. Then I discover the lunch box straps that hold everything together. These are decorated too; children would pay close attention to who had what kind of lunch box strap.

In addition to erasers in many shapes, there are notebooks of all kinds and sizes. The pencil caps in transparent jelly-bean colors, sprinkled with glitter and including a tiny eraser, are just what I am looking for. Two Christmases ago, I spent quite a bit of time in an unsuccessful search for colored staples. They have red, blue and green, in addition to silver staples at Daiso. Clips for stacks of paper? Yes, in coordinated sets; bright, dark or pastel colors. Wrapping paper to die for. Then there are the curious packages of colored silken cord and elastic cord in the sewing supplies, and Japanese-style bamboo brushes in the craft department. What about plastic bins for rice, plastic boxes for food and plastic trays of all kinds; cleaning supplies, toys and even little coats for your cat or dog? The hardware section includes little elasticized fabric "bonnets" for the bottoms of chair legs.

Now when I have guests, we head for the Japanese Dollar Store. When I feel the need for shopping therapy I can wander and ponder there for an hour. It's the kind of place where you stop in for one item and leave with two or three. But at $1.50 or $2.00 for each item, it's possible to spend less than $5 and go home with a satisfied feeling.

A Mixed-up Mind

2008-01-18T09:47:00.000-08:00

I'm enjoying some essays by E. B. White. But I tend to get him mixed up with C. P. Snow. Snow is white and both use two initials, all of which rhyme. Though their names are confused in my mind, their writing is quite distinct: E. B. White was a New Englander who wrote wry essays; C. P. Snow was from Old England and wrote painfully detailed novels about academic politics.

My sister has the same problem. The first time she flew from Ohio to California, she remarked how interesting it was to see the Smoky Mountains from the air. We had learned from Miss Bork, our fifth grade geography teacher, about the old, worn down mountains in the east and the young, rugged mountains in the west. They're easily recognized as different mountains; my sister just confused the names. But I understood perfectly. Pondering this, I realize the Rockys have snow, but the White Mountains are part of the same Appalachian chain as the Smokys.

Maybe it's something about all the words that end in the sound "ee". E. B. C. P. Rocky, Smoky. But in most words that end with the letter "e", the "e" actually remains silent, unless the ending is "ie". In that case, the word ends in the sound "ee", as do words ending in "y" and sometimes "i" (as in taxi). Now who's mixed up?

I have a hard time using the correct words for left and right. Although I know in my mind which is which and I can point correctly, I often apply the wrong name. This makes my husband crazy when he's driving and I'm giving directions. I actually have a very good sense of direction; north, east, south and west give me no trouble. Then there's "screen up" and "screen down" on my computer. When I tap "screen up", the display moves down. But for some reason, "page up" and
"page down" make perfect sense.

But there's hope. After being mystified for several years about the option in PhotoShop to flip an image horizontally or vertically, I now remember which does what. Most of the time.

I Don't Want to Sound Like Scrooge, But . . .

2007-12-21T20:41:00.000-08:00

When a family from church learned that my husband and I would be spending this Christmas alone, without other family members, they felt sorry for us and kindly invited us to their house for the day. They have five kids, and it's a lively scene. We graciously turned down the invitation. I didn't go into detail about why I like to spend Christmas alone, but let me explain here:

Underlying the whole issue is the fact that some people like a big party and some people don't. That's just the way they are, and I belong to the latter group. Nothing wrong with that. The more immediate reason that I like a quite, peaceful Christmas is that for forty years, I hosted a big family Christmas almost every year, and I've OD'd on big Christmases!

Both my mother and my mother-in-law were the oldest of a family of five and seven kids, respectively, and they grew up in hard times when each child got one present, something practical like new mittens or a book. Even an orange in the stocking was a treat. After they grew up and had the means, producing a big Christmas for us, their kids, was something that was really important to them. My mother-in-law, in particular, like to play the role of the fairy-godmother, and she "treated" (her word) not only her children, and later, her grandchildren, but also nieces and nephews with substantial gifts. She liked to shop. She liked to be the one who gave the "special" gift, (one among several.) The Christmas after her husband died, she told us and my sister-in-law that Dad had wanted to get each of us a television set for Christmas and she was going to carry out his wish. Neither of us wanted a television set --- our kids had been getting along fine without one. We weren't even very sure that television sets had really been Dad's idea, but what could we say? So we got television sets for Christmas, like it or not.

Shortly after my husband and I were married, my mother announced that she would never spend Christmas alone. So began the annual rotation: my parents one year, my in-laws the next year. Since my husband and I each have one sister, one of our sisters had parents every-other-year. Many years later, when dating old photos, we'd calculate which Christmas it was by which parents were with us. For my sister and my sister-in-law, this meant a "big" Christmas alternating with a "little" Christmas. (They didn't have inlaws as part of the formula. ) For us, it meant a "big" Christmas every year. A couple of times it worked out that we had both parents at the same time. They went out if their way to be cordial to each other, but had such different expectations and interests, that the resulting stress for me was not worth the peace of a "little" Christmas the following year. And have I mentioned that our parents lived 2000 miles away; so they arrived several days before December 25 and stayed until the New Year?

I could go on about all the things about Christmas I don't like, but don't get me wrong. I like Christmas itself: the anticipation, the lights, the music, the smell of evergreen, the spirit of peace and cooperation that permeates society. I could do without the gross commercialization, the greed, the frantic attempt to do it all and make it perfect. Three years ago, my husband and I spent Christmas in England. We lived in a very small flat, and had an eight inch tall Christmas tree in a pot. We shopped for ready-made food the day before, and gave each other one very small gift that would fit in the suitcase. We attended a local Christmas Eve service for families and learned about the custom of Christingle. On Christmas morning, we walked about an hour into the countryside, past frosted fields. We could see our breath and that of the cows in the nearby fields. Our destination was a very old, tiny stone church without electricity or heat. There we gathered with about 40 or 50 other people, sitting close together in the rough wooden pews so we might stay a little warmer. At the beginning of the service, the bell ringer walked up to the front of the church to pull the ropes while his dog stood by. Although the organist was too cold or couldn't see in the dark or the little pump reed organ was in bad condition, the congregation sang joyfully anyway. We didn't know anyone, but we didn't feel alone.

This Advent season, we've been studying the messianic prophesies of Isaiah. We learned that they (and most Old Testament prophesies) were responses to bad situations: wars, exploitation, injustice, greed, self-centeredness, dishonesty --- people who had collectively fallen away from a relationship with God. The prophets said, "Shape up, or really bad things will happen." And really bad things did happen. But after suffering the consequences of their bad behavior, God offered them a second chance, a redemption. He was right to embody himself in a baby, an innocent who has no agenda, and can confer no power or status. A baby is the symbol hope, and another second chance. What joy!

Veterans' Day

2007-11-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

World War II vets are the subject of much attention this week as Veterans' Day approaches. They're all in their 80s now or older. It got me to thinking, and I was not sure my memory was working right, when I remembered that as a child, I saw Civil War Vets. That seemed unlikely until I did the arithmetic --- it's true, and the fact that I saw a living person born more than 150 years ago, means I'm not all that young myself.

In my small hometown in Ohio, there was always a big Memorial Day parade on May 30. (The observance was not changed to the last Monday of May until 1971). The holiday marked the end of the school year, the beginning of summer, the opening of the public swimming pool and the day my Dad set out tomato plants. The parade formed downtown, marched north past the high school where there was a brief ceremony in front of the Doughboy Statue. No, not the Pillsbury Doughboy, but a representation of a World War I soldier. When the parade reached the city hospital, the music stopped but the march went on, accompanied only by a cadence tapped out on the rim of the drum --- too much noise would disturb the patients inside. When the parade finally got to the cemetery, there was a longer ceremony which always included the recitation of the Gettysburg Address by a specially picked high school student (usually male.)

What fascinated me were the groups of vets who marched in the parade. As a young child, just after World War II, these recent vets all marched smartly and they all still fit into their uniforms. Preceding them were the World War I vets, a little gray and out of shape but still keeping up pretty well. Some of the Spanish American War vets still marched, but others rode in convertibles, waving and looking alert. But most honored were two or three very elderly, frail Civil War vets, propped up in open cars, looking about uncertainly. When you consider that they had probably been born between 1845 and 1850, they were approaching the century mark in age.

As the years passed and the last Civil War vet had died, the Spanish American War vets took their place as the oldest living veterans. Now the few remaining World War I vets are well over 100. This year I was in France on All Saints Day, and saw a small group of World War II vets with flags, marching into the cemetery, still looking surprisingly spry.

The parade goes on. Now there are Korean War vets, Vietnam War Vets, Gulf War Vets, and active soldiers in the diabolical conflict called the Iraq War. Will the time ever come when the only living veterans are as old as those Civil War vets I saw more than 60 years ago?

Pure and Simple

2007-11-08T08:10:00.000-08:00

My husband has been obsessing for several days now about his new computer. He's changing the operating system, installing new software and trying to get it to work with a new keyboard, monitor, mouse and his old laser printer. Most of the problems have been solved but it's taken several sleepless nights and the support of several other techno-wizzards. Not the sort of thing any of us ordinary, techno-deficient types could come close to doing.

I related his struggles to some friends. One replied that he'd worked six months to rid his new computer of unwanted software and it's still not quite right. Another friend replied that it certainly is frustrating to spend so much time fooling around with unwanted complexities when there are so many other constructive things we'd rather be doing.

A few months ago, I bought a small laptop for traveling, and wanted it to be synchronized with an older, larger laptop --- same manufacturer, same brand. But it turned out that I'd unwittingly purchased a computer with a new operating system and it proved to be impossible to go backward and install an older (but proven and widely used) operating system on the new computer. So even if I cave in and buy all new software, it won't necessarily work with both operating systems, nor will all the peripherals works with both laptops. I'm resigned to going back and forth between the two with the help of a back-up iPod and files copied to DVDs.

The PC guy I hired to try to synchronize the two computers also cleaned up my old computer (it was taking ten minutes to boot!) by deleting lots of junk, particularly the security software which he claimed was grossly bloated. Instead he installed some security free-ware and a low-cost counter-spy program. The old computer works so much better now.

Why do we put up with all this larding and incompatibility? Why not offer a machine that has a basic operating system, simple Internet access and that includes the option of a certain number of software packages, chosen by the purchaser. No ads, no 30-day trials, no Lite versions of fuller packages --- unless the purchaser wants them.

Mozilla has been outstanding in offering a clean Internet browser (Firefox) and email manager (Thunderbird). Since Mozilla is open-source software, many add-ons have been written and are available free --- if the user wants them. Google, too, is doing a fairly good job of keeping things simple, though I think their g-mail interface is confusing. Some manufacturer is soon going to tumble to the fact they can cop a huge share of the market by producing a computer that's pure and simple.

England and Bordeaux, October 2007

2007-10-23T03:08:00.000-07:00

19 - Friday.

We're scheduled to leave for Oxford this afternoon, but we had an electrical brown-out Wednesday night, and Don's main computer, the one in his office at home, burned out. Mine is OK, and Don threw the circuit breaker on the refrigerator, so that's OK, too. (We once lost a refrigerator during a brown-out, along with about two-thirds of the people on our block.) So Don spent most of yesterday, backing up files on his computer at school, writing down all the things he has been thinking about during the period he was not supposed to do much reading, and preparing for the lectures and meetings he'll have on the trip. Yoichi came over last night after work and stayed until nearly midnight, diagnosing the problem with the computer and saving all the files Don had not backed up. They went to Fry's and bought several pieces of equipment, including a battery-operated reserve power supply. Don had been thinking of getting a new computer for his office. So he came home with a laptop and a new keyboard. Those have not yet been taken out of the box; that's to do when we're home again.

In the meantime, I was reinstalling software and files on my small VAIO, the one that runs Windows Vista operating system, the one the PC guy had unsucesfully tried to convert to the older Windows XP. That turned out to be impossible (or at least not economically reasonable --- it was theoretically possible, but the time it would take would cost more than a new computer.) I burned DVDs for the first time --- five of them to backup 15 gigabytes of data and image files. Now all those files are also on the old computer, the new one and in an iPod. I'm well backed-up. Now it's a matter of maintaining the backups as I create new files.

At San Francisco International Airport:

Mr. Singh, an Indian man with a big blue turban, drove us to the airport in his van. He charges a little more than the van service we've been using, but he seems more reliable. A couple of times, we've wondered if we'd get to the airport in time with the other van service. The airport was not very busy. We checked in and went through security --- short lines both times. Then we had a leisurely lunch with plenty of time to spare. I found a place near our gate to plug in and edited photo files for an hour. That's my down-time task during this trip. I estimate I've scanned about 1000 old family photos; not all of them are edited and labeled, and I'd like to complete that job so I know what I have and can find what I want.

We're flying on Virgin Atlantic this trip, my first time with that carrier. Don had flow them once before, and liked the service.

20 - Saturday

Well, Virgin Atlantic was not at all what we'd hoped for. We were crowded into our seats and had to keep them upright during the meal service. There wasn't enough room to use my laptop. Don didn't get much sleep since he couldn't move enough to get comfortable. I slept fitfully. The meals were reasonable and the attendants were nice. Each seat had a video screen, and promised to deliver (free) movies, TV, games, music and news. I don't like to listen through headphones, but I thought I'd play some of the games. The video controls were combined with a phone, clipped into the side of the armrest. In the first place, the device was hard to get at since we were wedged into our seats. Once in hand, the controls were hard to understand, and some of them did not work. I turned my screen off, and put the control back into its niche in the side of the armrest, but every time I moved, my hip pressed some of the buttons and the screen came to life in a random way. I finally let the control dangle to the floor.

Since there was supposedly so much video to watch, there were no magazines to read or crossword puzzles to do. I was able to do some sewing, and I also watched the lady in the seat next to me. She was from England and had been to Monterey, California, to visit her daughter who'd just had a new baby. The English woman had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of movie star gossip magazines. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught up on all the news about who's in love, who's breaking up, who's expecting a baby, how everyone dresses and does their hair and how they compare with each other. Most of the magazines seemed to carry the same tit-bits. I wondered why this woman, who was about my age, was so interested in what pop-starlets are doing. Maybe since these were American magazines, they were about different people than she could read about in England. But who cares?

We landed on time at Heathrow Terminal Three and I think we were the only plane disembarking at that time. The non-EU, non-UK passport control line had very few people; even the UK-EU line was a lot shorter than we've seen at other times. We waited ten minutes or so for our baggage; it all arrived safely. The longest part of the airport process was walking the long tunnels from Terminal Three to the Central Bus Station. That area has all been redone, with a tent-like roof over part that used to be in the open air, and a more orderly boarding area. We waited another ten minutes for the Oxford bus, and arrived at Queen's Lane about 1:00 pm. While I waited on the sidewalk with the suitcases, Don zipped down to the Magadalen porters' lodge to pick up some keys.

We vowed not to go to sleep, but to try to keep going until 6:00 pm, then sleep the night through. It was all I could do to get up the four flights of stairs to North Light with a backpack and a small but heavy box of Halloween candy Kelly had asked me to bring. Don made the extra trip downstairs to get my suitcase. Paula and Lloyd had left the flat wonderfully clean and the newly made bed was almost too much to resist. But after a quick inventory of the food, we left for Sainsbury's to buy groceries. Down the stairs, up the hill, then home with bags of food and up the stairs again. We spent an hour unpacking and regrouping. Then it was down the stairs once more and up the hill to Tom Tavern where we had a nice supper of fish and chips and half-pints of bitter. Once more home, up the stairs and quickly to bed. It wasn't quite 6:00 pm, but we were too tired to hold out any longer. It's oh, so wonderful to stretch out horizontally after a night on the plane. My legs throbbed from all the stair-climbing.

21 - Sunday

We slept most of the night, getting up briefly now and then; I needed to eat a little at one point. But mostly we slept until 7:30 am. It wasn't too hard to get up. I finished unpacking and reorganizing. Don worked on the lectures he'll deliver in the next two weeks. We walked across Christ Church meadow at 10:30 am, on our way to Magadalen for the 11:00 am church service. Yesterday and today have been cool but sunny. There seem to be many tourists; at least there are lots of people taking pictures. We got to Magdalen with time to spare and walked around the quad. All the perennials in the formal gardens have been cut back almost to the ground for winter. There were two or three dozen deer in the deer park.

The hymns this morning were by Charles Wesley, and we later learned that this is the 300th anniversary of his birth. Diana and I had a preview of this in May when the churches were commemorating the anniversary of John Wesley's conversion experience at Aldersgate church in London. Father Michael (who is from Buffalo) presided at the Magdalen service. The men's choir of 12 voices reverberated with the liturgy. The sermon was given by a biologist who gave a scholarly review of the second letter to Timothy: it's authorship and date. He pointed out that the letter was written from and to people who knew each other well and had shared the same experiences. They trusted each other. In the same way that we trust our good friends, we can also trust the witness of the people in the books of the New Testament.

After church, we joined students and others in the "New Room" for lunch. I'd attended this same lunch a few years ago: bread with cheese and paté, wine, beer and soft drinks. They ask a donation of two pounds each. We sat across from a fellow from Magdalen who had been my table partner at a Magdalen dinner about a year ago. He's a philosopher and we had an interesting conversation then. But I don't think he remembered us today; in addition, he's very shy. Don is scheduled to attend the "Restoration Dinner" at Magdalen later this week. So we asked what it commemorates. The fellow was glad to have something to talk about, and related that under King James II, (who was deposed in 1688), Roman Catholic scholar/priests were appointed to take the place of the non-Catholic scholars at Magdalen. The Magdalen scholars resisted, of course, and later, James relented, and the original scholars were "restored". This happened only at Magdalen, so they celebrate the anniversary of this restoration. The fellow with whom we were talking also remarked that on the 300th anniversary of the restoration (1988) some historians wrote about the event and concluded that the Roman Catholic scholar/priests actually did better scholarly work than other Magdalen scholars have done before or since.

Back at North Light, I took a nap while Don worked, then he slept while I worked. Unfortunately, the unsecured wireless network we could access from the flat in May is no longer available. But I may be able to share the wireless connection of the people next door. Otherwise, my computer is working fine.

We walked out at supper time to the castle precinct which has been redeveloped. A few of the fancy restuarants were open, but not too much was going on, and it was too dark to see much. I'll revisit the area tomorrow and take the tour of the old castle and jail. We picked up some not very good fast food near the bus station, then came on home.

Some things have changed. We can now buy milk in four and six pint containers where a few years ago it was impossible to find anything bigger than one pint. The multi-story car park behind Westgate Shopping Center is apparently going to be made into retail space and replacement parking will be built behind and beside the present parking garage where there is now a simple parking lot. The Wharf Tavern, the scary pub nearest North Light, where I was always afraid to go by myself, is now closed.

But some things stay the same. After church this noon at the Magdalen lunch, we saw the same old man who joined the Beating of the Bounds last May, and got in on the free lunch then. This noon, wearing the same red plaid muffler, he seemed to be making cheese sandwiches with a loaf of bread he had brought along. I asked him if he enjoyed the cheese and he replied with a long discourse on reality. He's charming and obviously well-educated. The students this noon were saying that he's a musical genius and can spontaneously analyze the harmonics of the music he hears. Diana and I thought he was a decayed scholar, probably an alcoholic, who has become a sort of dignified and gentlemanly beggar. Another Oxford eccentric.

22 - Monday

I found the unsecured network after all. It comes in the window obliquely, perhaps from the telephone building behind and to the west of North Light. I can receive it from the windowsill and from the sofa, but not from the table.

We were up reasonably early this morning and Don headed for the Com Lab. I started out toward the Botley Road to look at floor covering options for the bathroom. The flooring store on Oxpens has mostly wood laminate --- not suitable for a bathroom, but they also had a small selection sheet vinyl, and one sample with a black and white tile pattern would look nice. The young man in the store was quite helpful, but I had a hard time understanding his British accent.
I walked along Botley Road, through Osney. There didn't seem to be many signs of the floods from mid-summer. My destination was the Wykes do-it-yourself store where I was disappointed to learn that they only carry ceramic tiles --- very little vinyl. Ceramic tiles would be very nice on the bathroom floor, and they cost about the same per square meter as sheet vinyl. But the installation costs would be considerably more since the toilet would need to be removed and reinstalled.

Taking the bus back into town, I got off at the Castle, and took the tour "Castle Unlocked." It was interesting, but focussed mostly on ghostly and gruesome stories rather than history. However there were displays that told more about the history and reproduced old maps, which I find fascinating. We climbed the narrow circular staircase of St. George's Tower, the old, square tower in the complex. It was originally the tower for St. George's church where, before the university existed, there were scholar/monks in residence. The earliest structures on the site date from Norman times, the late 1000s. As the years passed, the buildings changed, walls were built, then crumbled. The mound, which I had thought was the buried ruble of a castle, was actually built as an earthen mound on top of which there was a castle.

Sometime, maybe in the 1600s, the complex became a prison, and functioned as such until the 1990s. The main prison buildings were built in the 1800s, and much of that building has now been made into a luxury hotel called Malmaison, or "Bad House". Our tour included the crypt of the old St. George church and one hallway of cells, each furnished in the style of a particular period, including the 20th century.

Prison conditions, especially in earlier times, were very bad and a description of the place in the late 1600s is related in the historical novel, "An Instance of the Fingerpost." There were hangings and beheadings. John and Charles Wesley and their friends, while students at Oxford, visited the prison regularly and advocated for prison reform as did many others.

Our tour group included some school children --- about 4th grade, I'd guess --- who are on half-term holiday. The guide, a soft-spoken young man, told some of the more grisly stories in discreet language which the kids didn't always understand. So there were questions about "cess pits" and the like.

My back has been bothering me. It was good while I was in California, but I guess a combination of the long airplane ride, carrying heaving suitcases and backpacks, and walking long distances has taken a toll. After the castle tour, I headed for Boots for ibuprofin. That and a nap made me feel a lot better.

Don gave a lecture at the Com Lab late in the afternoon and I met him at 7:00 pm at the Magdalen President's Lodge for a dinner party in his honor. We'd met the president and his wife, David and Heather Clary, when we stayed overnight at their house in June 2006, after Norway, while John and Julie were at North Light. David and Heather apparently have dinner parties like this frequently. All the other guests were computer science undergraduates. There was one other young wife. About 16 of us were seated at the long dining room table. The walls of the dining room were papered with a late 19th century design --- Arts and Crafts style --- made especially for Magdalen. David told me a designer had been commissioned to redesign the entire President's Lodge, but his plans were never carried out. However, the blocks for printing the wallpaper had been made and were later rediscovered and used. The original plan was for the dining hall in the college to also be papered with this design, but at present, it only exists in the dining room of the President's Lodge.

We had salad with mint and chile peppers, crusted salmon served over a mound of scalloped potatoes, green beans and a stem of cherry tomatoes, broiled. Desert was a kind of caramel cake. All was served by a butler, and there was obviously a cook in the kitchen --- what a life!

23 - Tuesday

I'd thought of going into London today --- haven't been there to do anything for three or four years. But then I thought I'd better rest my back. As it turned out, my back is fine again; heavy doses of ibuprofen for a day or two usually do the trick.

I went out at mid-day to do some shopping. Chose some vinyl for the bathroom floor (black and white squares) and got the name of an installer. Bought bread at Nash's in the Covered Market and ate lunch there at Brown's: a dish of hot apple pie with custard. Bought two new pillows at Boswells and a package of square cloth patches from India at the Fair Trade Shop under St. Michael at the North Gate.

Then I started feeling like I was coming down with a cold, and headed home to start Echinacae and decongestants and to sleep.

Don gave his second lecture then went to Evening Prayer at Christ Church. We ate in, primarily the bread from Nash's.

24 - Wednesday

I was up and down most of the night, with nasal congestion. Couldn't breathe.

Left home at 10:30 am to visit a church embroidery workshop at Christ Church. The ladies, all volunteers, meet there one day a week to do fine liturgical needlework in the traditional style. A lot of the work involves gold thread which is actually a very narrow, thin gold ribbon wound around a thread core. It can't be threaded through a needle and sewn though the fabric in the usual way. Instead, it's laid on the surface of the fabric and fastened down with small stitches of fine silk thread.

I knew about the technique called couching, in which the gold thread can follow curves and contours. Depending on the way the threads run, they catch the light in different ways. Think of a halo around the head of a saint. One approach would be to make concentric circles, stitching each pair of gold threads down with nearly invisible thread. A different approach would be to lay the gold threads in a radiating pattern. The final effect would be a bit different. Red thread is usually used for the holding stitches, but other colors give subtly different effects.

The second technique, new to me, is called "or nué" which I think means "nude gold". In this technique, the gold threads are laid in straight, parallel rows, touching each other. They are fastened down with fine thread as in couching. Then heavier colored thread is stitched over the gold in a grid pattern. Each of the heavier stitches hides the gold in that spot and forms a part of the patten, similar to a cross-stitch pattern, except that the stitches are straight and at right angles to the gold thread. The gold forms the background and sparkles through the heavier stitches.

The ladies showed me working drawings and a photo of the robe they recently completed for the vice-rector of Oxford University. The back of the black gown was decorated with a cascade of gold leaves and featured the University crest between the shoulders. The front of the gown also had a cascade of gold leaves down each side, accented with tiny crests, one for each of the 40 colleges and halls of the university. Each crest was about one inch by one and a quarter inches, and the emblems on each crest were worked in the "or nué" technique. Imagine a complex crest with lions, for example, reduced to a regular grid, where each tiny stitch represents a paw or an ear. I suppose there were about 20 or 30 stitches and rows to the inch and 1600 stitches in each crest (including the foundation couching.)

In addition to new work, the ladies also do restoration. They were working on an altar frontal from the late 1800s. The silk couching threads had rotten away, and the gold threads were just hanging loose. The design was of gold grape leaves and several clusters of grapes. The grapes were three-dimensional, like half spheres, stuffed and covered with gold couching. I found it interesting to learn that decorative elements in a piece are often carefully cut away and reapplied to a new background which is reinforced and lined. One woman had some of the bunches of grapes detached from the original piece to rework the couching. They estimate this piece will take two years of work.

A couple other women were working on needlepoint wedding kneelers, also on a very fine grid. I think there are only a few people in the U.S. who do this kind of traditional, fine needlework. It makes my machine-sewn banners look quite crude by comparison.

After the visit to the embroidery group, I met Kelly for lunch. She's the American woman who looks after North Light for me. She was a friend and neighbor of Jen and Greg when they lived here. It's half-term holiday for the school kids and her two boys (Ian and Willem, fourth and second graders) are home for the week. Her husband (a biologist from the Netherlands) took them for the day to give Kelly a day off. She had her hair done, then we met at the Vault, a natural-foods restaurant in the crypt of St. Mary the Virgin church. I enjoyed the visit with her over lunch. She stayed downtown to start her Christmas shopping and get the most out of her free day. She stopped in a North Light on her way home to pick up the box of Halloween goodies she'd asked me to bring from the U.S.

25 - Thursday

A bad night with fever and aching. I gave up the idea of visiting another church embroidery workshop, this one in an Anglican convent in East Oxford. I'd been looking forward to seeing the convent and having a silent lunch with the sisters. The sewing group meets there only on Thursdays, so I'll have to arrange a visit during another trip to Oxford.

I took it easy all day. Felt well enough to go out for lunch to the Loco Cafe where I had mushrooms on toast. I then browsed a bit in some of the stores downtown and on Broad Street.

Have been resting, reading and editing old photos the rest of the day. Don, dressed in a tux, is attending the "Restoration Dinner" at Magdalen. Even if I felt perfectly well, I wouldn't be allowed to attend --- it's for Fellows only. This was the kind of thing Virginia Woolfe wrote about in "A Room of One's Own".

26 - Friday

Walter and Heidi Gander from Zürich arrived last night and are staying with their daughter, Marie-Louise, who lives in Botley. This is the day Heidi and I had planned to spend together, so she came into Oxford and up to North Light. We had some tea and talked awhile, then went out to lunch. Walter and Heidi had a sabbatical in Oxford in 2000 and were there when Jen and Greg first arrived. But I'm not sure how much Heidi explored the city at that time. She doesn't seem to know her way around very well.

I asked what kind of lunch she would like, and she described Jacket Potatoes (baked potatoes) which are served in England with many different kinds of filling: cheese, cheese and bacon, baked beans, tuna mayonnaise, shrimp mayonnaise (the latter two we would call tuna salad or shrimp salad.) So we went to the Turf Tavern, entering the picturesque way through Bath Place. This old tavern, composed of several rooms on different levels, jerry-built together, is located in the center of a cluster of other buildings. The entrance through Bath Place is down a narrow cobbled lane, past the old Bath Hotel and through a passageway. The Turf Tavern is a favorite hangout of Oxford students and staff. Heidi chose a jacket potato with tuna mayonnaise while my jacket potato was filled with bacon and cheese. We each had a half-pint of bitter.

After lunch, we left the Turf Tavern by way of St. Helen's Passage, another narrow alleyway between buildings that ends at the Bridge of Signs across Queen's Lane (also an alleyway between buildings, but not as narrow.) The geocache Diana and I found in May on Queen's Lane, under the dolphin, is still there. Heidi and I walked around Oxford until I got tired. Then we returned to North Light for more tea with cakes we'd picked up at the Cafe Loco take-away.

We met Walter and Don at 6:00 pm at Magdalen Chapel for Evening Prayer. The music tonight was special --- composed by the present music director. We all liked it very much. I'm not sure Heidi and Walter had attended an Evening Prayer service before. In the dark chapel, illuminated only by subdued reading lights at each place and candles by the choir, the atmosphere is quiet and mystical.

We had three-quarters of an hour to kill before dinner in hall at Magdalen. Don had the key to the "Smoking Room" where Fellows gather for sherry before dinner and coffee after. There was a gas fire in the fireplace and plenty of big, leather couches and chairs. It was pleasant to relax, sip sherry and talk.

In contrast to this elegant atmosphere, the walk to the dining hall is on a chickenwire-covered catwalk over a lead-covered roof. We entered the hall through a tiny, almost secret door. The students all stand when the Fellows enter to take their seats at High Table (elevated a few inches above the main part of the hall by a shallow dais.) Since this was my second meal in Magadalen Hall, I knew that the silver pots at each place were for drinking water. With a ring-shaped handle sticking out on each side, I still think they look like sugar bowls. These water pots are unique to Magdalen; I suppose some former student donated them long ago, and they've become a tradition.

I can't say a lot for the food at Magdalen. I think the cook is trying too hard to produce haute cuisine and should stick to a simpler style of cooking. It's as if he knows the vocabulary, but can't put the words together into smooth sentences. The artichoke salad with olives was too oily; the breaded pork cutlets were underdone (almost impossible to cut) and the sauce for the accompanying spaghetti was too sweet. The cooked red cabbage was underdone and the zuchini was over-done. The dessert of mocha mousse was OK, except that it didn't really go with the poached, diced pears in the middle. There were three spots of some kind of sauce on the dessert place, an imitation of haute presentation, but there was too little to taste, so it didn't add any flavor.

I sat next to the fellow we'd talked with during Sunday lunch. His name is Prof. Walker, and he carried on an adequate conversation. He was the acting head of the table, so said the beginning and ending grace (in Latin.) The students may choose to dine in hall on Wednesdays and Fridays in what is considered a formal dinner. Many of the female students were dressed up. The rest of the time (or all of the time, if they choose) they may eat in the student cafeteria.

After all of us at the head table were done eating, we arose, the students arose, and we filed out though the tiny door in the corner where we had entered. Back over the roof and into the "Smoking Room" where we had coffee. I think Walter and Heidi enjoyed the experience of eating in hall at high table (as I do), but the food was not the primary attraction.

27 - Saturday

Although my cold is improving a bit, I wasn't sure I had the energy to carry luggage downstairs then trek up St. Aldate's Street to the bus stop at Queen's Lane. I made it, but slowly. The bus trip to Gatwick airport and our short flight to Bordeaux were uneventful. However, after deplaning and filing into the terminal at Bordeaux, we were held in a waiting room for about an hour. The pilot of the British Airways plane explained in English, that there was a security alert, something about an unidentified bag. We later learned from our host, Robert Cori, who had come to meet us, that the whole terminal was locked-down and the roads leading to it were closed. He had to park some distance away, outside the airport. I had noticed, during our time in the waiting room, that another plane had parked next to ours and the passengers from that plane were bussed somewhere else --- as it turned out, probably to a different terminal. I think we were held because our luggage had already been offloaded into the locked-down terminal.

After an hour, we quickly filed though passport control. Those passengers with EU passports only had to show the cover of their passport. Don and my passports were opened and stamped. Our luggage was waiting and so was Robert. He drove us to our hotel, The Normandie, in the center of the city. There was no good parking place, so Robert quickly made sure our room was waiting for us, then left us.

One of the windows in our room looks out to the Esplanade des Quinconces, which is ordinarily a large park. But it is presently the site of a huge fair, or carnival. It was impossible to resist walking though the brightly lighted, gaudy, noisy aisles. I haven't been to such a carnival for a long time, and I was interested to see that many of the attractions are the same as they've been since I was a little girl: bumper cars, shooting galleries, cotton candy, fun houses, horror houses, fishing for plastic ducks for very young children, a roller coaster and the biggest Ferris Wheel I've even seen. But the Ferris Wheel was tame compared to the rides that twirled, tipped and spun, all at the same time. They not only looked frightening, they looked dangerous to me, and Robert later told us two or three people had been killed on a similar ride earlier in the summer. I couldn't imagine how long it must take to set up all this equipment, then at the end of the fair, dismantle it and transport it to the next site. We later learned that the fair was at this location for a month, and it took two weeks before that to set up.

We decided not to eat at the fair, but headed in the opposite direction, toward a posh shopping area. Don has started to come down with a cold, and wanted soup. We checked the menus of several restaurants, but they were too fancy and had no potage. We finally settled for a small place on a side street where it looked like we could order a small, relatively inexpensive meal. As we walked in, an older American couple (the only other patrons) were expressing dismay because the waitress spoke no English. I plunged in and offered to help. The waitress was patient and experienced with tourists, and we eventually worked it all out with a combination of my poor French, writing, and drawing pictures.

Don had tapis, and I ordered bruschetta, which turned out to be huge. We had our first sample of Bordeaux wine. We sat on the opposite side of the restaurant from the other American couple, not encouraging them to start a conversation, but we eventually heard their story. They were from Fresno and had been part of a tour. They'd added an extension of a few days to their tour in order to visit Bordeaux. They were staying at a Best Western Hotel across the street from the restaurant and since they were on their own, had been eating the same thing at the same restaurant every day because the owner spoke English. When we encountered them, the owner had taken the day off, leaving the place to the non-English-speaking waitress. They didn't know what to do. They were tired and discouraged, wishing that they had not taken the extension to their tour. They were 80-ish, and the wife had recently recovered from a broken leg and was not walking well. We were amazed to watch them drink an entire bottle of wine before beginning their meal, then order an additional carafe of wine to go with their food. By the time they walked over to our table to thank us for helping, the wife, in particular, was not thinking clearly. They'd been up since 3:00 am when they'd left for the airport, only to learn that Air France had just gone on strike and would not be flying for several more days. I felt sorry for them and could understand why they were acting like ugly Americans, but we didn't want to get more involved.

28 - Sunday

Our hotel room is comfortable, even charming, but strangely shaped and decorated. It's located on a corner of the building which is not a right angle, and which is curved. We have two windows on one side of the room, but they look out in slightly different directions. A shallow closet has been partitioned off between the windows and that's where the toilet had been installed. One side of the room has also been partitioned off to form a narrow bathroom with a handsome, one-piece, cast-glass sink and a shower. The other end of this space is the closet with an empty alcove above it, reaching up to the high ceiling. All of these architectural elements --- windows, alcoves, niches --- have been outlined with dark wooden molding. With all the curves and odd angles, some craftsman had quite a job piecing and fitting the decorative strips of wood. I lay in bed and try to figure out how or why it was all done. The windows are very tall and hung with double frames of glass that open like doors. The iron latches are very substantial and when both sets of windows are closed, we can only faintly hear the sounds of the carnival and the bells of the trams that stop outside.

I still don't have my normal energy. But after a substantial breakfast at the buffet in the hotel, we started walking to look for a church. The old city of Bordeaux is situated on the west bank of the Garonne River which flows northward into a deeply cut estuary that empties into the Atlantic ocean on the south-west coast of France. The city underwent an architectural renaissance in the 18th century, and with it's broad boulevards and spacious plazas, became the model for the later transformation of Paris. The Place de Tourny anchors the northern edge of the city center, and the Place de La Victoire marks the southern boundary. In the northern part of this area --- the neighborhood of our hotel --- the buildings are grand in the 18th century style with large open spaces surrounding them. The Grand Théâtre (Opera House), the Bourse (Stock Exchange), the Cathedral of St. André and the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) are connected with streets of high-end shops. Even though traffic is very congested and parking is very scarce, the city officials have wisely resisted making the open plazas into parking lots, thus retaining the elegant atmosphere.

To the south, by contrast, off the main boulevards, the medieval street pattern is still apparent in narrow, twisting lanes, with barely room for one car. These are lower-income neighborhoods inhabited by various immigrant groups.

We located the church of St. Pierre, but it didn't seem to be open. Going further, we found ourselves in a neighborhood inhabited by Turkish people. The small markets were open and the displays of fresh fruits and vegetables were appealing. We eventually encountered a large, gothic church with a huge, ornate stone steeple or bell tower constructed as a separate element in front of the church. All around the church and the tower, people had laid things for sale out on the pavement. It was a bazaar. We didn't linger for a long look, but I saw old clothes, furniture, books, hardware, dishes and other housewares and many curiosities.

This was Eglise St. Michel and we learned that the steeple is called Fleche St. Michel or the Arrow of St. Michel. It is reputedly the tallest stone steeple in Europe. There was a mass going on inside the church, and since we were only about 15 minutes late, we entered and sat down in the back. It wasn't hard to follow the liturgy since it's very similar to what we're used to in the Lutheran church. The priest was a Frenchman, assisted by several Africans in white robes or native costumes. We've always found that a church service is a good place to try to understand an unfamiliar language. At first it just sounds like gibberish. Then it becomes possible to distinguish (but not understand) individual words. Then comprehension begins with the understanding of individual words, then short phrases, and then occasionally entire sentences. I suppose by the end of the service I was understanding about 20% of what was said, enough to get the gist at times. It helps that the priest is using correct French in complete and connected sentences, and that we have a general familiarity with the context. That's quite a lot easier than understanding random fragments in an unknown context.

After the service, we wandered around the church, looking at the side chapels and the ornate stained glass windows. Some restoration of the building was going on, but it was apparent that much more is needed --- I think the restoration never ends. Nevertheless, the priest in charge was cheerfully doing his best. A large group of people from India came in and he greeted them in a friendly way. It turned out that they had brought a baby for baptism. The women were dressed in brightly colored saris with glittering trim. The young girls, in red saris, had sparkely ornaments in their hair, and the big brother of the baby, about five or six years old, was dressed in a white suit and shoes. The baby itself (I couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl) was dressed like a bride in a fancy white dress, crown and veil. I wondered how they kept the crown and veil on. The baby was at least a few months old, old enough to pull the veil off. The priest welcomed the family group and lead them to the font in one of the side chapels. He explained the symbolism of the pictures on the walls: the baptism of Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well.

By this time, I was feeling very tired, so while Don explored more of the city, I took the tram back to the hotel for a nap. There seemed to be large groups of tourists hanging around, stranded, I suppose, by the Air France strike.

Late in the afternoon, Robert and his wife, Nicole, picked us up and we drove to Eglise Sainte Croix, in the southern part of the city near the train station. One of the younger faculty in the computer science department of the University of Bordeaux, was the nephew of the man in charge of all the organs in this part of France. Apparently his was a government position, charged with the oversight of cultural treasures. He told us the history of the organ, and gave us a short concert.

The church building itself dates from about 1100, but it's origins go back at least 500 years earlier to a Benedictine Abby. The organ was built by the monk, Dom Bedos, and completed in 1750, using funds from the monastery vineyard. The instrument had undergone several rebuildings and changes over the years. Parts were taken away; some stored, some installed in the cathedral. But in 1995, the migrant pieces were returned and the organ was restored according to the book written by Dom Bedos about organ building. Now it exists as a magnificent example of an 18th century organ and it's the largest tracker organ I've ever seen, rising two or three stories above a balcony in the back of the church. The facade is painted apple green with bright gold trim.

Don was allowed to play while the rest of us explored the chamber behind the console. Air is supplied by seven huge bellows; they're now powered by electrical blowers, but the old pump handles are still available so that seven sturdy men could manually pull in the air for the organ to breathe. The connection from each key to each pipe is provided by a complex system of mechanical linkages. When the organist presses a key, it pulls a thin wooden rod which pulls another rod, which pulls another rod and so forth through several links until it opens the valve to let air into the pipe and allow it to sound. All of these linkages must function easily and freely so that the organist can play successive notes quickly and without fatigue. These mechanical links make a clacking sound inside the chamber or near the console, but are not noticeable from the floor of the church.

After our visit to the church, Robert took us to Gare St. Jean and helped me buy a train ticket for my trip tomorrow to visit Ann Curl Joubert. Then Don and I returned by tram to the neighborhood of the hotel and had supper at Noialles. I had duck; it was a mistake to specify it well done --- it was dry. Don had three-cheese ravioli. It was a white tablecloth restaurant, not inexpensive (at least to us who are still thinking in dollars) and I was surprised to see several families with young children. The French couple at the table next to us had two little boys. The parents had their work cut out to keep the boys in check, but they were vigilant about it. In a few years the boys will be charming little gentlemen. I hope their parents had a chance to enjoy their meal.

29 - Monday

Don left for the university to meet people there and to give a talk. I left by tram to meet Ann Curl Joubert at an outlying station where Ann would be able to park. The tram system is relatively new. There are three lines: two of them meet outside our hotel; one goes north along the river and the other goes south along the river to the train station. A third line, (the one I took today) runs east and west and goes across the river on the historic stone bridge and into the suburbs to the east of central Bordeaux. Robert had given us a ten-ride ticket which we punched in a time clock when entering the tram. Each time stamp was good for one hour of travel on any tram and/or bus --- such a sensible system, used in many European cities, and one that we wish would be duplicated here in the U.S.

Ann Curl was a teenager whom we knew when we lived in Sierra Madre. We were members of the same church, and Ann baby-sat for John shortly after he was born. Ann went on to study French at UC Berkely. While studying in Bordeaux, she met Jacques Joubert. A short time later, they married, and Ann has lived in France ever since. She teaches English at the high school level and been involved in setting up computer systems in the schools. She and Jacques have raised two daughters and now have grandchildren. I hadn't see Ann for 40 years and I'd never met Jacques. They live in a very small village near the town of Jonzac. I'd kept in touch with Ann's mother over the years and had Ann's address. When I knew we'd be in France, I did a map search for her village, and learned it was about an hour north of Bordeaux. Several emails later, there I was, sitting at the tram stop waiting for a friend I was not sure I'd recognize. Fortunately we'd exchanged information about the clothing we'd be wearing.

After a drive through the countryside, I spent a delightful day with Ann and Jacques. Their comfortable house is located in a semi-rural area, surrounded by oak trees. In fact Ann said the trees flourish at such a rate that they shut out too much light and Jacques cuts down a few every now and then. We visited and caught up with 40 years, including pictures of our respective grandchildren. Jacques (who knows about as much English and I know French) has just retired, and he prepared a wonderful lunch of roasted duck, perfectly arranged in pink, oval slices and centered with a mound of cèpes Bordeaux, a kind of mushroom which happens to grow in their yard. [I later learned that these mushrooms cannot be grown commercially and are rare and command big prices in the market. When I mentioned to other French friends that I'd eaten cèpes, they all looked envious. The lunch prepared by Jacques turned out to be the best meal I ate in France.]

In the afternoon, we toured the town of Jonzac: the church, a romanesque structure which looked like it had been restored in the 19th century; the market; the shops; and the chateau, now the City Hall. We ducked into an unobtrusive alleyway which turned out to be a medieval street. Ann remarked that the old houses along this street are considered very desirable because they are old. Some of them, as charming as they looked, seemed like they'd be inconvenient or even uncomfortable. We drove past the high school where Ann has taught for many years, and made a brief visit to the new recreation center on the edge of town which includes indoor swimming pools configured to look like a tropical paradise. Apparently it's the place to be, especially for families with children.

I returned to Bordeaux on the train. From Gare St. Jean, another tram ride to the hotel, then back on a different tram line to the university where there was to be a banquet. Robert had given me good instructions for locating the right place on campus. Even in the dark, it was not hard to find the old manor house behind iron gates near the tram stop, surrounded by modern university buildings. The gathering marked the end of the first day of a three-day symposium in honor of Don and the honorary degree he'll receive tomorrow. I met some mathematicians I'd known in the past, and met several new to me. We enjoyed wine and appetizers, then a buffet supper: I had chicken in a tomato sauce, a local specialty. Since it looked like Don was going to be talking for a long time to the other mathematicians, I was glad to be able to take the tram back to the hotel and go to bed.

30 - Tuesday

I'm still tired. Since the honorary degree ceremony didn't begin until 10:00 am, I could take my time getting up and eating breakfast. Don had gone ahead, but had given me detailed directions for finding the Agora, the building on campus where the ceremony would be held. Robert had also drawn a map for me last night; the key clue was that the building looked like a church and I saw the tower before I got to the point where the way was not clear.

The conference attendees were having a break when I got there. I scouted the auditorium, looking for a good place to take pictures. Unfortunately, the view of the stage from the side balcony looked straight into up-turned light fixtures. Since there would be professional photographers covering the event, I decided not to try to take many photos.

Jacques Desarmenian and his wife were present, and we talked awhile. I met them for the first time many years ago at Stanford when they came to a backyard brunch at our house, held for new grad students and visitors. I remember particularly their two little girls, both dressed very fashionably in little French frocks with long white stockings. They sat primly on the grass in the back yard, with plates of food. Freckles, our dog, sat expectantly beside them. The little girls politely shared their food with the dog, alternately taking a bite, then giving him a bite. Desarmenians spent Thanksgiving with us that year, and later, when the girls were teenagers, Don received an honorary degree from Jacques's university outside Paris. Now all the Desarmenian children are married, and Jacques and his wife have become new grandparents twice in the past three months. The younger grandchild is only two or three weeks old and lives in Montreal, but they've already had a vidio conference with both babies.

The president of the university began the honorary degree ceremony in French. Another man on the stage (chair of the department ?) spoke in English, and Robert introduced Don starting in French and ending in English. He'd confided to me before the ceremony that he was unsure of his English but had tried to compose a few jokes. It all went well.

Don received a dark red stole, trimmed with white fur, a diploma, a medallion, and a wooden box containing a bottle of Bordeaux wine and several wine-serving tools, some of which I did not understand. This was a simple ceremony, not an academic convocation or commencement. I received a bouquet of flowers near the end. It was an interesting assortment of dark red lilies, orange daisys, several other kinds of flowers and some exotic foliage. (Startlingly mixed bouquets are the fashion now.) It was all firmly packaged together with what felt like a bag of water --- very nice since I didn't have a vase. I took a few pictures of the platform individuals after the ceremony, thanked everyone, then headed back for the tram and the hotel, carrying my flowers. It's so nice to be able to get places independently rather than waiting until someone else is ready to go (which might be hours.)

After an espresso and pastry at the snack shop by the tram stop, and a nap, I wandered south to St. Catherine Street, supposedly the best shopping street. But it seemed like a tourist trap with shops selling flashy, high-fashion clothing. (Knee-high leather boots are a must for winter.) I heard the sound of a hurdy-gurdy through the crowd, and wondered if I'd see an organ grinder with a monkey. Sure enough, there was an organ grinder, but he didn't have a monkey. He had a young white cat, instead. The cat was probably lively and playful at times, but not nearly as interesting as a monkey in a little red jacket and cap would have been.

I wandered toward the cathedral of St. André. Here again, the steeple is a tower built separately from the church. The church itself has been partially cleaned on the outside, and there's a dramatic difference between the pale yellow clean stone, and the dark grey, soot-stained stone. Inside the gothic structure, the ceiling soars heavenward, and the intricate stained glass windows gleam like showers of colored gems. I wandered around inside the church for awhile, then continued on to the Musée d'Aquitaine, the museum of the history of the region. There was a reproduction of the cave paintings from near-by Lascoux. There was a huge collection of stone tools (I thought of John Darwent) and an exhibit of different stone-tool making techniques with examples made from different kinds of stone. There were many inscribed monuments and grave markers from Roman times. I always enjoy the glass, pottery and metal work, particularly jewelry. I often feel when I see these ancient works of art, that no one since has done any better.

Late in the afternoon I joined the rest of the conference at a reception in the Hôtel de Ville, the City Hall. It's a grand and ornate building, (possibly an old estate manor). We were welcomed by a woman held some position in the city government --- perhaps a something to do with education and culture. Her father had been involved somehow in the University. We stood in a grand room with mirrors and huge crystal chandeliers. I was surprised and pleased to see very modern art work on the walls. There was wine and finger food.

It was dark outside when Don and I walked back to the hotel. I was still hungry, not having had much lunch, but at this hour it's hard to find fast-food places open. At last we spotted Pizza Prêt-a-Porte, a pizza carry-out. It was just a hole in the wall and we wondered if they were closing. But they indicated that we could order and propped open the hatch at the front of the shop. We watched while they spun the dough, spread the tomato sauce and garnished the pizza with several items. Then it went into a brick oven. While we waited, I watched a young woman who stood there visiting with the workers in the shop. She had black hair and was dressed in a very short black skirt with bright green tites, a very wide green belt over a leopard-printed jacket, all topped with a pale green fur shrug. She wore big earrings and many finger rings and bracelets. It looked like she loved to buy clothing and jewelry at second hand stores and wear as much of it at one time as she could. While it was way over-done, she still had a certain attraction.

The pizza was good and surprisingly cheap.

31 - Wednesday

This is the first morning I've actually felt like getting up. My cold is definitely waning.

Don returned to the University for the last day of lectures while I took the tram to the neighborhood of Eglise Sainte Croix where Don had played the organ on Sunday. I'd learned that the Ecole des Beaux Arts is located right next to the church, and I wondered if there would be small galleries and art supply stores in the same neighborhood. As it turned out, there were not, but I enjoyed wandering through a residential neighborhood, lined with old, stone apartment houses three and four stories tall. The medieval streets patterns, narrow and curving, are obviously not made for cars, and to prevent parking and give pedestrians a chance, a narrow walk-way is blocked off on each side with metal posts, concrete barriers, large potted trees or metal railings. The streets are of necessity, one-way for cars, and it appears there is occasionally an intersection where several one-way streets come together and there's no way out. This is not actually true, of course; it just seems that way.

The buildings are constructed right to the edge of the street with no yard at all, and the facades are flat to use every bit of space. There may be architectural embellishments applied around the windows and doors and along the cornices, but even the entrances are scarcely recessed and the balconies are quite shallow. The windows of French houses all have shutters; traditional wooden ones on the older houses and pull-down metal ones on newer houses. I suppose since the front windows are right on the street, the shutters are needed for privacy and security. But since they are often closed, even the daytime, I think they make the houses look blank or blind. There's no sense of living beings and activity inside. However, I was walking though a lower income neighborhood, and there was laundry hanging from the balconies and plenty of activity on the street to make the place seem alive.

From Eglise Sainte Croix, I arrived at Eglise Saint Michel where we had gone to church on Sunday. The bazaar was still there, though reduced in size. The Turkish men, some wearing little embroidered caps, gather here to talk. I sat on a bench in the sun for awhile and wrote.

Proceeding on toward the hotel, I came to Eglise Saint Pierre where Don and I had failed to find a church service on Sunday. This time the church was open and I walked around and sat for awhile. The church is a smaller version of the cathedral: grey stone gothic construction with complex stained glass windows. I found the strong turquoise color in the stained glass particularly appealing.

Avoiding the streets with fancy shops, I approached the hotel by way of the small streets, passing a shop that sold all kinds of fishing nets and another that sold powdered pigments for use by house painters.

I had left-over pizza in the room for lunch, then headed for the university where I was to join the conference participants for a tour of a chateau/winery. But to my dismay, the tram was running only part of the way; the section by the university had no power. I got on anyway, and went as far as I could. I knew I could walk the rest of the way, but it would take a half hour or more, and the group would probably have left by then. I had the mobile phone number of Robert, but the only phone booth I could find took phone cards, not money. So I continued walking toward the university, looking for a place to buy a phone card. Just as I spotted a likely looking shop, I heard the tram coming behind me. I sprinted for the next stop and hopped on. Power had been restored, and I arrived at the University only about ten minutes late. The people at the conference had known the tram was not running, and Robert had vowed to wait at the meeting place until I arrived or phoned. So it all worked out.

The Château Pape Clément, though once in the country, is now on the outskirts of the city. It was owned long ago by the man who in 1306 became Pope Clément V. The vineyard remained the property of the church until the French Revolution when it was secularized. In the mid-19th century, the present chateau house was built --- a pistache of romantic styles. The vineyard now produces high quality wine of the Grave appelation.

The region around Bordeaux is sub-divided into regions called appellations, depending on soil type and climate. The wine of Château Pape Clément carries the appellation "Graves" which to a wine expert implies a certain character. We toured the winery and learned that the grapes are hand-sorted then, instead of being crushed, are put into big vats with dry ice which apparently agitates the fruit enough to release the juice. Aging goes on in small oak barrels which are used only once --- I don't know what they do with them after the wine is bottled. At the end of tour, we tasted some of the wines in the shop which had originally been an apothecary and had lots of interesting old shelves.

We had been invited for supper at the home of our host, Robert. It was only about 4:00 pm, but he drove us to his house. His wife, Nicole, took our early arrival in stride and we enjoyed a relaxing couple of hours before the other guests arrived. Nicole had fixed cheese biscuits cut into star and crescent moon shapes, cherry tomatoes with mozarella, and had baked caneles for us to nibble on along with sauterne, a sweet white wine. The caneles are a Bordeaux specialty: an egg-rich, sweet, thin batter is baked for a short time in molds in a very hot oven, then for a longer time in reduced heat. The result is a little fluted cylinder, with a nearly black, crisp, burnt-sugar flavored exterior and soft, pale, custard-like inside. I could eat a lot of them. Nicole uses a silicon mold but the traditional molds, which come in various sizes, are made of copper.

It was Halloween and the neighborhood children started ringing the doorbell in their costumes. Apparently this is a relatively new tradition in France, and Nicole ran out to buy candy to give to the trick-or-treaters. Two additional guests also arrived: Philippe Flagolet and Brigitte Vallée. Philippe is quite a food lover (as you can see when you meet him) and he even enjoyed the left-over Halloween candy.

Nicole showed us her pride and joy: her wine cellar. It's a small, underground room where the walls are lined with racks of wine bottles, resting on their sides, and hung with paper labels. There were also stacks of wine in wooden boxes, twelve bottles to a box. She said she had a few hundred bottles. I estimated at least 500 and Don thought there were at least 1000 bottles in the cellar. Nicole loves to entertain groups of friends and relatives and brings out several different kinds of wine on such occasions. I asked Robert if they drank wine every night. He said no, just when they had guests or on special occasions. He questioned if they'd ever use all the wine Nicole has collected.

But she certainly enjoys collecting the wine, talking about it to people and serving it to company. She showed me that the corks of a couple bottles she opened for us were drying out; the wine should soon be used. One wine we sampled was called "Chasse Spleen" which means "chase spleen" or "melancholy". Drinking it should make you happy. She also wanted me to see what she was doing in the kitchen. She'd prepared a boned leg of lamp with the bone laid back inside the rolled meat for baking. (The bone radiates heat.) With the meat, she'd made roasted potato halves and a mixed vegetable casserole. But the first course was the most interesting: warm goose liver in a sauce with green grapes. The dessert was also memorable: a kind of crême fraiche with fresh red raspberries. Needless to say, by the end of the evening, we were very full of good food and wine.

1 - Thursday

Tousainte or All Saints' Day. It's a holiday here in France, and we weren't sure if very many businesses would be open. Don was scheduled to meet Xavier Viennot at the hotel at 11:00 for a day in the county (I'd opted out). After our big meal last night we decided not to eat the buffet breakfast in the hotel (which is an extra charge.) So we started walking. Many cafes were closed, but we found one open near the cathedral where I had a continental breakfast: tea, orange juice and a croissant.

Our destination was the Cimetiére de la Chartreuse. (I think Chartreuse refers to an order of nuns from the Chartreuse district of France. The liquor also comes from this district and its distinctive color is what we now think of when we hear the word.) Most people visit the cemetery on All Saints' Day to place flowers on the graves, most commonly potted chrysanthemums. Since this particular cemetery, the one nearest our hotel, is marked on the map as a very large green area, we were surprised to see that there were few trees and no grass. Each family plot is surmounted by a large rectangular stone, maybe the size of a single, bed, surrounded by flat paving stones. Many of the family stones had several plaques laid on top, each with the name and dates of one member of the family. I wondered if these were laid out temporarily for this observance and taken home again after a week or so. They looked neither substantial nor weathered. Some of the graves were almost completely covered with potted and cut flowers, while older graves had no decorations at all. There were a few plastic flower arrangements, but more often a ceramic piece molded and glazed to look like a flower arrangement. The most touching and dramatically decorated was the grave of two children who died on the same day in 1999, probably in an accident. The grave was arrayed with dozens of angel statues and figurines as well as plaques and flowers. One plaque seemed to be from their great-grandmother.

I was curious about the small stone buildings that covered some of the graves. At first I thought that the coffins might be immured inside. But several were open --- some under reconstruction --- and they seemed to be tiny chapels furnished with an altar, a kneeler, religious images and flowers. The burials must be underneath.

Don left to return to the hotel, while I wandered a bit longer in the cemetery. As I was leaving, a small contingent of military veterans came marching down the street, carrying flags. As they turned into the cemetery, I could see that most of them looked like World War II vets (still spry) and each wore all his medals, sometimes dozens of them, enough to almost cover the chest.

I slipped into the church of St. Bruno across the street where a mass was going on. The decor was all black and white baroque --- quite a change from the grey stone and stained glass of the gothic style churches.

Wandering back toward the hotel, I encountered Centre Mériadeck, an indoor shopping mall where lots of people were going in and out. I entered to find a very large supermarket and several smaller shops and cafes. (Also a pubic restroom which I was glad to find.) It was interesting to see what kinds of things ordinary people ordinarily buy. Much was similar to what we'd find at Safeway or Target. The most fascinating store sold all kinds of confections and condiments in beautiful packages. The pastry displays in the bakeries are also very appealing. I stopped for a raisin pastry and a cup of espresso, served in a tiny cup and accompanied by a piece of bitter chocolate and a very small glass of water.

My plan had been to visit the Musée des Beaux Arts, the Musée des Arts Décoratif and the Musée d'Art Contemporain. Alas! They are all closed for the holiday. I sat for a short time in a wire-backed chair by a fountain in the garden of the Musée des Beaux Arts, which is behind the Hôtel de Ville --- the City Hall where we'd attended the reception on Tuesday night. I was pleased to discover several reasonably priced, quaint old hotels in the neighborhood of the Musée des Arts Décoratif. Bordeaux is not as expensive as I'd expected, in spite of the plunging dollar. Pizza, books and flowers cost no more than in the U.S. The tram tickets were ten for ten Euros or about $1.50 per ride.

Back to the hotel to nap. Out to the snack shop across the street for a salad and a Sudoku book, and back to the hotel. I'm feeling much more energetic, but I still appreciate the chance for some down-time and relaxation. It's back to Oxford in the morning.

2 - Friday

Don told me about his day in the country with Xavier Viennot. He's about our age and is a computer scientist from the University of Bordeaux. He and his recent wife, Marsha, have bought a large villa in a very small village south of Bordeaux, and are involved with extensive remodeling. Marsha's son, who is a carpenter, lives in one of the houses in the complex and is doing a lot of the work. Xavier also took Don to lunch at a nice restaurant, and accompanied him on a tour of a chateau. We're a bit confused about chateaux. According to Robert, our main host, they're always connected with a vineyards. I think most of those in Bordeaux are, but clearly some are not. The one I saw with Ann Joubert was the city hall. The one Don visited has recently be acquired by a group of people who want to restore it. It had at one time been a vineyard, and new vines are now being planted. I think historically, chateaux were small, fortified manor houses belonging to local nobleman in feudal times. Since Bordeaux is such good wine-growing country, most probably kept vineyards as an income-producing activity.

We were up early and waiting for the airport bus by 7:30 am. Since today is part of a long holiday weekend, there was no traffic to speak of and we got to the airport more quickly than usual. After checking in, we had breakfast: orange juice, café au lait for me, hot chocolate for Don and a croissant and a hard roll each. It was one of the best meals we've had in France. Our plane arrived at Gatwick ten or fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, and there was no line at passport control. But we waited nearly an hour for our bags to appear and another 40 minutes for the bus to Oxford. Then we made up time again since the ride from to Oxford took only an hour and a half instead of two or two and a half.

The countryside is beautiful just now with autumn colors --- more than when we left England a week ago. The colors are soft and muted; browny-yellows shade into browny-oranges or dull greens. There are few of the bright reds and yellows we see in Ohio in the fall.

North Light was a familiar and welcome home. We ate most of the remaining food for lunch and I cleaned the flat. At supper time, we walked to the castle district and had supper at Ha-Ha, a medium priced restaurant with an interesting menu. It was busy and noisy however, an attractive place for younger adults.

3 - Saturday

Up very early, finish the food in the frig, trek to the bus stop, endure long lines at Heathrow, and a crowded plane. This time I had Sudoku and a book to take my mind off the long ride. The trip was uneventful, Mr. Singh found us at the airport in San Francisco after a phone call, and everything at home was just as we had left it.

In a Word

2007-09-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book about the history of Quaker beliefs and practices. Simplicity is one of four modes of recommended behavior. Simplicity in speech often gave Quakers a reputation for bluntness, but a single word can convey a lot, as I recently experienced.

I seldom understand what our almost-two-year-old friend, Ricardo, is saying; he doesn't talk a lot, and his primary language is Spanish. I was taking pictures of people at church, and as I sat there waiting for another subject, Ricardo climbed up by my knee. He put his face very close to the lens of my camera, and said, quite clearly, "Cheese."

-----

During a recent visit by my daughter and her two boys, we left the six-year-old home with Grandpa while the three of us went out. Grandpa was working in his office upstairs, and Kadin was downstairs, engrossed in a computer game. A couple of hours later, as we approached our neighborhood on the return home, we saw Grandpa riding off on his bike.

"Oh, no!" we thought, "he's forgotten he's supposed to be watching the six-year-old."

"Kadin will be very upset," my daughter said. "He'll throw himself at me and demand to know why we left him all alone."

We hurridley entered the house. Kadin was still intently playing his computer game.

"Kadin!" we said. "Did you know Grandpa left the house and you're here all alone?"

He looked up and said, "Cool."

Then he went back to his game.

To exonerate Grandpa, he had a doctor's appointment, and saw that Kadin was fully occupied. And to be fair, we had been away a lot longer than we said we'd be.

Inside Pockets

2007-09-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

My London Fog raincoat has served me well for several years. Although long coats are not fashionable at the moment, I still feel elegant when I travel in this ankle-length, egg-plant colored, classic coat (especially when I wear matching pants and sweater underneath!) But, alas, the coat is getting old. It was dirty and some seams had begun to open up. So I mended and washed it. When I pulled the coat out of the washer to hang it dry, I was surprised to see a little pouch sticking out of the front placket. An inside pocket! I'd never known it was there, and I thought of all the times I could have used it for airline tickets, passport, hotel key card and the like --- times when I needed both security and quick access.

Then I remembered Bakk-Fikkan. We had been living for a few weeks at the Swedish research institute where my husband was working before I realized that another wife was also living on the campus. She and her husband were in Bakk-Fikkan, or "back pocket" in Swedish, a studio apartment hidden in the corner of a larger house.

We refer to pocket parks and pocket gardens, small hidden green spaces encountered unexpectedly in the midst of densely built-up areas. We have pocket dictionaries, pocket guides, pocket handkerchiefs, and pocket combs; they are all small enough to slip easily into a pocket. I don't like to buy pants unless they have a pocket (even though it makes me look more "puffy", as my grandson would say.)

In general a pocket is a small, self-contained space, often hidden. It can enclose something positive, like the examples above, or something negative, like a pocket of resistance, or a pocket of infection. Sometimes we discover dark pockets in a friend's personality.

I usually see the big picture first. Now I also look for pockets, and am surprised and usually delighted by the small treasures they hide.

Tin Cup

2007-09-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, my mother kept a tin cup in the bathroom for us to drink from. It was actually an old, thin, aluminum measuring cup. I think it once had a lid, but by the time it got to the bathroom, it was lidless, old and slightly bent out of shape. I suppose Mom used it there instead of a glass because it wouldn't break. (These were the days before plastic.)

Whenever I was thirsty, I went to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and drank out of the tin cup. Although I'm sure that the water from all the taps in the house was the same water, it seemed to taste better from the bathroom tap and from the tin cup. Maybe it was colder.

Recently I got to thinking about my favorite drinking vessels now, and realized they're all metal! Every morning I sip my breakfast tea from a stainless steel mug. It's double-walled so it doesn't get hot on the outside. On the rare occasions when I drink coffee at home, I like it from a smaller, stainless steel cup with saucer that my daughter gave to me. It's the kind of cup you might find in a trendy Italian or French cafe.

When I'm hot, nothing hits the spot like a glass of iced tea. But not out of a glass, out of a tall, thin, stainless steel tumbler. I bought a set of them at a restaurant supply store, and they may have been intended for milk shakes. My son likes them too, so I bought him a set, much to the puzzlement of my daughter-in-law, who wonders why anyone would want to drink out of them.

And for ice water, I have a special sterling silver tumbler. It's smaller than I'd like, but the silver gets very cold from the ice, and while I quench my thirst, I also enjoy the tactile sensation of the very cold silver against my lips and in my hand.

MUSES: Nursery Rhymes

2007-06-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

10 June 2007 topic: Write a piece in a particular literary form.

Nursery rhymes are a form of oral storytelling and can be educational, whimsical, or historical. Some of them have secret meanings or subversive messages; a kind of oral political cartoon.They are usually in the form of a rhyming couplet or short verse and they are a primary example of accentual verse, having a fixed number of accents per line, but with a varying number of syllables.

Georgie

Georgie had a cowboy hat.
Georgie had fine boots.
Georgie had a shiny pistol,
One that really shoots.

When the bad guys crashed the town,
George had but one tho't.
He dug himself into a hole
And shot, shot, shot.

Pieman

Once a pieman came to town.
His pies were fresh and sweet.
They quickly sold and so he told,
His voice soft and discreet,

"Pay me now; tomorrow I will
Bring more pies to town."
But next day there was no pieman;
We all had been done down.

England With My Sister: The Entire Trip

2007-06-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

Note: the number at the end of each title refers to the date in May, 2007.

England With My Sister: Oxford 15

We landed in late morning, slightly ahead of schedule, at Heathrow Airport, and passed though passport control, baggage claim and customs surprisingly easily. The Oxford bus was waiting, and we climbed on. England is always green, but it seemed especially so on this damp, spring day. Choosing to disembark at Queen's Lane, we rolled our suitcases down The High to the Covered Market where we stocked up on enough food for our first meal: fresh baps from Nash's bakery, Caerphilly cheese and ash-cured goat cheese, oak-leaf lettuce, bananas and a pint of milk. We asked about English strawberries, but the produce vendor told us there had been too much rain --- maybe by the weekend.

Down St. Aldate's Street to Thames Street, in the door of Stephenson House and up the stairs to North Light. It looked very good; everything was clean and in order. We unpacked food, had a quick lunch, made up the second bed and collapsed for a nap. I'd slept though most of the overnight flight, but it feels so much better to lay down and stretch out in a real bed.

We awoke in time to shop for more food, but first we stopped at the library in the West Gate shopping center, and pickup up a directory for the Oxford Art Weeks. At Sainsbury's we added tangerines, butter, black current jam, cheese biscuits (crackers), puffed wheat cereal, oat cakes, Korma sauce and turnip-apple soup to our stock of food. The soup with bread and butter, and hard-boiled eggs brought for the trip from Ohio, made our supper. We did a little unpacking, read the first part of the Art Weeks directory, plotted some visits for the next day, and managed to stay awake until 9:00 pm. As we dozed, we heard the bell in Tom Tower strike 101 times at 9:05.

England With My Sister: Oxford 16

Although it seemed like we'd only dozed though the night, it wasn't too hard to get up at a reasonable hour, shower, dress, breakfast and get ready for a day of visiting art studios and galleries and geo-caching.

We headed immediately for the open market which we'd anticipated would be a farmer's market where we could buy local produce. It was a bit disappointing to find mostly merchandise for sale; it's a bit too early in the spring for local produce, so we only bought assorted olives and stuffed vine leaves.

A quick look at Anna Belinda, the Oxford coturier for university matrons. Piping as trim seems to be her signature this spring. There was a sign in the window, "Experienced dress-makers urgently wanted." I'd talked with Anna Belinda a couple of years ago about her dresses and she mentioned that she used to feature a lot of hand embroidery. But then it had become almost impossible to find embroiderers. Now it seems that even dress-making is a skill that is disappearing.

We strolled down George Street toward Broadway where we stopped at a Sainsbury Local for more milk (a quart this time) and chicken, and checked out the schedule at St. Mary Magdalen. We picked up an A to Z book map of Oxford at the Tourist Information Center, then headed back down the hill and up the stairs to North Light to put away the food and eat a quick lunch. (Cheese sandwich for me, stuffed vine leaves for my sister, olives for both of us.)

The 1:10 pm organ concert at Queen's College started right on time and we heard Oliver Hancock of Jesus College play an eclectic concert, which (strangely) included "Lo How a Rose is Blooming", an Advent piece, and a Noel. While listening we also watched the people sitting on the other side of the aisle. My sister was fascinated by a woman of late middle-age who looked like a subject from a pre-Raphaelite painting, and a white-haired man who looked like Ben Franklin.

The altar was draped in cloth of gold for the Easter season, and the stained glass window across from us was a picture of the Last Supper. We could not understand why there seemed to be a small dog on a platter in the middle of the table. During a brief discussion with a couple of English women after the concert, we surmised that it might really be a lamb, symbolizing the sacrificial lamb, or a cat, which sometimes symbolizes Judas.

From Queens, we continued east on The High to Magdalen, where I picked up a chapel schedule. Then we attempted to find our first English geo-cache, probably secreted in one of the holes in the stone wall on Longwall Street. We didn't have the probe or hook we needed and will have to go back later, preferably when there isn't so much traffic.

I picked up another chapel schedule at New College, then we darted down Bath Place, past the Bath Hotel and through the Turf Tavern to Queen's Lane, for another geo-cache. This time we were successful in locating it under the dolphin.

Back-tracking to the Bodleian, we stopped in the gift shop, then located our second geo-cache in a tiny magnetic container under the metal railing surrounding the Radcliffe Camera. Brasenose chapel was one of the Art Weeks venues, so we got into the college, and I could point out my son-in-law's old office. We were more interested in the fan vaulting of the chapel than in the art work.

By this time we were ready for a rest. But organ music coming from St. Mary the Virgin, the University Church, drew us into the sanctuary where John Wesley, John Newman and many other famous theologians have preached. I was touched to see the pillar where a platform had been constructed in 1555 for the trials of Bishops Lattimer and Radley and Archbishop Cranmer. They were all condemned to burn at the stake for adhering to their Protestant beliefs during the reign of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots. A cross in the pavement on Broadway marks the spot where they were immolated.

We sought sanctuary in the vault where there's a cafe, and we shared a pot of tea and a piece of coconut cake. The rest rooms for the cafe are tucked into small and convoluted spaces. Of course, the church itself was built long before indoor toilets, and it must be a nightmare to install and maintain plumbing in the thick stone walls.

The rest and food revived us enough to find out third geo-cache, on The High across from the Boyle observatory. We had just enough energy to check out one more gallery, and stop for a brief inspection of Exeter College. Wandering down Ship Street, we stopped at St.Michael's at North Gate. There we had a fortunate meeting with the verger who told us about Beating the Bounds which will take place tomorrow. We vowed to participate.

Then we headed for home, supper of chicken cooked in Korma sauce over rice and bed.

England With My Sister: Oxford 17

Mark! Mark! Mark!

As we shouted, we hit the boundary stone with a stick. This was the ancient ceremony, Beating the Bounds.

In the old days, each church parish was a geographical entity, and there were matters of jurisdiction and taxation connected with each parish. For example, if an indigent person needed help, he or she was the responsibility of the parish. It was important to establish and maintain the parish boundaries and in a time when few people could read and write and there were few maps, the parish boundaries were "marked" every year by this ceremony. It was a way to teach the children where the boundary stones were located so they would remember when they grew up. It was also an occasion for blessing the land so the crops would grow.

St. Michael at the North Gate has been Beating the Bounds since at least 1428, and probably much longer, possibly since Saxon times. Now days, there is no agricultural land within the parish, so prayers are said for the prosperity of the businesses, shops, pubs and colleges within the bounds.

Two adjacent parishes, St. Martin (where only the tower remains at Carfax) and All Saints (now the Lincoln College Library) have merged with St. Michael at the North Gate, so there are 28 points to be marked.

We started at 9:00 am with a communion service at St. Michaels. Then we exited the church, led by the verger, Jo Reid, who was carrying the processional cross. She was followed by The Reverend Hugh Lee in black cassock and white surplice, two ushers carrying staffs, a fellow of St. Peter's college in academic regalia, and about 100 of us carrying long sticks.

The first stone was down the street on the wall outside Boots, the Chemist. The priest said a brief prayer for pharmacists, then marked the wall in chalk with a cross, the initials, SMNG (Saint Michael North Gate) and the year, 2007. As the rest of us passed by the stone, we each hit it three times with our stick while shouting, "Mark, mark, mark!"

This routine followed for 27 more points as we walked at a brisk pace through central Oxford. Some of the stones were set in walls or in the pavement, some were unmarked except by the priest, some were inside businesses, colleges and the city hall. One was in the storeroom of a store, several were in back alleys and rubbish areas, one was in the floor of Marks and Spencer department store. We criss-crossed main streets, the traffic held up by the crucifer. We were met by security people in the businesses and by heads of colleges and chaplains in the colleges. We passed though doors and gates ordinarily locked and saw much of Oxford we would not otherwise have seen.

We stopped at two non-Anglican churches within the parish, Wesley Memorial Methodist Church and St. Columba's United Reformed Church. At each church, the minister met us and said a prayer.

And we were frequently fed: orange juice and cookies at St. Peter's College, (Where I said hello to the head, Bernard Silverman whom I'd met in California), coffee and sweets in Hall at Brasenose College, (where my son-in-law was once a fellow), more coffee and cookies in the staff lunch room at Marks and Spencer, beer at The City Tavern in back of the covered market, and finally a lunch in Hall at Lincoln College: pork pie and ivy beer accompanied by salad vegetables, cheese, and jam donuts. As we left each place of refreshment, we shouted our thanks with a three-fold Hip-Hip-Hooray!

The final ceremony was the penny scramble. Students at Lincoln College save the pennies from the college bar, and from the top of the tower over the gate to the college, throw handfuls to the lawn in the quad below. Students from Combe School (I'd guess they were fourth-graders) scrambled for the pennies in the grass. We were told that in the past, the pennies were heated just before they were thrown --- a rather cruel amusement to watch the children juggle the hot coppers.

After the exercise, excitement and food, my sister and I retired for an afternoon nap. We walked out after supper to St. Mary Magdalen church for an Ascension service. St. Mary Mags is an Anglo-Catholic church with a very formal style of worship, the church of "bells and smells." Most traditional Anglican churches are long and narrow. But although St. Mary Mags retains the traditional orientation of the altar on the east, it is located on a long sliver of land that runs north and south, so the church is short and wide. We sat in the second pew, which was one-third of the way to the back.

Three priests in gold brocade, and a verger, two acolytes and a thurifer in black cassocks and white surplices moved in a complex choreography of bowing, kneeling, turning and bowing again. The thurifer kept the incense burning and by the end of the service the sanctuary was cloudy with smoke.

The gentle spring evening grew gradually darker as we strolled back down St. Aldates, watching Tom Tower as it reflected the setting sun.

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We've been longing to sleep in, and this was the first day when we didn't have something to do first thing in the morning. But I slept soundly for the first time and awoke early, finally adjusting to the five hour time change.

This time, we took the bus down Iffly Road into East Oxford. Here, away from academia, we experienced a completely different part of Oxford: lower rent neighborhoods, a mixed ethnic population, and restaurants and food markets from many eastern countries. I showed my sister the flat I had almost purchased on Stanley Street.

We continued on along Magadalen Street to Sylvestre's, a tiny hardware store squeezed into a long-narrow space at the very edge of a building. It was once run by a little old man and a little old lady, and I recalled buying a shelf bracket there. The little old man, tottering and frail, climbed a step stool to reach an upper shelf where what I wanted was in a box on the bottom of a tall pile of boxes. It was agony to watch him and not leap forward to help. But he managed. I hardly expected to see him on this visit, since it had been two or three years since I'd visited the shop. But there he was, not much more tottery, though a little less sharp mentally. We poked around in the dusty collection of miscellaney; some of the stock seemed decades old. We bought an orange candle for 45 pence.

Nearing Cowley Road, we encountered the church of Saints Mary and John. The large cemetery is now overgrown, (deliberately to provide habitat) and we strolled among the old cross-shaped headstones. There's a small laberynth in the front of the church.

Our destination on Cowley Road was Restore, which turned out to be a mental health facility. Therapies for the clients include a charming ecological garden, a woodworking shop where some well-designed wooden items are for sale, and a few classrooms for art therapy and other classes. We were particularly interested in the newly constructed straw bale house. It was built mostly by volunteers, directed by an Australian architect who specializes in such structures. The walls, built of bales, rest on a foundation of rubber tires rammed with mud, straw and stone rubble. The whole thing is then plastered to seal the straw from dampness and vermin. Paul, who showed us around, was proud of the building and told us how it had been constructed. The woodworking shop will be moved here, freeing up space for a cafe.

There are several small, interesting shops along Cowley Road: a stationary store with the lowest prices in Oxford and an amazing array of small, interesting things; a costume and vintage clothing store with a different array of small, interesting things; and three boutiques with original clothing and jewelry. My sister and I each made a purchase in the Oxfam thrift store: a glass pitcher for North Light and a velvet scarf.

By this time, we were past being hungry. Joe's, near The Plain, provided a nice place to sit and relax. I ordered a pate plate with toast, carmelized onions and a salad. My sister had the pasta special, Carbonara.

Somewhat revived by the chance to sit and by the food, we walked up St. Clements to the Port Mahon pub, the starting point for a multi-stage geocache. I'd tried to locate this one nearly a year ago, but found myself in a patch of nettles a short time before the park was scheduled to be locked, and I left without finding the cache. This time, there were still nettles, but we had plenty of time. I was glad to note that our course took us across the Angel and Greyhound meadow to the bank of one strand of the Cherwell. This verified that we were headed for the same spot I had calculated a year ago.

The cache was supposed to be in the hole of a tree near the water. We came upon a large, old willow, full of holes, that had recently crashed apart and fallen. We wondered if the cache had been there and was now gone. But after poking around for awhile, we found the actual cache near the bottom of a smaller tree, in plain sight.

By this time we were really tired, so took a bus back to the center of town, and returned to North Light for a nap. Out again in time for a brief visit to one of the artists who is participating in Artweeks; a photographer who lives on a houseboat along the towpath, east of Folly Bridge. He was a real middle-aged hippie, who was displaying photos taken about ten years ago in various countries in south-east Asia and India. He wanted to explain each one to us and offered us a cup of tea, but we were headed for Choral Evensong at New College.

A segment of the old city wall, complete with battlements, stands inside the outer buildings of the college. We passed though a gate in the wall, into a vaulted corridor, out into another quadrangle, and finally into the great chapel. We found seats in the choir stalls, just in time to stand again for the entrance of the choir and the clergy. This is one of three colleges in Oxford that performs evening prayer nightly with a choir of men and boys. Here, the boys wear black cassocks, white surplices with white ruffs around their necks. They look and sound angelic. The service was mostly sung by the choir and the presiding priest, The Rev. Cannon Susan Shaw.

After the benediction we spent a few minutes looking at the El Greco painting on the wall, the great east wall with tiers of stone saints, and in the narthex, the Eckstein sculpture of Lazarus freeing himself from his grave bindings. We walked slowly home though another soft, spring evening, lingering for a few minutes on Folly Bridge to watch the geese and swans on the river.

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Our destination was Wolvercote, a village north of Oxford, and we decided to buy a day pass on the bus. But we found ourselves on the wrong bus, traveling north on the Banbury Road instead of the Woodstock Road. This was not as serious an error as might have been, since the two roads branch off from each other north of St. Mary Madgalen, and diverge only slightly from each other. It gave us a chance to see more of North Oxford, the home of many university and professional people. The detached houses with large gardens were a contrast to the small row houses we'd seen the day before in East Oxford. Just before reaching the Northern By-Pass, we disembarked and walked to the Woodbury Road and on east into Wolvercote. The view of Port Meadow was breathtaking, all yellow and green and stretching for what seemed like miles. In the background were the spires of Oxford.

Wolvercote is the home of the Trout Restaurant, a famous eating place by the river at the western edge of the village. But our destination was a house in the village itself, one of the venues of Artweeks, the Oxfordshire Artists' Festival. We'd scheduled our visit to Oxford especially to see the work of a few of the more than 400 artists, all over the county. As interesting as the art itself, were the open studios and homes of the artists.

Mr and Mrs David Hyams had remodeled an existing house, changing the floor plan, and adding an extension using sustainable material. Most interesting was the roof of the extension, planted with sedum. From the second floor bedroom, we had a panoramic view of Port Meadow, with the green roof just beneath us.

From the Hyams' house, we hiked further west, by-passing The Trout which was fully booked for lunch, and on to the ruins of Godstow Abby. Only fragments of stone walls and a roofless chapel remain. Buttercups now look up with cheerful faces in the grass within the walls. A geocache was supposedly hidden beside the wall, and we found the likely place, but no cache. Later, we learned it had been muggled.

A short walk back into the village brought us to the Red Lion pub for lunch where we had jacket potatoes with cheddar cheese, and shared a large blackberry crumble smothered with hot custard sauce.

This time, we got on the right bus at the end of the line, a block from the pub and rode back into town in order to catch the Banbury bus again (this time it was the one we really wanted.) Once again in North Oxford, we visited the home of Hugh Pryor, a young computer nerd who makes drawings with his GPS. Starting with a satellite image, he finds patterns in the natural landscape, sketches them in, then uses the sketch as a map for walking or biking with his GPS receiver. The GPS receiver traces the path he takes, and this information is then downloaded into his computer, and a print is made of the pattern. He has also experimented with video images superimposed upon GPS trails. The results resemble contour drawings done without looking at the paper. Now my sister wants to upgrade her GPS receiver to one she can download.

On our way back to the bus stop, we took a brief walk through the Wolvercote cemetery where there are sections for Jewish, Russian, Roman Catholic and other faiths, as well as Protestants.

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This trip is turning out to have several connections with John Wesley. We heard a sermon about him in Ohio before departing for Oxford. Since we've been here, we've had lunch at Lincoln College where he was a fellow from 1726 to 1751, and where his portrait hangs on the wall behind the high table in Hall.

This morning, we attended Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, known for short as "Wes Mem". Although the present building was erected in 1877, it is on the site of an earlier Methodist Meeting House, and the first Methodist Meeting House in Oxford was located across the street on property owned by Brasenose College. A plaque marks the spot, and Wesley himself preached there several times. He also preached occasionally at St. Mary the Virgin, the University Church on The High.

John and his brother, Charles, were undergraduates at Christ Church in Oxford, and John was ordained there. Putting their faith in action, the Wesley brothers and their "methodist" friends visited prisoners in the jail, now Castle Mound, and in the Bocardo, the city jail at St. Martin in the North Gate.

This morning, at Wesley Memorial, we commemorated Aldersgate Sunday, the Sunday nearest John Wesley's spiritual conversion on May 24, 1738. There will be further commemorations on Thursday, the actual date.

Since Reverend Cooper, the minister at Wesley Memorial, is just finishing a sabbatical leave, the service this morning was led by Mr. Simon Mitchell, a young man who spoke about faith and freedom. We sang a couple of hymns with texts by Charles Wesley, but neither of the tunes was familiar to us.

After church, we walked north though the open market, and were surprised to discover stalls selling produce, cheese, cured meats, nuts, preserved fruit, and sweets. All the vendors were from France! Not wanting to carry purchases, we continued north to Jericho where we ate lunch in the Cafe Rouge, a French restaurant. I had chevre on toast with salad, and my sister had roasted vegetable tarte.

We stopped in a few shops and made our way north, taking a small detour though St. Sulpulchre Victorian cemetery. The entrance is unobtrusive, but after passing though the gates, the overgrown graveyard opens up into a spacious area. Many of the flat tombstones have been carefully laid on the ground and we learned that a local government agency has been checking the stability of old grave stones, and either bracing or laying down those that are loose. Lucy's Iron Works, which formerly adjoined this cemetery, is no longer there, and the area is being redeveloped with what seems to be high-rise housing.

Our ultimate destination was the home of sculptor, Colleen McLoughlin Barlow, who makes life-size, cast glass sculptures of human bones. We recognized her North American accent immediately, and learned she is from Vancouver where her husband is a math professor at the University of British Columbia. They are in Oxford on sabbatical. Unfortunately, none of her glass sculptures were on display --- they're in other exhibit venues in other cities and countries. But we saw her sketches and drawings, and learned that a couple of her pieces will be exhibited in San Francisco next year, apparently at a conference for orthopedists.

A slow walk back to North Light allowed us to buy a small ham, strawberries and Belgian chocolate from the French vendors. There is still much we want to do in Oxford, but our bodies are telling us that they need a day of rest.

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A domestic day in preparation for supper guests. We shopped at the Covered Market in the morning for fresh produce, barley and salmon. I was pleased to find ginger, mangoes, and limes for mango-tomato salsa to go with barley-salmon salad. Later in the day, we walked to the center of town again to Marks and Spencer for wine and chocolate desserts. We also wanted cider vinegar, but they don't have something as standard as that.

The rest of the day we cleaned house and napped. It's satisfying to be able to clean the whole "house" in an hour, one of the benefits of living in a small space. We're also realizing that living in a small space limits how much you can buy, as does having to carry purchases home from the store. So any effort to restrain the consumer culture in the U.S. will also depend upon limiting housing and the use of automobiles.

Gene, Anne and Nick arrived about 6:30. Gene is living in North Oxford, but even though he has purchased a used car, he hasn't driven and he doesn't seem to have learned to use the bus. So he depends upon friends and students to take him places.

We had a pleasant evening, just talking. Emma and Jacob are thinking about attending university in the U.S., but their mother is not in favor of the idea. Anne explained more about her job as the director of the eScience institute at Oxford. The do research for and give support to any department in the university that uses computers and digital techniques. The institute moved into a new building a few months ago, next to the Com Lab, and that has been a big job with some glitches. She'd spent three hours earlier in the day in an unscheduled meeting with an accountant, and she's resolved to hire an administrator to help with this kind of issue.

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Today, somewhat impulsively, we decided to rent a car and drive to Wales. By using the Internet, we were able to reserve a car from Enterprise and it was ready by noon. On our way to pick it up, we walked along the Thames and through the Osney Cemetery. At the Waterman's Arms in Osney, we checked the location of a geocache. The pub sign was a clue to the actual coordinates which turned out to be back toward North Light. We'll look for it another day.

The batteries in my sister's GPS receiver died, so we took a bus out the Botley Road past the Enterprise office to a small shopping center where we could buy new batteries, a large chicken-mango sandwich to share and bottled water.

Although I've driven in England before, driving on the wrong side of the road always takes some getting used to, as does sitting on the right side of the car and shifting with the left hand. Thankfully the clutch, brake and accelerator are in the same position as a left-hand drive car. We headed toward Eynsham on a secondary road, and soon found ourselves on a one-lane road with tall hedges on either side. This is a typical situation in England, and there are frequent places to pull off the road to park or to let an on-coming car pass. We stopped at one, and ate a picnic lunch on the grass overlooking a field. There were small wildflowers in the grass and birds flying overhead. It was an idyllic scene except for the occasional roar of a military jet from a nearby RAF base. The strangest event was paying a ten pence toll to cross a small bridge. I wondered if it was really worth hiring a toll-taker for such a small amount, but I suppose if the road is heavily traveled, the 10p pieces add up.

The A-40 goes west from Oxford to Carmarthen, our destination. But we didn't stay on it all the way, preferring sometimes to take the by-ways. Each village is a calendar picture with cottages of golden Cotswold stone. The gardens now are profuse with iris, roses, pansies, poppies, daisies, and many other kinds of flowers. The peonies are just opening, while the rhododendrons are in full, glorious bloom.

We made a stop in Cirencester, an old Roman town. I'd remembered visiting an excavated Roman Villa there, but we discovered it is outside the town a few miles. We stayed in the center of town instead, and visited St. John the Baptist church, a very large, historic parish church. An elderly lady in the book shop told us the story of an old embroidered cope displayed there. The clergy in such churches must have a complex job, balancing respect for the history and the maintenance of an old structure (always in need of repair, and not really suited to modern activities), with the present-day needs of a congregation.

Driving north to Gloucester, we crossed the Severn River before it broadens into the great estuary that slashes into the southwest corner of England. We left the Cotswold stone behind and saw houses built of dark brown stone and brick. The land became more hilly, but was still a brilliant spring green. Crossing into Wales, we passed though Monmouth, and made a stop in Raglan. It would have been interesting to tour the castle there, but we were tired and hungry, and stopped instead at a "Fryer" for take-away fish and chips. We sat on a ledge outside the shop and enjoyed moist and tasty cod. I tried a canned soda of dandelion and burdock --- it tasted like mild root-beer.

The Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons are the mountains of Britain. We'd think of them as rolling hills, massive, but rounded and not very high. The individual fields are outlined with hedgerows, and the green velvet hillsides are dotted with sheep. Some of the animals were still wooly with their winter coats, but others looked naked, having just been shorn. Here and there, we saw abandoned and roofless stone houses and barns.

We knew were were in Wales when we saw grey stone cottages (though not slate) and passed though towns like Llandovery and Llandeilo and finally arrived in Carmarthen. Although the town names I've just listed sound Welsh, they also have real Welsh names: Llanymddyfri and Caerfyrddin. Just across the border into Wales the bi-lingual signs displayed English first and Welsh second. Further into Wales, Welsh was the first language. In Carmarthen, some signs were only in Welsh, and we heard Welsh spoken on the street although usually mixed with English.

Some of our ancestors came from Carmarthen over 200 years ago, and my sister and I had been there before, But it had been a long time ago, and it took a few circuits around the town to become reoriented. We'd thought about staying in a Bed and Breakfast outside of town, but none looked right and we found rooms in the old Spilman Hotel on Spilman Street, across from the historic Ivy Bush Hotel. It was a little bit of a challenge to drive "around the block" and into very narrow King Street (fortunately one-way) then make a sharp turn, avoiding several iron bollards, into the narrow passageway that led to the parking yard behind the hotel. Fortunately we were driving a small car; my sister watched a larger car drive into the yard and they had to fold back the side-view mirrors.

The hotel is a series of small, connected buildings, probably constructed at different times. Our room was a large one on the ground floor, accessible from the parking yard, and recently outfitted for handicapped access. We slept long and well.

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Breakfast at the Spilman Hotel was our first chance at a full English breakfast (even though we were in Wales!): egg, bacon (like Canadian bacon), sausages, grilled tomato, mushrooms, and toast. We checked out of our room, but were allowed to leave the car in the hotel parking yard --- a big advantage.

Before leaving the U.S., we'd printed out a geocache that took us on a tour of Carmarthen. Even though it's the county seat of Carmarthenshire, the town is small, with a population of about 15,000. It's situated on a cliff above the Afon Tyfi or River Towy, and laid out like a narrow horseshoe with the curved part above the river. The geocache tour took us from one arm of the horseshoe through the center of town, to the other end of the horseshoe. Most of the clues were found in historic markers and monuments along the way, including the fragments of Carmarthen castle, and all were easy to find. This is the historic center of religious non-conformity, and we passed by many Baptist, Methodist, Anabaptist and Presbyterian chapels; only the Anglican places of worship are called churches.

The final clue to the geocache took us into what looked like an abandoned dump. This was so unlikely, that we surmised the cache was actually in the Roman amphitheater half a block away. While my sister poked around in the bushes, I tried to see where we'd gone wrong in our calculations and figured that if we'd change the third-to-last number in the coordinates, it might lead us to the right spot. But before I could test my theory, my sister found the cache under a pile of stones hidden by bushes --- just where I'd theorized it might be.

As we strolled back into town, we stopped in a few shops and had lunch at the Curiosity Shop: cheese and pineapple toasties and bara brith, Welsh for "speckled bread", a kind of fruit cake with raisins.

We headed south out of Carmarthen to the coastal village of Ferryside where we found a parking spot by the beach and spent nearly an hour walking on the sands of the Tyfi Estuary. There were many small shells and it was difficult to resist picking up one after another since there was such a variety of coloration. It was apparently shortly after low tide, and it didn't look like it would be hard to cross the estuary to the other side; but apparently the tide comes in rapidly and there are shifting sand bars.

Following the coast on narrow roads, we came into Kidwelly and saw the magnificent ruins of the Kidwelly castle. It was fun to explore all the rooms, towers, tunnels and walkways, though first-hand experience with the dark and treacherous winding stone staircases made us realize how uncomfortable medieval life in a castle would be; cold, damp, inconvenient, and probably short and brutal. Except for the smooth, green lawns in both the inner and outer yards, the castle has been left mostly as it was and any monument of this sort in the U.S. would be deemed too dangerous for tourists.

From Kidwelly, we meandered though many small villages, slowing to allow one-way traffic when the narrow street was partially blocked with parked cars. We passed through the Brecon Beacons again, somewhat by accident. But they are so beautiful, we were glad to have had the experience. We stopped at the White Hart in Crickhowell, where we had a nice dinner in a very old inn: pork in plum sauce for my sister and deep-fried y Fenny cheese over rice with a sauce of tomatoes and leeks, for me. Then it was onward along the A40 back to Oxford. We knew we'd arrive well after dark, but it was later than we'd estimated after we were "diverted" north of Cirencester. The alternate road was narrow and led though more villages that would have been picturesque had it been light enough to see them. One or two big trucks, which had probably been mistakenly rerouted on this road, left a trail of broken branches behind them.

It was too late to return the rental car, so after dropping my sister at North Light, I parked in the Westgate parking lot, walked back to the flat and fell into bed.

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I was up early to remove the car from the Westgate parking lot before day-time rates took effect. All was well when I returned it to Enterprise, and David, the agent gave me a ride back to North Light. But before leaving home, I realized that I had lost the wallet that contained not only the money in our "kitty", but also my passport and driver's license! Fortunately, I was able to remember where I had probably left it: in the restroom at The White Hart in Crickhowell, where we had eaten supper. I found a listing with phone number for the inn on the Internet, and reached them by phone where they verified that they'd found the wallet. They agreed to mail it to Oxford.

My sister and I both felt tired, but a shower and clean clothes helped, and we walked to Carfax to withdraw more cash. The battery to my sister's camera was discharged, and on the third try, we found a camera store that could recharge it for her. We also checked out the Open Market; Thursday is the day for stuff, rather than food, and there are a few real antiques, but mostly the kinds of things you might find at a rummage sale (or jumble sale, as it would be called here.)

Lunch and a nap at home. Then we walked back to Jessup's, the camera store on George Street, where my sister picked up her battery --- no charge for the charge. We stopped at the coffee shop at George and New Hall Inn Street where an iced drink tasted good to me. The day was warm, and the lower floor of the coffee shop was air conditioned. The upstairs, however, was hot until we opened a window.

From the coffee shop we walked over the Lincoln College for a lecture about Charles Wesley. This is the day in 1738 when John Wesley "felt his heart warmed" in the church on Aldersgate Street in London. My sister and I had both been confirmed in the Methodist church many years ago, but I had never learned more than a rudimentary history of the early Methodist movement. We knew about John Wesley, of course, and we knew that his brother, Charles, wrote hymn texts. But we learned a lot more than that. The speaker, Gary Best, is just now retiring after 20 years as the headmaster of Kingswood School in Bath. Kingswood, a co-educational boarding and day school, was founded in 1748 by John Wesley. Gary Best has felt that Charles Wesley, John Wesley's brother, has been neglected by historians, and last year published a biography of Charles, the first in over 150 years.

Charles Wesley, younger than John by four years, greatly admired and loved his older brother and was strongly influenced by him. Nonetheless, speaker Best pointed out that even when the two brothers disagreed, and when when there were differences among other leaders in the Methodist movement, it was Charles' warm personality that was able to prevent splits. Contemporary accounts of his preaching note that he was a more moving preacher than his brother who tended to be rigid and dogmatic. Best's main point was that the two brothers complemented each other, and neither would have achieved as much alone.

The talk was well presented and well attended and we recognized a few of the people in the audience from Beating the Bounds. There was a wine reception afterward, and we bought Best's book, "Charles Wesley, a Biography."

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Though we were still feeling tired, we decided to visit the Ashmolean Museum this morning. When got there, we learned that they're involved in a large construction project that will more than double the space of the museum and provide more classrooms and a roof-top cafe. Because of the construction, the second and third floors are closed. But the "treasures" of the collection have been gathered into one room: The Alfred Jewel, Powhatan's Mantle, Guy Fawke's lantern, Anglo-Saxon artifacts from Oxfordshire and many other unique objects present the Ashmolean in a nutshell. We ate lunch in the Ashmolean cafe --- tuna sandwich and pear-ginger cake, then stopped in the Covered Market for a few food items.

We both napped, then prepared for a dinner at the home of Marie-Louise in Botley. Marie-Louise and her partner, Vito, have been living in Oxford since the end of last year. Vito is doing research at the university, and Marie-Louise, a physician, is doing research into mindful meditation in Northhampton. I've known Marie-Louise's parents for 30 years and had last seen them in California at the birthday celebration of Gene. This time, Walter and Heidi arrived from Zurich to visit their daughter, and since several other mutual friends from California (including Gene) were also in Oxford, Marie-Louise organized a party to celebrate her father's 63rd birthday.

My sister and I discovered that a City 4 bus would take us to within a block of Marie-Louise's house, and we arrived with salad, melon and ham in hand. Other guests brought other salads and desserts, and Walter grilled sausages for sandwiches. The weather was cool, but not cold and not rainy, so we ate in the back garden. I knew some of the guests, and met others for the first time. It was a pleasant evening.

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The doorbell rang at 8:30 this morning. It was the postman with a special delivery packet containing my wallet with money, passport and driver's license intact. It was a great relief.

My sister and I decided to stay home today. We're both still tired, so it felt good to nap, read, and catch up with tasks around the flat like bringing this blog up to date.

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Rain! We've been having nearly perfect weather with sun and warm temperatures --- it was even too hot to wear a sweater on Friday. But the rains have come, and instead of seeing a cloudy sky with patches of blue, the sky is now unrelieved gray.

We walked past the back Christ Church to St. Mary the Virgin, the University Church on the High. This is the parish church that encompasses much of the university: Radcliffe Camera and surrounds. The clerical staff is trying hard to make it into a family church and there were several parents with small children there. Liturgically, the service was middle-of-the-road Anglican.

The lady sitting next to me asked if we were visitors, and in the following conversation, we learned that she is a retired historian who taught at Somerville. When I mentioned where I was from, she remarked that she's working on a festschrift with a man whom we know.

We partook of tea and sherry after the service (their version of Coffee Hour). It was noticeable to us that people didn't mind leaning on and leaving their cups atop the sarcophagus of Adam de Brome. My sister lit a candle and left a prayer request for healing for Sara.

Approaching Tom Tavern on the way home, we decided to eat Sunday dinner there. This pub, across from Christ Church, has a no-smoking section and good food. We each ordered the Sunday Roast: beef for me and lamb for my sister with mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and three veg (sauteed potatoes, broccoli and carrots cooked tender-crisp.)

There was time for a brief nap at home before taking the bus along Botley Road to Binsey Lane. We'd arranged to meet Walter, Heidi and Marie-Louise there. It was raining quite heavily by this time, so we stood under a tree for partial shelter. They finally drove around the corner, apologizing profusely for being late; they'd encountered very heavy traffic. We gladly climbed into the car and guided them down the narrow, hedge-lined lane to the village of Binsey where we saw the charred thatched roof of the Perch Pub which burned a few weeks ago. That was the only business in this village of a few houses. The church of St. Margaret, our destination, was further along at the end of the road.

St. Margaret of Binsey was at one time a large abbey. Legend says it had been established by St. Friedswide, the patron saint of Oxford, after she prayed for healing for her spurned and blinded suitor. A holy well sprang up and the water restored his sight. Many pilgrims visited the well for it's healing properties. King Henry VIII thought that drinking the water might enable him to father a male heir. The well is still there, in the church yard, surrounded by a curb, and down a few steps into a kind of grotto. It's just a hole in the ground, filled with murky-looking water. It may have existed since Saxon times.

The small stone church of St. Margaret is all that's left of what was once a large ecclesiastical establishment. The vestibule and entry door, a round, Roman arch with a zig-zag decoration, is the oldest part of the building --- probably 12th century. The interior has pointed gothic arches. There is no electricity in the church, so when we arrived, one of the members was placing candles on the windowsills and in holders attached to the ends of the pews. The pews themselves are clearly built for smaller people from a former time. Since there's no heat in the building, we four women squeezed into one pew, party to keep warm.

The bell ringer stood up front and pulled at the two bell ropes, ringing the bells for a minute or two. Then the service started, led by a very young-looking but assured priest, and accompanied by a few members of the Christ Church Choir. The choir director also played the old pump reed organ and managed to keep it going in spite of obvious problems with the bellows. After the service of Evening Prayer with a sermon for Pentecost, we were once again offered small glasses of sherry: dark or light. While sipping, we explored the church and I pointed out the Eric Gill carving on the inside of the pulpit. We admired the simple bouquets of roses, clearly from someone's garden.

Outside in the rain, my sister took photos of some of the gravestones. There are many people with the family name of Prickett buried here. One of them was the governess for Alice Liddell and her sisters. Alice is better known as Alice in Wonderland, and Charles Dodgeson (also known as Lewis Carroll) described the holy well at Binsey as the treacle well in his story. There is some confusion about the meaning of this word. It means what we in America call molasses; the heavy, dark, sticky syrup that's left over after sugar cane is refined. But an early English word with a similar pronunciation meant an antidote for poison, and the word, "treacle" has also come to mean "healing". Lewis Carroll used this double meaning in the story told by the Dormouse.

There's also a geocache in the church yard, and we finally found it in the crotch of a large yew tree. It had fallen down, but I was able to finger it out. Marie-Louise was fascinated by this game, new to her.

We were all wet and cold by this time, so we drove back into town, and everyone had tea at North Light.

England With My Sister: Oxfordshire 28

About 10:00 am, Marie-Louise, along with Heidi and Walter, picked us up in her orange VW camper. It was raining rather heavily, and while we were driving toward the Com Lab to drop Walter off, Gene phoned and asked for a ride to the Com Lab, too. So we got to see his digs on the Woodstock Road: a large living room with a gas fireplace, overlooking a green lawn with flower borders, a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

We four women then headed for the tithe barn in Greater Coxwell. I'd seen it once before, but this magnificent stone barn with a vast timber roof was a new sight for the other three. It was hard to imagine how the huge timbers had been cut and dressed, let alone raised and secured. William Morris, the artist, took his friends there and felt it was the most beautiful building in England. The virtual geocache there calls it an Agricultural Cathedral. Tithe barns were used to store the grain, hay and other farm products that were given to the local church as tithes in the days when cash was scarce. There are only a few left in England, and this one dates from about the 15th century. We were reminded of the Old Testament story of Joseph advising the Pharoh to store up grain during the seven years of plenty, so there would be food during the seven years of famine.

There was a small display of art in the near-by dairy barn, part of Oxfordshire's Arts Weeks. Walking across the short grass was like walking on a sponge; the ground was completely saturated with the rain.

A narrow country road took us into the village of Greater Coxwell where we parked and walked up to the church of St. Giles. Some of the church women had made flower arrangements for Arts Weeks. Back on the main street, we stopped at the Reading Room, a kind of Victorian Culture Center. We had intended only to have a cup of tea, but after seeing the attractive display of salads and desserts, we decided to eat lunch there. The food was all home-made, and none of us could resist the scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam for desert.

Next, we headed for Avebury, the site of a significant collection of prehistoric standing stones which are spread over a large area. There are at least two small circles and one large circle, surrounded by a ditch and bank. The megaliths were probably erected about 6000 years ago. Heidi wondered about the word "henge" which is used to describe the monument; the word is more familier in "Stone Henge". I surmised that pronouncing "henge" in the Germanic way as "heng-eh" probably relates it to "hang" and that proved to be true. So while we call such monuments "standing stones" earlier people called them "hanging stones". We spent a hour or more just walking among the stones near the village. There are many other stones, barrows and mounds in the surrounding countryside, and a person could spend many days exploring them all.

Our last stop was the Uffington White Horse, the abstract figure of a horse carved into the top of a high ridge. Prehistoric people scraped away the thin topsoil to reveal the white chalk underneath. Grass will not easily grow in the chalk, though the figure needs some maintenance. This horse is more than 300 feet long and can be seen from several miles away. No one knows why the horse was made. Other white horses have also been carved into hillsides in more recent times, and we saw another that had been carved in honor of Queen Victoria.

The rain had gradually let up as the day advanced, but as we returned to Oxford, it started again.

England With My Sister: Oxford 29

My sister had read "The Dead of Jericho", an Inspector Morse mystery by Colin Dexter. She thought she knew a street similar to one described in the story, the one where the murder took place.

We walked to Jericho the back way, along the towpath of the Oxford Canal. There were many more houseboats tied up along the bank than I had previously remembered. A few looked ship-shape, but many were in need of repair and a good paint job. We supposed that low-income people would find living on a houseboat affordable. There was a geocache on the footbridge over the canal into Jericho. We got a good reading of the coordinates, but the cache was a micro, a tiny steel pill box, and there were too many nooks and crannies in the bridge to make it easy to find. The internet description of the cache warned about poking info any hidden recesses because there might be drug paraphernalia. So we looked superficially, but didn't find the cache.

After crossing the bridge, we found Canal Street. The Inspector Morse story was supposed to have taken pace on Canal Reach, but in the epilogue to the story, Colin Dexter reported that Canal Reach had been obliterated by a new apartment complex. However, the old street next to the apartment complex matched the description of the street in the story, even down to the house numbers. Part of the story related how the suspect (who turned out to be victim number two) spied with binoculars into the bedroom window of victim number one. I hadn't realized how narrow the street was and how close the bedroom window of one house would be to the bedroom window of the house across the street. The location was further confirmed by the boat yard at the end of the street. This was the place where my sister and her son had rented a canal houseboat a few years ago. Dexter often describes real neighborhoods in accurate detail, but usually the house and street of the victim and the suspect are fictitous.

We walked down the block to St. Barnabas church, built in the mid-19th century in a Spanish or Italian style. Its square tower is distinctly different from the Gothic steeples on most of the churches in Oxford. The church was locked, but from the vestibule, we could see into the sanctuary. It's a very large church with much rich mosaic decoration. I could hardly believe it wasn't a Roman Catholic church until a read that the church, though part of the Anglican Communion, follows the Anglo-Catholic traditions of the Oxford Movement.

We had a ploughman lunch at the Harcourt Arms. Except for the smell of cigarette smoke, it was very clean and we had the place almost to ourselves. A ploughman is basically bread and cheese, but each pub adds their own extras. This time our plate included a mound of "pickle", a pickled onion (very sour --- it made me cough), a hard boiled egg, a bit of lettuce, and an apple. We took home the apples and half of the thickly sliced bread.

A walk north on Walton Street took us to the location of another geocache. The coordinates did not seem very accurate, but the clues were clear and we were sure we'd found the right place, but no cache. Later we learned it had been muggled. By this time I was tired (partly from the Bitter I'd drunk with lunch) so we took a bus along the Woodstock Road back into the center of town where we stopped at the Sainsbury Local and the Covered market for a few groceries.

A long nap, supper (with the apples from the pub made into very good applesauce) and an evening at home, completed the day.

England With My Sister: Oxford 30

The bathroom sink faucet had become hard to turn off, and we thought it probably needed a new washer. But it took us awhile to find the place to turn off the water --- it was under the kitchen sink.Then we were unable to figure out how to remove the faucet.

So we took a break from plumbing and started out in the rain to take the paid tour of Christ Church, but we were too late to see the Hall. So we went to the Oxford City Museum instead. The exhibits there are arranged chronologically, starting with prehistoric remains found in the Oxford area. There was no Roman town at the site of Oxford; the Saxons established the first market town and the colleges were originally monastic foundations for teaching. I was particularly fascinated by the maps from different periods. We know enough about the city now to locate various points; the old city wall, the Civil War bulwarks, the parish boundaries. A short video summarized the history of the city.

From the City Museum, it was a short walk to Gill, the Iron Monger. We wanted to ask how to fix the dripping faucet. I'd made a drawing of the faucet, and for 63 pence for washers, the clerk gave us good step-by-step instructions.

The Reginald Davies Silver Shop was further down The High. I'd previously purchased a sterling silver chalice for church here, and I wanted to look for another, larger chalice, and a large paten or plate. They had a chalice of the right size and of simple design, but the proportions seemed a little awkward. But I was interested in a plate, not intended especially for church use, but decorated with a "pricked" floral pattern.

It was past lunch time when we headed back to the flat, so we stopped at the West Cornwall Pasty shop. My sister chose a small traditional pastry while I got the onion and cheese pasty. They were hot and fresh and smelled very good. We ate them at the flat with a can of Guiness that I picked up in the small shop by the bridge across from North Light.

After a nap, we attended Evensong at Christ Church. We had a little time to look around at the Friedswide shrine and the Edward Burne-Jones window behind it. A choir of men and women from the congregation sang the service, and two middle-aged female priests presided --- quite a departure from the traditional all-male crew.

Back home for supper, we made crepes and ate them with fresh strawberries and clotted cream. Then we attempted to fix the bathroom faucet. We turned off the water, removed the plastic cap (that said "COLD") from the top of the faucet to reveal a screw. When that was removed we could take off the handle and unscrew a chrome collar. But at that point, we were stymied. We knew we wanted to unscrew the brass valve, but we couldn't get it to budge. I was afraid to apply a great deal of force lest I snap off the whole faucet. With only one turn-off valve in the whole flat, a disaster in the bathroom sink would mean we'd have no water anywhere. Once reassembled, the faucet didn't seem to drip so much. Maybe just cleaning it out made it seal better.

But that was not the end of our plumbing adventure for the day. As we were going to bed, the toilet started running continuously. We looked into the tank at a mechanism rather different from what we're used to. Finally, we just tried turning a plastic screw (because it was there and was obviously meant to be turned) and that adjusted the float enough to stop the flow.

Oxford With My Sister: 31

The Hall, Chapter House and Cathedral at Christ Church were all open this morning, so we seized the opportunity and took the paid tour. It's a self-guided tour, which was nice because we could go at our own pace, reading the tour booklet as we went along.

St. Freidswide, the patron saint of Oxford, founded a Priory here in the eighth century. Nothing of that remains, but parts of the 12th century priory are still visible. The Priory was secularized during the reign of King Henry VIII, and the college, founded first in 1525 by Cardinal Woolsey, was refounded by King Henry in 1546. King Charles I lived here 1643--1646 during the English Civil War.

I haven't seen any of the Harry Potter movies, but parts of them were filmed in Christ Church dining hall, which I think is Oxford's largest and grandest Hall. The long tables were set for lunch with Christ Church china and several pieces of silver at each place. The head table was also set with silver salt shakers, or sugar castors, and other small pieces of silver. The ceiling is very high and ornate and the walls are hung with a double row of painted portraits, including King Henry VIII and Cardinal Woolsey, Queen Elizabeth I, several prime ministers, and next to the back door, John Wesley, who with his brother, Charles, were undergraduates at Christ Church. My sister said that the paintings must have been removed for the Harry Potter films, a big job since most of them are life-size or bigger and have heavy, ornate frames.

Having the privilege to dine in this hall is the epitome of living in an ivory tower. Students and fellows who are single live in college, eat in hall, study in the library and worship in the chapel. They are taken care of and never need go out into the real world. Few members of college are this isolated today, but in the past, many a confirmed bachelor spent his life in this rarefied atmosphere.

We had plenty of time to take pictures and to wander in the cathedral. We examined the Jonah painted glass window, painted in 1630 by Abraham Van Linge, and the Edward Burne-Jones windows from the late 19th century. He made the one behind the St. Freidswide shrine when he was in his twenties. It's vibrant, colorful, full of detail and painted in a spontaneous style. His other windows in the cathedral are from a time later in his life, and while graceful, they are more studied and stylized. The Beckett window, from 1320, is also famous because the face of the saint was destroyed during the reign of Henry VIII, and replaced with a plain piece of glass with no facial features.

A short video about Christ Church emphasized its dual function as the cathedral of the Diocese of Oxford and as a college chapel.

We ate lunch at Queen's Lane Coffee Shop, dating from the 1600s when coffee was first introduced into Europe and became a favorite beverage. (Starbucks is nothing new!) My sister had a cheese and tomato panini while I enjoyed mushroom soup and an almond shortbread. Of course, we also had coffee; it was foamy and very strong.

The students are taking exams this week. They report to the University Examination Schools building dressed in their short, black scholars' gowns. The men wear black suits with white shirts and white pique bow ties. The women dress in black skirts, stockings and shoes with white shirts and black ribbon ties. They all wear red or pink carnations.

After the stress of the exams, many celebrate with balloons, confetti, champaign, and the weird tradition of "flouring". Friends crack a raw egg over the head of the student, then throw handfulls of four over the sticky egg. We saw remnants of raw hamburger and baked beans which apparently were also used to "decorate" the students. This tradition has become too rowdy, and there are now signs forbidding it in restaurants and pubs, especially the student pub, Turf Tavern.

I bought the silver plate I'd previously looked at. We had a nice chat with the owner of the shop, and my sister marveled at the huge stock of silver items on display. If it was ever made in silver, there's probably an example here in this three-generation business.

I made scones for supper, using up the last of the butter, and we ate some with cheese and some with clotted cream and jam. There were enough left over for my sister to fix scone and clotted cream "sandwiches" to take on the plane.

We cleaned house, then walked to Magdalen for Evening Prayer, our farewell to Oxford.

Oxford With My Sister: Summary

My sister and I were in Oxford for 15 days and in Wales for two days.

We visited eight colleges, nine churches, and found nine geocaches.

We heard an organ concert and a lecture, walked along the canal, the Thames, and the beach, climbed a church tower, a castle and a Roman amphitheater, participated in a medieval ritual and ate lunch in a college. We strolled among prehistoric standing stones, were awed inside a tithe barn, touched the water in a holy well, and accessed the Internet every day.

We sampled ivy beer, pork pie, clotted cream, baps, oat cakes, blackberry crumble and bara brith. We experienced soft sunlight and beautiful English spring weather as well as heat, cold, rain, fog and wind.

We worshiped in several different liturgical styles, visited with friends, drove on the "wrong" side of the road, learned a lot of history, drank a lot of tea, and walked and walked and walked.

MUSES: Robert Barnard

2007-02-11T18:45:00.000-08:00

This is the first in a series of topics suggested by the Muses, a group of writers and poets who meet monthly in Columbus, Ohio. I've been invited to be an Auxiliary Muse, and will submit my offerings on this blog, to be read at the gathering 2000 miles away.

18 February 2007 topic: In Love With a Writer. Imitate, embellish, in homage or tribute. Bring an example. "Take off" on her or him!

ROBERT BARNARD

Robert Bernard has written 37 mysteries since his first, Death of an Old Goat, in 1974, plus two volumes of short stories and two or three non-fiction works. His 38th mystery, A Fall from Grace, will appear in 2007.

Barnard's stories take place in identifiable locations: Australia (where he spent six years teaching college-level English), Norway (where he spent nearly 20 years teaching) and England, especially Yorkshire, (where he now lives). If you, as the reader, are also familiar with these places, you'll often find yourself saying, "That's what it's really like!

The villains in Barnard's stories are often characatured, over the top in their horribleness. Some are the standard characters we love to hate like the purient journalist, Cosmo Horricks, in Blood Brotherhood. Other villains are characters we'd expect to be heroes: police inspectors, clergy, and even children. But the bad guys are sometimes good, and the good guys are sometime bad --- in other words, human.

Barnard leads the reader along, introducing the characters, setting the scene. Then the murder occurs, and the reader follows the steps toward what turns out to be an unexpected solution to the crime. Only near the end, do you realize that Barnard is also making a social comment: on the church hierarchy, on class structure, on politics, on sexual orientation, on parenting. This makes the story worth rereading for the author's thoughtful views on social institutions.

Several of Barnard's stories are set among writers, as one might expect, but other settings include the Anglican church, the art world, an opera company, a youth hostel, academia, high-level politics, and the world of competitive body building. In each of these settings, he uses language evocative of the milieu. In The Cherry Blossom Corpse, which takes place at a conference of romance writers, he quotes from one of their novels: "And as they gained the top of the Cathedral tower, her petite hand somehow found its way into Hereward's brown, commanding one, and the wind brushed their hair and caressed their cheeks as they stood there in rapturous silence."

In Unholy Dying, which takes place in an Anglican monastery, he uses Biblical language not only to describe ecclesiastical matters, but also when describing suspects. "This remark earned her a furious look from Randi, who looked as if she was treasuring up such remarks to report them back to the Church authorities." In A Corpse in a Gilded Cage, there's a fine collection of working-class catch phrases.

To close, I quote from the conclusion of Unholy Dying. Father Anselm, the leader of the Anglican monastery in which the story takes place, has calmly revealed that the monastery is a place of refuge for homosexuals, drug pushers and other men who are fugitives from the law. Many stay for only a short time, but those who find life in the community attractive, are allowed to become members of the order.

Father Anslem describes his leadership. "During my period as head of the order, the Community has been a model of order and discipline. Nothing essential has changed, and the day-to-day life has gone on entirely as before. The spiritual life has flourished, peace and decency have reigned."

Responding to further criticism of homosexual activity within the order, he goes on. "For myself, I believe what I have been doing is in no way reprehensible. I hope I have made that much clear. Christ went among the tax-collectors and prostitutes and befriended outcasts. I have done the same with their modern equivalents."

I have not read all of Robert Bernard's books. I savor the prospect of reading one more, at deliberate intervals, extending the pleasure.

Edges

2007-01-29T17:44:00.000-08:00

We had a special invitation to attend the early service at a near-by Missouri Synod Lutheran Church on Sunday. There were not many people in attendance, and most of them were of retirement age. Most of the men were wearing suits and ties and the women were well dressed, coiffed and made-up. The service was billed as "traditional" (while the service to be held later in the morning was "contemporary".) We sang an old, familiar liturgy, and felt like we had stepped back in time at least 25 years.

I was curious to meet the new pastor, fresh out of seminary. He was a confident, good-looking guy with a shaved head. He delivered a fluent sermon based on the text of the day from Luke 4:21--32.

In this story Jesus reads from the Torah in the synagogue in his home town. The people still think of him as the son of Joseph, the local carpenter, but they had heard of the miracles Jesus had performed in other places. They want him to do the same for them. But the fact that the people would not recognize him as the Messiah without supernatural signs, angers Jesus and he reminds them how Elijah had helped a gentile widow in Zarephath and Elisha had healed the gentile leper, Naaman, the Syrian. The implication is that Jesus will only help people outside his own community. This, in turn, angers the congregation and they run Jesus out of town to the top of cliff where they threaten to throw him over the edge.

The pastor picked up on the theme, "on the edge". Jesus ministered to people on the edge, and he finds us today when we're on the edge. As I looked around the people sitting near-by, I wondered if they had ever been on the edge.

Then we attended a service at our own church, a less conservative Lutheran Church. There were heard another sermon on the same text, delivered by a retired pastor, a confident old guy with a bald head. He gave a strong message of inclusion, emphasizing especially the inclusion of gay, lesbian and bi-sexual people. This sermon could never have been preached in the first church; it was even on the edge of acceptability by the hierarchy of our church, and possibly by some of the people in our congregation.

So what does "on the edge" mean? A comment by an aeronautical engineer crystalized the concept. There's a leading edge, and there's also a trailing edge.

Tail-ends

2006-12-30T11:48:00.000-08:00

The end of the calendar year seems like a good time to think about tail-ends --- all those unfinished tasks and projects. Is it my imagination, or with advancing age, are there more of them than there used to be?

It seems that before I can finish one project, I've veered off into another one. Now I make lists of pending tasks, trying to assign priorities and deadlines. Take yesterday. I spent most of the day at church, reorganizing the cupboards and file cabinets in the office work room. I accomplished this task in a general way, but there are several tail-ends: a drawer of old files that need to be evaluated, sorted and relabeled, a drawer of old bulletins to be transferred to the archive, a pile of old file folders that should be thrown away. None of these tail-ends are complicated, but they'll take time to finish, and in the mean-time, I'll add them to my lists.

There are a few more Christmas cards to send to people whose cards we received but to whom we did not send. I promised to make three turbans for the Three Kings at church --- an enjoyable task, but one, that once again, takes time. There are tail-ends of sewing and mending: a hem to take up, a hat to trim, a pillow to cover, a bag to make (out of the tail-end of fabric left-over from the pillow --- tail-ends create more tail-ends!)

I like to write, but the list of writing projects seems overwhelming: trip journals, blogs, family history stories. I've begun them all, but they're still unfinished. I don't even like to think of all the computer projects --- transcribing, editing, updating, archiving --- that are on my list of things to do.

Maybe making lists is part of the problem, though I don't know how I'd get along without them. When all the tail-ends are chasing each other around in my mind, the only way to get relief is to write them down. But once I've commited them to paper, they leave my mind, and tend to be over-looked, if not forgotten. I've lost any feeling of urgency about them.

More profound than unfinshed projects, are tail-ends to relationships and stages of life. My father's recent death, coinciding with an illness that I've thankfully recovered from, has made me think about the tail-end of life. In the past, I wondered how my parents' lives would end; would my mother or father die first, and what would be the causes of their deaths? Now I know, and that knowledge leads me to think about the end of my own life (still many years away, I hope!) Dad's death also means the end of the family home, the house he and Mom built 56 years ago, and of my sister's and my relationship with our home-town. Associated with that are all the tail-ends of belongings that will need to be sold, recycled, donated, and disposed of.

All of this pondering about tail-ends sounds depressing, so I balance those feelings with the thoughts of new beginnings: the wedding we'll attend next week, new babies in the family, the fascinating development of the grandchildren. A new pastor at church. Perhaps even a new way of dealing with all the tail-ends. This year, my resolution is not to list and finish all the tail-ends, but to list them, then cross off half the entries. (Yes, simply eliminate all the unfinished tasks I can responsibly abandon.) I hope to do the same with my possessions --- eliminate half of them. (I must assure my husband that these resolutions will not apply to him; some people thrive on complexity rather than simplicity --- but that's another topic!)

Keep in touch. We'll see how this new year goes and in twelve months, what has happened to the tail-ends.

Geography

2006-11-05T19:02:00.000-08:00

George Eats Old Grey Rats And Paints Houses Yellow.

That was the way I remembered how to write the heading on my grade-school Geography papers. (There was another phrase for ARITHMETIC, but I don't remember it now. My sister always wrote MATH, instead.) The highlight of fifth and sixth grades was making relief maps out of salt and flour dough.

That was the beginning of my life-long fascination with maps. First it was ordinary road maps. Then U.S. Geologic Survery maps, the more detailed the better. When we built our house in 1970, we covered the floor of the family room with USGS maps showing the area surrounding our house and oriented by the compass. While researching family history I learned about the British Ordnance Survey maps, the German Topografische Karten and the very detailed Wandrekarten. I loved plotting old family homesteads and churches.

Assembling a collection of maps was the prelude to travel. I'd study the maps to get oriented, and once at the destination, had a pretty good general sense of direction. It's one of my greatest pleasures to explore an unknown city neighborhood by neighborhood, walking up and down the streets then making a sudden and satisfying connection with a previously known area. We discovered the state-by-state Delorme atlases and followed our route on Amtrak from Denver to San Francisco. The Internet brought Map-Quest and Yahoo Maps and the magical Google Earth.

Now I've discovered that geocaching brings a new dimension to geography. Most of the time I've used maps to get an overview of an area and to navigate while driving a car. Sometimes I've looked for small details like footpaths and springs. But geocaching brings to me an intimate knowledge of a very small part of the earth: the underside of a specific park bench, the crook of a certain tree, the cavity under the flange of a lamp post, a loose brick in a wall. When I pass by a place where I've discovered a cache, I think, "I know that patch of woods, I know were that turn-off leads, I know there's a deserted beach over there." These are places I would never have gone and I may never go again. But like the secrets we somtimes exchange with perfect strangers, geocaches add little points of intensity to my view of the world.

(By the way, my geocaching name is Moon Lady's Elder Sister.)

Neighbors Helping Neighbors

2006-10-20T18:09:00.000-07:00

Our neighborhood had a disaster drill last week. Just prior to the drill I'd volunteered to be the alternate area-captain for our area of three streets --- about 55 houses. At 7:00 pm, when an earthquake was supposed to have occurred, I put on my orange vest, red backpack and black fannypack and proceeded to our EAP (emergency assembly point.) (I have not yet been issued my orange hard-hat.) The turn-out for our area was pretty good, but it was woefully inadequate in some of the other areas.

Since then, I've attended a meeting to evaluate the drill, and I've been compiling lists of various sorts: emergency supplies that each household should keep on hand, the basic information we should collect from each household (like how many people live in the house), and an up-to-date list of names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of the street captains, alternate street captains, area captains and alternate area captains. Mostly for my own benefit, I started to compile a list of the families on our street. It was not difficult to write down each house number, but I was dismayed to learn that seven out of 21 houses are not listed in our community directory. I was even more astonished to realize that I would not recognize three of the families that are listed, and I have no idea who lives in five of the houses --- and this street is just one block long.

We've lived here for more than 35 years. When we first moved in, most of the families had pre-school children and we knew each other because the kids played together. Those kids have now grown up and left town, some families have moved away and other families have moved in. There's a wider range of ages and life-styles. Many of the women have full-time jobs and are not around during the day. I've never been the sort to pop into a neighbor's house every day for coffee, but I certainly have some catching up to do to form at least a nodding acquaintance with my neighbors.

The need to do this was emphazied on the night of the disaster drill when 20 minutes into the drill, an older man appeared, looking for other disaster workers. He explained he'd come from a street a few blocks away. At first we thought he was confused.

We told him, "Your EAP is further down the road."

"I've been there for 20 minutes," he replied, "but no one else has showed up."

It turned out that he'd been asked at the last minute to substitute for one of the street captains in his area. He'd done his duty very well, seeking out the nearest group when no one appeard at his EAP. He came wearing a badge with his name and address, carrying a cell phone and operating a crank-generated flashlight. Further conversation revealed that he'd lived though the London Blitz in World War II. We took his concluding words to heart.

"When you've been though an experience like that, you know how important it is for neighbors to help neighbors."

Isolation and Creativity: The Quilts of Gee's Bend

2006-10-09T18:13:00.000-07:00

We saw the exhibit "Quilts of Gee's Bend" last month, and as I slowly read the book about Gee's Bend and look at the pictures of these amazing works of art, I wonder about the relationship between isolation and creativity.

Gee's Bend was a geographically isolated town in Alabama. The citizens were also racially isolated because they were black, and economically isolated because they were very poor.

The quilts were rapidly and crudely made --- they needed five or six quilts on each bed in the winter, and these were large families of eight, nine or ten children. One quilter related that the kids might tear a quilt apart in a year (probably because the fabric was old.) So the women were pressed to keep up a production of as many as 20 or 30 quilts a year (in addition to working in the fields, keeping house, taking care of children and having a new baby every year or two.)

But making quilts was one of the few creative things they could do. After ripping apart old clothing, and worn household textiles, and grabbing on to any other kind of fabric they could find, they started assembling the pieces: Color against color, shapes (mostly rectangles) in endlessly varied configurations. Some kind of bed coverings were a necessity, but the designs in these quilts go far beyond utility.

Several scholarly articles accompany the photographs in the book. Each author ponders the reasons why this particular group of women was able to develop a common activity into such a high art form. I think isolation was an important (though not the only) factor.

I know that many artists work best in groups or "schools" and I am always amazed at the people who write best in cafes or other public places. But I find that my own creativity is often born out of isolation --- or perhaps deprivation is a better word. When I don't have much reading material, I'm more likely to write. Apparently I need a diet of so many words a day, and if I don't get them by reading, I feel the need to create them myself. If my environment is bleak, I'm inspired to "fix it up" by adding color or ornament, or simply by rearranging things.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I feel the same way when I'm overstimulated by an exhibit as I do when I've eaten too much rich food. I didn't sleep the night after seeing the Quilts of Gee's Bend. I wanted to get up and start making quilts! But I'll be going back in a few weeks for another dose. They're just too good to miss!

Conserves, Preserves, Jelly and Jam

2006-08-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

I was idly reading the labels of the individual containers on our breakfast table at the luxurious Marriott Hotel in Yerevan. (That's the capitol of Armenia --- I didn't know either, until we'd planned a trip there.)

Strawberry jam
Plum preserves
Blackcurrant jelly
Pineapple conserve
Orange marmalade

What's the difference? Why all these different names for the spread made of fruit cooked with sugar?

I was pretty sure jelly referred to the juice of the fruit, cooked with sugar until it gelled. I remember my mother making jelly using a jelly bag, a muslin bag that fit into a perforated aluminum cone about 12 inches tall and 8 inches in diameter at the top. It hung from a special stand, and the juice from the crushed fruit inside the bag, slowly seeped out and dripped into a pan beneath the apparatus. I loved watching the dark red juice "bleed" though the cloth. There was a cone-shaped masher with which to smush the fruit even more, and squeeze out the last drop of juice. Skin, pulp and seeds remained in the bag and were discarded.

I've made jam using the traditional proportion of a-cup-to-a-cup --- a cup of whole fruit to a cup of sugar. Bring slowly to a boil, cook at a simmer, stirring frequently. Test occasionally by letting the juice run off a spoon. When the juice has become syrupy enough to coalesce into a sheet, it's done. Then you hope it gels as it cools.

A glance at a few cookbooks added further information. The New Settlement Cookbook (1954 edition) gave jelly a chapter of its own, and lumped marmalade, jam, and conserves together, defining them as fruit cooked from 3/4 to its whole weight in sugar. So my cup-to-a-cup technique was valid.

How to Cook Everything (by Mark Bittman, 1998) ignored jelly, but in the chapter on fruit gave a general definition of jam: fruit cooked with enough sugar to make it gel. Bittman added that the sugar acted as a thickener and an antibacterial agent.

On Food and Cooking (by Harold McGee, 1984 edition) defined jelly as the juice of the fruit, preserves as whole fruit, and marmalade as cut-up fruit, all cooked in sugar. He traced the history of the spread; it became popular in the 16th century when the Spaniards began growing sugar cane in the West Indies. He also explained what happens at the molecular level to make the fruit gel.

The dictionary revealed that the words, "preserve" and "conserve" share the same root which means to keep or protect. Both words can be applied to any fruit cooked with sugar. The word "jelly" has a root meaning "to freeze", which relates to the definition in The New Settlement Cookbook: "Jelly should be of a clear, bright color, quivery, but firm, and should retain its shape." Jam is probably so named because the fruit is crushed and bruised, or "jammed". Marmalade come from the Greek for "honey apple" and usually includes the rind and pulp of the fruit, usually citrus.

Orange marmalade is my all-time favorite. But I occasionally switch to blackcurrant jelly or cherry preserves. Right now, I'm working on a jar of gooseberry jam. But whatever the name, it's a sweet way to start to the day.

Telescoping Time

2006-07-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

It was partly that we'd done so much in such a short amount of time, and it was partly jet-lag. Time seemed like a telescope. Somtimes I was looking through the end that magnified. The here-and-now seemed like all there was; I was concentrating on the moment at hand, and the future and past were out of view. At other times I was looking though the end that makes everything look smaller. I still had little concept of the passing of time, but the past, present and future all merged into the same image.

First we'd traveled to Armenia --- a twelve hour time change, and a different culture. Since the Armenian language has its own alphabet, I was also denied the kind of orientation one gets by reading. Then we celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary with week and a half in Norway with the kids and grandkids. It was an physically demanding time with hiking, rock climbing, canoeing, archery, horse-back riding and other camp activities. Plus, constant interaction with four bright and active boys, aged 5--8. Never a dull moment! The other disorienting factor was the long period of daylight. It was light until 11:00 pm, and light again a few hours later, with only a brief period of twilight to mark the night.

By the time we got to our flat in Oxford, I was ready to vegetate for awhile. I had the luxury of being by myself for three days. For the first 24 hours, I slept till I awoke, did routine tasks, like laundry for two or three hours, then slept again. (The positive aspect of routine, domestic chores, usually performed by women.) By the time we left for home, I'd caught up on sleep, and adjusting to another time change of only eight hours, didn't seem so difficult. Now time seems to pass in a normal way.

I think as we age, time seems to pass more quickly, possibly because we're less acutely aware of daily events, or remember them less easily. With gaps in memory, time is telescoped. Elderly people with severe memory loss must feel almost completely outside of time, even to the extent of not knowing whether it's night or day, even with the dirunal cycle of light and darkness.

When my oldest grandson was a small boy, he used the word "soon" in a strange way. His mother asked him to tell her what the word, "soon" meant. He replied, "It means a long, long time." It was what his parents told him when he asked how long until some anticipated activity. Even though time can be viewed through either end of the telescope, fortunately we all have exactly the same amount.

Grace

2006-04-22T17:30:00.000-07:00

I recently read Oliver Sacks' book, A Leg to Stand On. In it he relates his experiences following a severe leg injury. After surgery, the leg appeared to be healing well, but Sacks found himself in a bizarre state; he was unable to feel his leg or even realize that it was his leg. This was the inverse of the experience of amputees who feel pain in a leg that is no longer there.

By fits and starts, Sacks regained feeling in his leg. When it came time to walk again, he couldn't remember or even imagine how to do it. At first he took calculated and deliberate steps. Gradually, with the help of music, he learned to use his leg normally. He described this as recovering bodily grace. I don't think he meant to say he walked gracefully. Rather it was the capacity to walk without calculation, without thinking of every move; to walk in an integrated, natural way.

Sacks' use of the word grace led me to think of other meanings. We say grace before a meal. We exploit the grace period for completing financial and legal transactions. In church, we hear about the grace of God, the undeserved mercy he shows us. What about the Spanish word, gracias? And since we speak of God's grace and mercy in the same breath, how is gracias related to the French, merci?

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of grace goes on for several pages. The primary meanings are: I. Pleasing quality, gracefulness (attractiveness, charm, elegance, refinement, honor, embellishment.) II. Favor (goodwill, privilege, dispensation, permission, virtue, mercy, clemency, pardon.) III. Thanks.

None of these definitions seems to be exactly what Sacks is talking about. He is reaching for a deeper meaning of the first definition. More than a pleasing quality, bodily grace implies the seamless integration of many functions; a process or system that is fit, right. (The word right also has several meanings, and in some uses, means the opposite of grace/favor. But we'll leave that discussion for another time.)

What Sacks seems to be getting at is something we need a lot more of these days. In our everyday lives we're rushed and hassled, out of kilter with time. We're consuming the world's resources at a rate that is not sustainable. We think only in nationalistic terms when we consider economic policies and stratigic interests. How can we get back into a state of grace? I don't know the answer, but maybe we need to start relaxing to the music of toleration and kindness.

What's for Supper?

2006-02-21T11:48:00.000-08:00

I've been doing it for almost 45 years now --- putting supper on the table nearly every night --- and it hasn't gotten any easier. I should qualify that a little bit; I didn't know how to cook when I was first married, and now I'm a competent cook who can improvise and put a decent meal on the table without a lot of physical effort. But it's still a struggle to think, "What shall we have for supper?" The only respite comes on the infrquent occasions when we eat out, or when we have lots of left-overs. (We've been working on a beef pot roast for several days now. I have to think of something different for supper tonight.)

When I was first married, I bought a good cook book, and sat down every day to write out a strategic plan for our evening meal. The big challenge was timing --- making sure everything was done and ready for the table at the same time. Over the years, that struggle has been made easier by microwave ovens, and I've given up trying for precise timing anyway, because I have a husband, who, when called to the table, will say, "Just a minute." and appear 30 or 45 minutes later. That means, fortunately, that he's not fussy about what he eats, and is willing to fend for himself on occasion.

Later in my marriage, I went through a phase of reading every recipe I came across in newspapers or women's magazines, evaluating it, and clipping it out if I thought it was worth trying. Gradually I learned that many recipes are for people who like to handle food and fuss around in the kitchen. I'm not one of them. Why bother to do something complicated with a perfectly good piece of fresh fruit? I don't even bother to squeeze orange juice when I can just eat an orange.

It's always been a goal to shop for groceries only once a week, instead of running to the store every two or three days. That means a certain amount of planning ahead, even if I also rely on seeing what looks good when I'm in the store. When I ask my husband for menu suggestions, I can rely on his reply: chile. That's fine once in a while or even once a month, but not every week.

I know I shouldn't complain when much of the world goes hungry. We not only have enough to eat, we have choices that would be unimaginable to most everyone in the history of the world. Maybe that's the trouble. Instead of serving the same thing day after day, I have too many options when I think, "What's for supper?"

Leavening

2006-02-08T22:20:00.000-08:00

Jimmy Carter's latest book is Our Endangered Values:America's Moral Crisis. Anyone who thinks the present administration in Washington has taken the wrong turn will agree with much of what Carter has to say. (It's always gratifying to read an author whose opinions reinforce one's own!) He plainly defines his conservative Christian background and allows that there will always be differences of opinion on any important issue.

So what's new? The extreme and partisan divisions within the country have created a political power struggle that prevents any efforts to work constructively or come to a consensus or even compromise. As a result, many of our nation's historic customs and moral commitments are threatened, both in government and in religious communities.

Carter attributes this change to three factors: September 11; the massive amounts of money that are being channeled into the political process, greatly increasing the influence of special interest groups; and most importantly, the growing power of religious fundamentalists.

His definition of religious fundamentalism is telling, for although he is discussing Christian fundamentalism, the definition can apply to any religion or strongly-held belief. He summarizes fundamentalism in three words: rigidity, domination and exclusion.

I'm not a political person by nature, and I don't keep up with the ins and outs in Washington. As I read Carter's book, I found the problems of our society adding up to a frightening sum: deteriorating relationships with other countries, erosion of human rights, preemptive war, major threats to the environment and more.

Carter has attempted through his books, to speak as the wise elder statesman, and through The Carter Center, in Atlanta, to improve the lives of other people, all over the world. But I felt depressed when I finished reading the book. The situation seems so bad, it will take monumental effort and many years, if not generations, to correct. Carter had no suggestions for anything I could do to make things better.

Then we received an email from a former student of my husband. He had written a paper rebutting the theory that the Wikipedia on the internet, would eventually self-destruct. Critics predicted that allowing anyone to contribute information and to edit existing entries would give a disproportionate voice to the uninformed, the illiterate, the pranksters and the cranks.

Instead, this resource for all kinds of information has (so far) been a success. The author of the paper pointed out that it's important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the way the Wikipedia works. It will always be changing and it will never be prefect. But what I found most encouraging was the way the community of Wikipedia contributors tend to civilize and moderate each other.

That made me realize that as we work together, in whatever context, for good or bad, each of us is like a little bit of leaven. We may not be able to make big changes in the world, but it's still important that we make small contributions from a variety of experiences and viewpoints. And if the Wikipedia is any indicator, the majority of us are still intelligent, conscientious and kind. I have renewed hope!

Steeples

2006-01-31T11:01:00.000-08:00

"Would you call that a steeple or a tower?"

While driving through the city, my sister and I were seeing tall, pointed steeples; short, square towers or stubbs of steeples and everything in between. There seemed to be no standard. The topic arose because I had pointed out that small churches, built in the last 50 years, often have the vestige of a steeple on the roof; a little, silly, pointy cap, intended to identify the structure as a church. Larger, modern churches sometimes have a sculptural structure, not necessarily rising from the roof, which serves as a bell tower. My sister commented that she'd like to survey all the churches in one area and photograph those that had "real steeples". But what IS a real steeple?

The Oxford English Dictionary definition: A lofty tower forming part of a church, temple, or other public edifice (often serving to contain bells); such a tower, together with a spire or other superstructure by which it is surmounted.

The word, steeple, comes from the old English word "staup" which (not surprisingly) means "steep". Architecturally, a steeple is defined as having three parts: the base (often a squat, square tower), a spire, which is the tall, pointed part, and a cupola which connects the two, and which often serves as the belfry. So what we thought of as a "real steeple" is actually the spire. It's not unusual in north-western Ohio, where we were driving, to see county churches with only the base of a steeple. It's a good bet that there was once a spire. It may have deteriorated or been blown down, and proved too expensive to repair or replace.

In the days when the church spire was the tallest structure around, it served as a landmark, a marker for getting oriented geographically. It was also a watch tower and a signal tower, a la Paul Revere. A steeple-chase was originally a race on horseback, across the countryside to a distant steeple, overcoming all the obstacles in between. The term, steeple, can be applied to anything that has a tall, pointed shape.

So what IS a real steeple? That's up to the beholder. But my definition would include a tall, narrow spire, architecturally integrated into the roof a church, and preferably containing bells.

High Tech?

2006-01-30T17:10:00.000-08:00

After navigating a bizarre, on-line registration process a couple of months ago, I wasn't sure I was actually enrolled in the web design course. There had been no reminder. But I went anyway, and found myself the only female in a class of five. (As it turned out, I was also the most experienced with .html coding.) Nobody took attendance or asked for our names.

The teacher spent the first half hour of the class attempting to get the big screen at the front of the room to work, and finally gave up. Awhile later, the lights in the ceiling of the room went out, and this happened intermittently for the rest of the class, leaving us with only the light from our computer screens to type by and to take notes by.

In one exercise, we were supposed to insert a sound file into our practice web pages. That's when I discovered the speakers on the computer I was using, didn't work. It took the teacher and another staff person to find the right connections.

In spite of all the technical glitches, the teacher did a good job, and we all learned how to create a basic web page. Much of it was a needed refresher for me, but I also learned some new things and gained the confidence to go ahead on my own.

And I also learned that even here in Silicon Valley, high tech is not always reliable, and people are still very important.

Standardized

2006-01-05T17:46:00.000-08:00

While sorting through old letters I had written in the 1960s and 1970s, I realized that in those days, I used interesting stationery, and I recall the pleasure of choosing a new box when I'd used the last sheet from the old box. I tended to favor a thin, pebbly kind of paper, tinted in pale colors. Not for me the letter sheets with pictures of cute kittens or bouquets of flowers.

Of course, these letters were all hand-written, usualy in ink with a fountain pen. Following the example of an aunt who wrote letters in distinctive green ink, I mixed green and black to achieve a kind of Loden green, a popular fashion color at the time --- no common blue or blue-black for me. The ink came in glass bottles with a dipping resevoir molded into the rim.

My reason for going through the old letters was to photo-copy them in preparation for transcription into digital files. It was not possible to use the sheet feeder of the copy machine since the sheets were different sizes and different kinds of paper, so I went through the tedious task of placing the sheets on the glass, one at a time. I realized that nowadays we all use 8 1/2" x 11" ( or A4) paper. We've been standardized by the computer and the copy machine. Even legal-size paper (8 1/2" x 14") is uncommon; lawyers no longer use it, and it's almost impossible to find binders for this longer paper.

If you have a sophisticated printer, look at the settings for different paper sizes: letter, legal, executive, monarch, and index cards, as well as European sizes in metric measure, and Japanese sizes with exotic sounding names. Then stack the paper feed with good old 8 1/2" x 11".

Remembrance Day Poppies

2006-01-01T20:01:00.000-08:00

Armistice Day is no longer observed with much emphasis in the U.S., but it's still an important period in England; after all they were much more directly affected by the war. The day itself, and the following Sunday, are marked with wreath-laying ceremonies, veterans wear their service medals to commemorative services, and everyone wears a red paper poppy.

This past November I observed Remembrance Day for the second time, and began to understand what it means. This day is the English equivalent of Armistice Day in the U.S.: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, marking the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. This was the War to End All Wars, but as we know it didn't. Remembrance Day now also memorializes the dead from all the wars since then.

As a child I remember that in school, we stood for a few minutes of silence at 11:00 am on November 11, and members of the American Legion were on the street corners, selling red crepe-paper poppies. The money collected went to benefit disabled veterans.

Many people are now unaware of the symbolism of the poppy. Following the second battle of Ypres during the First World War, Major John McCrae, a physician in the Canadian army, wrote a poem that begins:

"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row. . . "

The crosses marked the graves of soldiers killed in the bloody battle that had taken place in the area called Flanders Fields. Some people noted that the poppies bloomed more abundantly than usual the year after the battle, perhaps taking nourishment from the blood and bones that were buried under the soil. There are other poetic meanings associated with the poppy and you can read more here.

We were in London the week after Remembrance Day, and I walked to the Cenotaph, the war memorial standing in the middle of Whitehall Street, near the government buildings, and not far from Parliament Square. This is where the Queen and representatives of all the members of the Commonwealth lay wreaths on Remembrance Sunday. I was amazed to see the pavement covered with red poppies.

Further along, the sight at Westminster Abbey was even more remarkable. The grass was covered with row after row of small wooden crosses, each decorated with a poppy. Each cross (or Star of David, or Crescent) was inscribed with the name of a person who had died in the defense of their country. The crosses were arranged by regiment, and a map showed where the area where each regiment was located.

In an alcove of the Abbey, there was a Poppy Workshop where anyone, for a small contribution, could create another cross. I spoke with the man at the Poppy Workshop and he explained that the crosses remain in the yard for a week, and are then taken away. They seem to be saved for the following year, and it looked like a person could ask the Poppy Workshop to make a cross and plant it in the appropriate place.

The man at the Poppy Workshop also told me that they had supplied poppies to television productions filmed ahead of time, to be broadcast on Remembrance Day. I had noted poppies worn by the actors in a dramatization of a P.D. James mystery story that was set during this time period. If you're a sharp-eyed-royal-watcher, you may have noticed Prince Charles wearing a red poppy during his November visit to the U.S.

Next November, if you see a BBC newscaster or a British celebrity wearing a poppy, you'll know what it's all about.

No Power

2005-12-31T22:16:00.000-08:00

We woke up Saturday morning with no electrical power. That was not surprising after a very windy, rainy night. But what could we do until the power was restored?. I considered cleaning house with a dust cloth, broom and Swiffer mop, but it wasn't hard to resist the impulse. I'm too fond of my Roomba robot vac.

There was mail to process and there were checks to write. That was OK, and I even had enough power left on the laptop to enter the transactions into Quicken. I could cook, or at least heat water on the gas cook stove. It's an old model that doesn't have an electronic pilot light. But the gas furnace and the gas water heater depend on electric controls, so they were useless.

The analog clocks we still have are powered by batteries, so they were still accurate. Actually it would have been nice to have one, analog, plug in clock to we could tell when the power went off. Two simple phones, with cords, but without answering devices, still worked, so I spent an hour talking with my sister. I had been using the power cord on the radio, but this was the time to replace the long-dead batteries.

There was enough daylight to read by if we sat near the window, and I could have done some of the the hand-sewing I often wish I had time to do. But I was too unsettled. Couldn't catch up with ironing, but I cleaned out two drawers.

My husband finally decided he would go to the office to see if he could use his computer there. But the garage door opener would not operate, and with my weak back and his recent surgery, we didn't want to try to raise the very heavy door by hand.

At last, in mid-afternoon, the power came back on. Both of us headed immediately for our computers, and the day, which had seemed empty and lacking in things to do, now seemed over-full and demanding.

The latest issue of Wired magazine has an article about high-tech houses where heating and cooling, ventilation, air purification, security, lighting, communication and entertainment are all electronically controlled. There are even toilets with power flush.

No thanks! Too many of the devices that keep us comfortable and safe are dependent on electricity. If I were building a new house today, I'd want to be able to at least heat the house, open and close windows and doors, lock the house, cook, draw water, and flush the toilet, even when the power failed. Let's stay in control of the basic necessities!

Amtrak Adventure

2005-12-26T20:06:00.000-08:00

After visits to England and Zürich, we celebrated Thanksgiving with the kids and grand-kids in Colorado. Our return to California on Amtrak would be merely a postscript. In fact it was actually an afterthought. When we'd booked airline tickets from San Francisco to London to Zürich to Denver, we were so delighted to find a low-cost fare on British Airways, that we forgot about getting from Denver back to San Francisco.

Why not take the train, just for fun. We had time for the 33 hour trip, and we'd enjoy the winter scenery in the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas, passing through the Utah and Nevada deserts during the night. Even the name of the train that makes this daily run between Chicago and San Francisco, had a romantic sound: "The California Zephyr".

Our motel in Denver shuttled us to Union Station early Tuesday morning, and we arrived shortly after 7:00 am in plenty of time for the 8:20 am departure. We were not too dismayed to learn that the train had been delayed three hours; we'd been aware of bad weather to the east: heavy snow and high winds in Nebraska and Kansas. In fact, even Interstate 80 east of Denver had been closed for a day, and we felt fortunate that Denver and points west had missed the brunt of the storm. Because of the delay, the Amtrak agent was handing out breakfast vouchers, good for up to $10 each, at Dixon's Downtown Grill, a nice restaurant a couple of blocks from the station. Although we'd already eaten a quick breakfast at the motel, we were happy to walk for awhile in central Denver, then enjoy a second morning meal.

The weather was brisk as we strolled along the 16th Avenue pedestrian shopping street, all the way to the other end where we could see the capitol building. On the way back, we became aware of security officers quietly policing the street. We'd seen in the newspaper that President Bush was due in town for a campaign fund-raising lunch on behalf of a local candidate, to be held at the Brown Palace Hotel.

Back at the station, a sign in the ticket window announced an additional hour delay. There wasn't enough time to leave the station again, especially since we'd been told that instead of the scheduled 30 minute stop in Denver, the train would depart as soon as possible. So we hung around, admiring the grand architecture of the 100-year-old station, built when rail travel was the big new thing. There were interesting photo displays outlining the history of the building. One, taken of soldiers leaving for the Korean War, showed the spacious, three-story waiting room packed with thousands of service men and their families. It was quite a contrast to the fewer than 100 people who were waiting with us.

Noon came and went. My husband strolled back to the ticket window to ask if there was any new information. While he was there, the agent took a phone call. As he hung up, he said incredulously, "I don't believe it!" An announcement over the public address system soon informed us that the train was in suburban Denver where, on orders from the Secret Service, it would be held until the President had left town! No one could imagine how a train that was already several hours late, could pose any security threat to the visiting President. Passengers on the train, whose destination was Denver, were in touch by cell phone with people at the station who had come to meet them. It must have been particularly frustrating to be so close, but not yet there! We later learned that the passengers on the train had been told there was a mechanical problem that had to be fixed before the train could proceed. This may, in part, have been true, but I believe most of the delay was a totally idiotic security move.

We had time for lunch, after all, and enjoyed seeing the old two and three-story brick warehouses and workshops that have been rehabilitated in the LoDo district around the station. (LoDo is short for Lower Downtown, so called either because it is downhill toward the river from the capitol mall, or because the buildings are low-rise in contrast to the newer high-rise buildings in central Denver.) These handsome old buildings now house trendy shops and restaurants.

After another period of waiting in the station, the train finally arrived about 3:30 pm and we departed Denver at 4:00 pm, nearly eight hours behind schedule.

It was a relief to finally be moving west. We explored our tiny roomette and calculated how to stow our baggage in the limited amount of space. Since the price of the roomette included meals, we were eligible for a box lunch from the snack bar.

The train climbed the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, twisting over some tight switchbacks, though dramatic western scenery. A couple of passengers from New Zealand were entranced. We reached Fraser and Granby about dark. We had passed though both towns the previous day when we'd driven down from the mountains to Denver.

After two breakfasts and two lunches, we were not sorry to be seated at the last dinner service: white tablecloths, flowers in a silver vase, black waiters in black livery. But the food left much to be desired! Our ticket allowed us to order anything from the menu. My husband tried the steak, which wasn't too bad, but both the man across the table and I left most of our pasta on our plates.

Since we'd gotten up at 6:00 am that morning, we retired early. It wasn't hard to figure out how to recline the two facing seats to make a lower berth, and to unfold the top bunk from the wall. There was very little room to move around, but we managed. At least the room was warm and both of us slept fairly well through the rest of Colorado and most of Utah, except that we were beginning to worry about reaching the end of the line in Emeryville, California, at 1:00 or 2:00 am a day and a half later. We had no idea if the station (or anything else) would be open, and we knew that the local buses and trains that we had counted on taking us home, would not run until after 5:00 am.

One alternative was to get off the train in Davis, California, where a nephew and his wife live a short walk from the station. But we hesitated to appear on their doorstep at a late hour without previous warning. With no cell phone, (we'll travel with one, the next time!) the only way to make a call was during the 12 minute stop in Salt Lake City. But by the time we reached Salt Lake City in the morning, it was looking more and more like we'd arrive in Davis well after midnight.

We traveled though western Utah and most of Nevada, seeing the snow on the desert. The New Zealand couple took lots of photos. Ramshackle wooden houses in rag-tag desert towns looked picturesque to them. We stood for over an hour in a canyon with a freight train ahead of us and a freight train behind. The cold weather had snapped one of the rails, and a crew had to be called in to replace it. The engineer said it often happens on Union Pacific lines, the inference being that they were not well maintained. I felt the same about all the equipment. Everything worked --- more or less. And things were reasonably clean. But it was clear that the cars and the fittings had seen heavy wear.

Sometimes we sat in our roomette and watched the scenery. Sometimes we sat in the lounge car where we talked with other passengers and followed the route on the DeLorme atlases we'd brought along. As we fell further and further behind schedule, people began to bond in mutual resignation.

I was interested in learning why other passengers had taken the train rather than flying or driving. No one admitted to being afraid to fly. Some were frequent train travelers and had experienced delays as long as 24 hours. The majority of the passengers were retirement age people who had time to spare and didn't mind the delays. One younger man, who'd gotten on the train in New York and changed to the California Zephyr in Chicago, said he'd made the cross-country trip four or five times. He seemed eager to engage in philosophical conversations (mostly one-sided) with other passengers. Maybe the attraction of a long train trip was the captive audience. One couple, traveling in response to a sudden death in the family, had been unable to get plane reservations at the last minute because of the Thanksgiving holiday. The husband was calmly reading a book, but his wife was beside herself with nothing to do. I gave her a paper-back book I'd finished reading; I hope it helped. I had reading and knitting to do. My husband always has problems to work on.

Most impatient were the smokers. There was no smoking allowed anywhere on the train and most station stops were so brief that through passengers were not allowed to disembark. The smokers had gathered in one end of the lounge car, and it was not hard to overhear one woman's loud complaint. She recalled past train journeys when there had been a smoking car where smokers stayed up all night, playing cards, drinking and partying. It didn't sound at all appealing to me, but it was clear she really missed it. One crew member who ran the snack bar (imperiously) also served as a kind of recreation director, showing videos and trying to organize tables of bridge or cribbage. I don't think he had very much success with the card games, and after he went through the three videos he had on board, he played them again.

We stopped for about a half hour just before arriving in Winnemuca, Nevada. The crew in the engine had reached the federally mandated limit of hours they could work, and a fresh crew was trucked in. The new engineer had more sympathy with the impatience of the passengers and began to give us more information. That helped a lot. He even took pity on the smokers, and we were allowed off the train for five minutes in Winnemuca, in the dark, in the snow. Everyone, even the non-smokers, took advantage of the break, and I asked the New Zealand couple if they had ever imagined being glad to arrive in Winnemuca.

By this time, many passengers had missed connections. But the engineer began to let us know what the alternatives were and what accommodations Amtrak would make. We were asleep when the train crossed into California and labored over the Sierras, (an unscheduled second night on the train.) By then, it was clear we would not arrive in Emeryville until about 4:00 am and the crew assured passengers that buses would be waiting to transport people to various destinations in California. I was impressed by the passenger service at this point. I also pitied the sleeping car attendants and the dining room and kitchen staff. They had only a few hours off before the return journey to Chicago. Our sleeping car attendant maintained a helpful and cheerful attitude, and I particularly appreciated how often he cleaned the toilet room we all shared.

It was dark and raining when we finally disembarked at the end of the line. A large bus drove five people into San Francisco and the driver was able to tell us that the Caltrain station was open by then. He dropped us off, we bought a ticket from a vending machine and immediately boarded the first southbound train of the morning which was standing ready on the platform.

The local train seemed to fly compared to the speed we had been traveling from Denver to Emeryville: 1400 miles in 36 hours for an average of 38.8 mph.

Glitter and Agglomeration

2005-12-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

These are the key words in fashion this season. Layer many garments in a variety of shapes, textures and patterns, add jewelry, belts, and scarves, sprinkle all with beads, sequins and glittering threads.

Anthropologie does it fairly well, in a funky way. The ensembles in the window of Dickens and Jones on Regent Street in London were breathtaking; very dressy outfits for the opera or a Christmas Ball. Taffetas and satins, crumpled, pleated, draped, embroidered, beaded; overlaid with silken crocheted and tasseled shawls, sheer overskirts, and velvet jackets with glittering buttons.

For the most part, however, to my eyes, the look is sluttish. This excerpt from the middle of chapter six of Howard's End by E. M. Forster says it well:

Presently there was a noise on the staircase. . . . A woman entered, of whom it is simplest to say that she was not respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She seemed all string and bell-pulls --- ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that clinked and caught --- and a boa of azure feathers hung round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a double row of pearls, her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace.

Home decor has not excaped the trend. Mercifully, most of the glitter is restricted to holiday decorations and will be taken away in another month. We walked through Z Gallerie in Denver to escape the cold weather, but I was glad to get outside again and draw a breath of clean, fresh air. Round glass balls for the Christmas tree are decorated and patterned. Even more trendy are multi-colored blown glass ornaments that look like flowers, fruit, butterflies, and ballerinas. Bare tree branches are covered with colored glitter. Dark murky red and smoky copper-orange are the colors of this season.

At Liberty's of London, simple glass balls (even decorated) were not enough. Clusters of balls, agglomerated with beads, artificial flowers, leaves, ribbons and plenty of glitter, hung from the trees like mutant bunches of grapes.

I've succumbed in a small way. I bought a box of glass balls in circus colors and plan to decorate them with squeezed-on lines of glass paint. But I still prefer a simpler more natural look like this log star I saw in Zürich.

What's next? Wanna bet the new thing in spring will be minimalism?

BOOK REVIEW: A Scandal in Belgravia

2005-10-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

A Scandal in Belgravia, by Robert Barnard; 1991

This is a murder mystery but not a violent thriller. It is rather a measured, step-by-step investigation of a murder that had taken place thirty years earlier. Peter Proctor, a middle-aged former member of the British cabinet, is filling his retirement by writing his memoirs. He finds himself thinking more and more about Timothy Wycliffe, the son of a peer and a vibrant and charming young man. Peter and Timothy had started their political careers together in the Foreign Office. A few years later, life had taken them in separate directions. Then Timothy was murdered, supposedly by his homosexual lover. Peter wanted to know more.

Peter tracks down friends and relatives of Timothy and begins to piece the story together. He ponders the fact that at the time of the murder, homosexuality was illegal in England, and practicing homosexuals could be arrested and imprisoned. He realizes that the murder had not made a big splash in the press because it had occurred during the height of the Suez crisis. The story refers briefly to prime ministers and other political figures and scandals of the time.

Barnard's writing style is smooth and the story is told in such a gentle progression, that not until the end does the reader realize he has been set up.

Middle-Age Ambition

2005-09-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

As I find my self progressing further into late middle-age, I find my ambitions diminishing. My sister and I were talking about things we'd like to do. We'd both had the fantasy of riding in a hot-air balloon. But now, she says, she's past that; it would create more anxiety than pleasure for her. I made the goal to launch a website about STUFF by my 66th birthday, but that date has come and gone, and it's really not much closer to happening. I think about all the new and fascinating digital technology and it how it would be exciting to use it. But I know I'll never take the trouble to learn about it.

I can identify at least three reasons for this decline. I have less physical energy. I have less time left in my life, and it's more important to set priorities; I don't have the time to launch off into a whimsical endeavor that may or may not succeed. And there are lots of left-over projects that I need to finish now or never.

It's dismaying to realize that I no longer want to do so much. But it's also a relief.

Old Airports

2005-09-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, in most airports, you are sucked through the jet way from the lounge, into the passenger compartment. Unless you look for it, you never see the outside of the plane and you don't have the feeling of actually having entered a winged craft.

I frequently fly in and out of the old terminal at San Jose, California airport, and I love it because I get to board the plane by climbing a staircase that had been wheeled up to the door of the plane. A few years ago, when flying with my young grandson, I was delighted when he actually had the experience of climbing into an airplane.

Sure, it means you have to walk across the tarmac and climb a flight of stairs carrying baggage. It's often windy and it can be rainy. It's a nightmare for disabled people. But I guess I'm influenced by old images of famous people --- presidents and kings, celebrities and heroes --- pausing at the top of the stairs, waving to their admirerers below, the women wearing fur coats and carrying bouquets of flowers.

I don't know how long it will be until this old terminal is modernized. But until it is, I'll savor this last remnant of the romance of flying.

VARIETY: What we were reading

2005-09-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

On the plane yesterday, the older gentleman on the aisle was reading a book about Jesus, the large man in the center seat was engrossed in a novel by John Grisham, and by the window, I was leafing though the latest edition of Wired magazine.

More Vegetables: Radishes

2005-09-09T08:31:00.000-07:00

We drove through the little of village of McClure, Ohio, yesterday, and discovered it's the home of an annual Radish Festival. There's a big, red radish painted on the road at the entrance to the village park and inside the park, there's a building displaying a sign that lists past chairmen of the Radish Festival. It seems to be a big deal in this little town

It also seems like there are limited options with radishes: you can eat them raw, or slice them into salads. I once tasted cream of radish soup (chicken broth and cream spiked with shredded radishes) and we could imagine pickling them or making a relish to eat with roast beef or salmon. But none of these ideas would use very many of the peppery little roots.

Radishes are attractive to look at and they come in a variety of shapes ranging from long to globular, and a few colors --- red, white and black. Do they select a Radish Queen in McClure and crown her with a wreath of radishes? Is she required to wear a red dress? I know about the Garlic Festival in Watsonville, California, and there are Tomato Festivals and Pumpkin Festivals. But a Radish Festival?

When we got home I looked up the Radish Festival in McClure, and found there are more things to do with radishes than I'd imagined. Here's a report on the festival that took place in June, 2005.

Eat Plenty of Fruits and Vegetables

2005-08-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

I recently ate a meal prepared by a cook who was fully committed to a low-carb diet. Before sitting down to the table, we enjoyed vegetable-crab rollups (crab salad rolled in very thin slices of zucchini) and raw veggies with yogurt dip. The main meal was composed of roasted salmon with a delicious tomato-kale chutney, green beans, salad of diced watermelon and segmented oranges in a mint dressing, and for dessert, a baked peach and blueberry tart without crust.

The food was of gourmet quality, and although I wasn't really hungry afterward, I still wished for a piece of bread. And I would never spend the time (two or more hours) this cook spent peeling, slicing, and dicing.

However one feature of her kitchen caught my attention: she displayed her fresh fruits and vegetables like pieces of art, on white porcelain trays in a wrought iron rack. I wasn't able to find exactly the same rack, but instead, invested in the two racks shown in the photo, from Pottery Barn. Most of the time, I'll use them for fresh produce, but I can also use them on special occasions for serving pieces or as the base for a spectacular centerpiece. Having the fruit and vegetables right there in front of my eyes, displayed in an appealing way has had unintended consequences. Now, I reach for a piece much more frequently, and I don't have as much waste --- produce going bad because I'd forgotten about it.

I'll never adopt a strict low-carb diet (and I'm not convinced of the heath benefits). But now I'm eating plenty of fruits and vegetables.

BOOK REVIEW: Summer reads

2005-08-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

If you need some light reading, something relaxing and funny, I can recommend the following books I've recently read:

1. One Man's Meat, by E. B. White, 1942.

White's wit is dry and ironic, and his content ranges from the mundane to the profound, but he makes it all interesting. This book is a collection of short essays, published originally in periodicals, just before and after the beginning of World War II.

White and his family have left city life in Manhattan, and moved to a farm on the coast of Maine. It does not matter whether he is discussing the fine points of keeping the correct heat in a chicken brooder or the broad ideals of democracy; White takes life philosophically but with just the right degree of crankyness to keep the reader wondering what he'll think of next.

2. Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, by Bill Bryson, 1992.

In early middle age, Bryson takes off on his own to retrace his first trip in Europe, taken when he was a naive college student. The descriptions of the cities he visited will be familier to anyone who has also visited them; unlike the standard guidebooks, he is not uniformly entranced. But even when he finds himself in situations that would distress many travelers, he finds humor --- somtimes raunchy, sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Bryson is my kind of traveler, one who likes to be by himself and relates more to the place --- the geography, scenery, architecture, culture --- than he does to the people.

3. Marrying Off Mother and Other Stories, by Gerald Durrell, 1992

The settings and characters in a few of these short stories will be familier to those who have read Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. Durrell claims that all the stories are based on real events. He spins a tale, full of humorous exaggeration, piling one impossibility on top another. But he does it so skillfully, the reader is left with a tiny suspicion that it might really have happened.

Doolittle Syndrome

2005-08-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

"Words, words, words. I'm so sick of words!"

I share Eliza Doolittle's lament! The kids and grandkids have come and gone, and I enjoyed their visits very much. But I've also enjoyed a week of peace and quiet since they all left. The visits of all four grandsons, ages four to seven, overlapped for three days. They're a loquacious bunch; they all started talking at a young age, and they haven't stopped. When they're not talking they're screaming or simply making noise. When my kids were young, I theorized that many children have a minimum noise tolerance. When things get too quiet, they find a way to turn up the volume.

Like My Fair Lady, we hear words all day long. Many people have the TV or radio going day and night. I don't understand how people can work in establishments where loud, recorded music is part of the (supposedly desirable) ambiance. People cannot ride a bus or train without hooking up to their iPods. Even walking down the street, they feel the need to use their cell phones several times an hour, just to talk, just to check in.

Are we afraid to be quiet? Is this an adaptive trait, a need to hear noise and confirm that we're not alone in the world? Is noise substituting for quieter, more satisfying way of relating to other people? Can we really listen thoughtfully when others speak, while surrounded by noise?

Whatever the answers, I'm in favor of deliberately teaching kids to value silence. And maybe, since "No Smoking" areas are now prevalent, we could begin to establish "Quiet Zones" in public spaces.

P.S. I realize I'm creating more words with this blog, but at least they're silent and you don't have to read them.

Alleys

2005-08-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

There are not very many alleys in the town where I live in California. But alleys are an important part of the street plan in my home-town in Ohio. I suppose alleys were considered a necessity in the days of horse-drawn vehicles when, instead of garages, many houses had a stable at the back of the lot. Alleys also served as utility byways for delivering coal and picking up trash.

As children, we often played in the alley. There wasn't much traffic and when a car did come through, it was going very slowly. (The speed limit in alleys in Ohio is 15mph.) The alley was particularly exciting after a rain when the ruts filled with running water, and we could suddenly splash to our heart's content and sail little paper boats in the instant rivers. One night there was particular excitement when a tree fell, and the alley beside my bedroom window became a major thoroughfare for cars detouring around the blocked street.

Now my sister and I like to explore the alleys for a view of each property that is hidden from the street. There are interesting collections of out-buildings: garages, barns, tool sheds, playhouses, animal pens. Occasionally we see a substantial building that was once a small business: a machine shop, an auto mechanic, a one-man repair shop. We've sighted unknown apartments, even a swimming pool. And there are the carefully tended vegetable gardens: my sister remarks, "Why don't my tomatoes look like that?"

Our home-town is small, and as children, we walked, biked and even roller skated everywhere. Both my sister and I have lived elsewhere for our adult lives. Now my sister has returned after 40 years to take care of Dad, and I visit frequently. As we walk the alleys, we discover a different aspect to the town we thought we knew.

Chihuly's Glass

2005-07-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

An unexpected experience on a recent trip has left me excited and stimulated. I was in Colorado for a week to take care of my two grandsons, ages four and six. We went out every day, mostly to kid-friendly places: a nature center, Pioneer Museum, Children's Museum and the like. But I also wanted to visit the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center which was featuring an exhibit of glass work by Dale Chihuly.

I didn't recognize the artist's name, but when I saw his work, I realized I'd already seen a couple of his pieces in other places --- very large clusters of blown pieces hung as chandeliers. The exhibit at CSFAC also showcased several other series, created over a period of 30 years.

The boys and I had a serious talk before we entered the museum. We were going to use our museum manners: no shouting, no running, and NO TOUCHING. Kids nowadays are accustomed to interactive museums, which are great: but kids can also learn to see, think and feel without climbing, running, throwing and screaming. The six-year-old, who I'd thought would enjoy the experience the most, had determined ahead of time that he'd be bored. But a collection of big, bowl-like pieces touched him in spite of his resolution. The four-year-old responded most strongly to a gathering of large glass spheres in various colors, resting on a bed of clear, crushed glass and displayed in a long, dimly lighted space that receeded into the distance.

I don't like all of Chihuly's work. Some of his individual pieces are too ornate and derivitive. But he has certainly revolutionized the art of glass blowing, primarily by the scale of his work --- the pieces are BIG --- and by the way they're installed as architectural elements and landscapes. He is a big man who works in a big way with collaborators, and produces a huge number of pieces. His most sucessful pieces are not single, precious objects, but large conglomerations of many pieces. In spite of the fragile medium, the work is stong, spontaneous, and prolific. One has the feling that if a few small elements get broken, it's not a big problem. There are plenty more. The energy one feels when looking at the work is a major part of the attraction.

Chihuly also makes paintings. They're done on very large pieces of heavy watercolor paper (maybe 3' x 4') and the acrylic paint is applied with sponges and squirt bottles. It probably takes less than five minutes to create one painting. There are must be many duds, but the ones exhibited were extremely colorful, spontaneous and energetic. The artist conducts workshops for kids and adults where everyone is squirting and splashing. I'm stimulated to try it at home this summer when the grandsons are here. We'll need to keep them apart to minimize the temptation to squirt each other rather than the paper.

The boys were OK in the museum, although we didn't linger as long as I might have had I been alone. Maybe knowing that I had to absorb as much as possible as quickly as possible made the experience more intense. I'll see more of Chihuly's work next fall when we're in England and visit his installation at Kew Garden.

The boys were most interested in the little red metal badges we were given when we paid the admission. To their delight, we found a few extras on our way back to the car where people had dropped them in the parking lot.

A Paper Family

2005-06-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

Family history has been a long-time hobby of mine, and in the process of locating relatives, living and dead, I've run into people who have a strong need to create a paper family.

First there was the gay young man, who, when he came out, was disowned by his nuclear family. It was important to him have a paper family, and he discovered that there was a long history of multiple marriages and alcoholism in his ancestry, indicators of possible gender identity problems.

Then there was the woman from a severely disfunctional family. Her grandfather was convicted of child abuse, and the children had been scattered into foster homes and institutions. She needed to reunite her aunts and uncles, (at least on paper, for most of them were dead,) and to link with other, more normal branches of the family. Though not highly educated, she became an expert at locating hard-to-find records. The research also helped her to understand that undiagnosed learning disabilities may have contributed to the problems of the earlier generations.

A friend related that since her bi-polar niece has become interested in researching the family history, she seems more stable. It's not clear which is cause and which is effect, but I wondered if relating to a paper family was easier for her than confronting flesh and blood relatives.

I would say that the primary pleasure of genealogy for me is the intellectual challenge of the research. But, come to think of it, once I discover additional living relatives, I don't really go out of my way to meet them in person. So maybe I too, am most satisfied with a paper family.

Weren't We Liberated?

2005-06-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've looked at any of the popular women's magazines. But recently, while visiting cousins, I picked of copies of Woman's Day and Family Circle. They're conservative by any measure, but I was surprised and dismayed to read several articles about the danger of germs around the house, followed by elaborate instructions on how to clean the various surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom.

Is this all for real? Is this the current version of laundry that's whiter than white or kitchen floors so shiny you can see your reflection? Are we women being subjected in still another way?

An article in the May, 2005 issue of Wired was a response to this kind of scare-journalism. The piece was titled, "Germs Aren't As Scary As You Think", and subtitled, "The little beasties that lurk on common surfaces are rarely enough to make anyone sick." Recommendations: clean you phone receiver occasionally, throw your plastic cutting board into the dish washer (or use a wooden one), and get a flu shot. Our mothers knew what they were talking about when they taught us to wash our hands with (plain) soap and water before eating and after using the bathroom. If you have to worry about something, worry about being too clean and inhibiting your body from developing a strong immune system.

If the germ threat is a tactic to make a woman's life more difficult (and to sell cleaning products --- especially anti-bacterial solutions which do nothing special against viruses like the common cold), it seems that the present female clothing styles are also restrictive. Skirts are short and tight, tops are sleeveless, bras are boned and wired, shoes have high heels and pointed toes. And these styles are not really flattering, even on very slender and very fit teenagers. What will they think ten years from now when they look at photos of themselves taken today?

No, thanks. My house is clean enough to be healthy and I don't propose to be fashionable and therefore squeezed, poked and cold, plagued by foot deformities and backaches. Give me loose, pajama-style pants and tops and flat shoes and let me flow and glide through life on my terms.

BOOK REVIEW: Blue Blood

2005-05-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

Conlon, Edward, Blue Blood. New York: Riverhead Books, 2004

A cop story, told in tough-guy style, is not my kind of book. But I couldn't lay this one down!

It's so much more than just a cop story. The author, a detective in the New York City Police Department, skillfully weaves many layers together: his own story of becoming a police officer, the stories of fellow officers, including some of his own Irish ancestors, the history of crime and policing in New York. He includes accounts of many of his cases with perceptive observations about both the perpetrators and victims. He tries to understand or at least live with the organizational system, the reams of paperwork, the baroque regulations, the interdepartmental rivalry, the transfers and promotions wafted unpredictably by political hot air.

The frosting on the cake is his use of language: sometimes straightforward, sometimes lyrical, often staccato. Always rich and fast moving. At times, the sentences almost become rap. Conlon describes the police radio as "a constant and chaotic montage of stray details, awful and comic facts." NYPD uses the abbreviation "K" to end a radio transmission, in the same way most other organizations use "over."

"You okay, K?"

"A-OK, K."

"Okey-doke, K."

Conlon had majored in English at Harvard, but when he entered the police department, he didn't think his academic qualifications would be an asset. He describes how he filled in forms about his background:

" I had written where I had gone to college in a cramped scrawl, and the best guess for what it said would have been 'Howard.' Sgt. Alvarado and PO Rickard must have wondered why I'd gone to a historically black school, but Sgt. Solosky interrupted himself in the middle of class to say, 'Hey, wait a minute! Conlon, there's a rumor going around that you went to Harvard! Didja?'

I made a derisive sound. 'Not lately, Sarge.'

After class I approached him and apologized, saying I didn't mean to mislead him but I preferred to keep that quiet. He slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Don't worry, Conlon, it's nothing to be ashamed of.'"

If you ever wondered why anyone would want to be a cop, read this book. And be thankful there are people like Edward Conlon on the Job.

IKEA Adventure

2005-04-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

I was in the neighborhood, it was lunch-time and there were a few small items I wanted to pick-up. I hadn't been to IKEA for several months, and an hour spent there would be a nice break.

As I carried my plate of meat balls and boiled potatoes, with gravy and lingonberry jam, through the lunchroom, I was surprised to see Pastor Bill with two of his parishoners, Emma and Franklin. We greeted each other, then I proceeded to a table in the corner, removed my food from the tray and propped up the book I'd brought along. Suddenly Pastor Bill was at my elbow. "I didn't mean to ignore you. Why don't you come over to our table and join us?"

"Well," I answered, "I brought a book to read."

"Yes," he mused, "it would be hard to read with Emma at the table." Emma is a short, talkative women in her eighties, now bent over with arthritis and carrying a cane. Franklin is a pale, reserved man in his early nineties, slight and still spry, but carrying a cane, too, a white one. They have been long-time members of Pastor Bill's parish, and strong supporters of the church.

We frequently run into Pastor Bill with Emma and Franklin. I don't think Emma drives, and since Franklin lost his sight, they've walked long distances to various community events, the halt leading the blind. They've succeed in staying active and in touch with what's going on. But as Emma's arthritis has become more debilitating, Pastor B. has taken on what he calls his "pastoral ministry" by driving them places and doing things for them. He is, in a way, taking the place of the child they never had. Pastor B., in his early sixties, is the right age to be a son of Emma and Franklin. But you would not mistake him for their biological son because Pastor B. is very tall and powerfully built, with a smiling red face and an exuberant personality.

After lunch, my path crossed several times with the threesome. Pastor B. is just in the process of moving from an apartment into a house. Emma and Franklin are preparing to move from a house into a very small apartment in a senior citizen's complex. Pastor B. explained that he was picking up a few things for his new house. "But," he complained, "we haven't been able to find a convertable sofa-bed for Franklin. There are only futons and they're too hard to handle."

"I have a nice convertable I bought at IKEA a couple years ago," I replied. "But items at IKEA do tend to come and go. Let me look in the sofa department and see if I can spot something."

We left Emma and Franklin on a bench in a children's play area and shortcutted across the serpentine route IKEA customers are normally led along. There were actually several convertable sofas, but Pastor B. may not have recognized them because most do not look like the old sofa-beds our parents bought in the 1950s. We found two that were definite possibilities: one modern-looking and very easy to convert, and one more traditional in styling, but a bit more complicated to convert. Pastor B. excitedly went to fetch Emma and Franklin, then he and I explained the features and draw-backs of each model.

I didn't stay long enough to learn what they finally decided, but the encounter left me with several things to think about. I admired an ageing couple's dignity and their determination to stay active and in touch with the world in spite of increasing physical disabilities. Franklin asked if the bedding would need to be taken off the sofa each morning, and we assured him it could stay in place, with a nice bedspread on top. Emma added, "Even though Franklin doesn't see, he makes the beds."

She confided that Franklin would soon be 91. I replied that my father was almost 92 and is OK physically. But his mind is not good. Emma said with quiet pride, "Franklin's mind is as it was in his youth."

I could see it was true. He didn't seem confused when several people were talking at once, and when we read parts of the furniture specification sheets to him, he processed the measurements quickly and repeated the size in equivalent terms.

And I pondered the meaning of "family". This unlikely trio --- a gently gossipy old lady, a reserved and scholarly old man, and a physically commanding and flamboyantly gay, middle-aged cleric, talking to each other in easy intimacy, like I would talk to my sister or my daughter.

"You know that nice bedspread you gave me? I can give it back if you want to use it on the sofa-bed."

"I have lots of twin-size sheets I don't need any more, if you'd like them."

I'll return to IKEA --- it's one of my favorite places to shop --- and I'll enjoy the visual stimulation of well-designed items, attractively displayed. But I probably won't be as enriched and morally stimulated as I was during this particular IKEA adventure. And I won't have quite as much fun!

New Underwear

2005-04-26T14:37:00.000-07:00

When we travel we usually pack old clothes, sometimes very old. Although I admit I've succumbed to buying a new wardrobe for a trip, experience has proved that old tried-and-true outfits are more comfortable, show wrinkles and dirt less, and if they get chewed up by an aggressive laundry or come out of the coin-op machine the color of dirty bubble gum, I don't mind throwing them away.

We left home for a three-month stay in Europe with all our old underwear. In the back of our minds was the idea that if we had more stuff to bring home than we started out with, we could jettison the underwear at the end of the trip. For awhile we wondered if the underwear would last that long. Holes got bigger and bigger, elastic lost its stretch and came loose. I started mending, and washing things by hand between weekly laundry sessions. But we made it, and when we departed, most of our underwear stayed behind in the Daily Bin Store (as the dumpster shed in England is called.)

When the kids left home, I started doing laundry every two weeks. My husband and I produce one load of bedding and towels, one load of white wash, one load of medium and one load of dark in that amount of time, and it seems like the most efficient schedule. But it means that we need two week's worth of underwear, plus a few extras for those times when we change more than once a day or when I don't get the laundry done quite on time.

Today I bought new underwear. I made a run to Target and WalMart for a three-pack of men's boxers, four bras, and three six-packs of women's briefs. I had enough socks. For undershirts, my husband wears t-shirts that people give him with things printed on them. He also mysteriously produced a dozen pair of new or nearly-new boxers. (He must have bought them some time ago and put them away.) And 18 pairs of men's socks arrived in the mail; they'd been ordered from the internet because my husband takes a size that's hard to find, and they accounted for the biggest part of the sum I spent on underwear.

So even though what I bought today was not really our full supply, I still resented spending $283.36 on underwear. I know it will last a long time; most of the boxers my husband threw away had been purchased at outlet prices from Big Lots, nearly 20 years ago. Our culture dictates that we wear underwear, and I'd feel cold and naked without it. Besides, what would happen if we were in an accident and someone found out we were not wearing underwear!!

Underwear is a necessity, but I can think of a lot more interesting ways to spend $283.36.

Any Volunteers?

2005-04-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

Reading Jeninco's blog, Boulder Moment, brought back many thoughts about the North American practice of volunteering.

Most charitible organizations and churches could not exist without the efforts of volunteers, and most organizations are set up to accept volunteer help. In fact some organizations that rely heavily on volunteers have a paid staff person whose primary job is to manage the volunteers. The international center at our local univeristy has such a person who organizes and schedules all kinds of services and events for foreign students and their families: ESL partners, cooking and shopping demos, play groups, tours of local points of interest, even legal and technical advice about buying a used car, or renewing a visa. The people who actually carry out the work are mostly volunteers.

My sister-in-law just started volunteering with the political party she supports; she's unhappy with the present political situation, and working for the opposition is her way of doing something about it. My husband's secretary, after she retired, volunteered to shelve books at her local library. She loves to read, and she's a very efficient and organized person, so the job appealed to her for a couple of reasons.

My husband and I enjoyed a recent International Festival at our local elementary school. I suppose it was a fund-raiser of sorts, but more importantly, it brought the whole community together. It was inspiring to see children and parents from many different countries wearing their native costumes, explaining their cultural customs, and sharing their ethnic foods. I'm not sure what I ate at the international buffet --- it was like a huge potluck --- but all of it was delicious. While we ate, we watched the children perform. The kids were excited, the teachers were high, the parents and grandparents were proud and the music was good. Everyone had worked hard and contributed time, energy and resources. Could any highly-funded program create so much understanding and cooperation?

When our kids were little we lived in Europe for a year. It was my intention to volunteer at the school the kids attended or at a local library or hospital in order to learn the language. But I soon discovered this just wasn't done. When, somewhat later, we entertained a couple from then newly independent Czech Republic, I took the wife on a tour of volunteer agencies in our area. The idea of philanthropy, not to mention volunteer work, did not exist in the former communist country. When the government stopped supplying minimal social services, no one knew how to step in and take up the slack.

A generation ago, young, stay-at-home wives and mothers made up most of the volunteer army. Now with so many women working full-time, we see still-vigorous retirees filling the volunteer slots. Bright, home-schooled teenagers are fully capable volunteers. Some companies give their workers time-off for volunteer work.

We must nurture and cherish our volunteer networks. Any volunteers?

The Red Sweater

2005-04-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

I was very happy this morning to see Maria come to church wearing a red sweater. She was a bit late, and I didn't have a chance to talk with her then, but during the sharing of the peace, I said, "You must be feeling better."

"Yes," she replied, "a lot better."

"I could tell," I responded. "You've been wearing black and grey. Today you're wearing a red sweater."

Maria is pregnant, and she's been feeling pretty yucky during the first three months; very tired, unable to keep food down, not up to doing much. She hasn't complained but there's been a look of patient suffering in her eyes.

Her first pregnancy was unexpected, and she was upset to find she was going to have a child. But once she accepted the situation, all went well. Their daughter has been such a joy to her and her husband, that they planned this second baby. But the "morning" sickness (actually "all day" sickness) and fatigue are new this time around.

I kept reassuring Maria of what she already knew; that she'd eventually start feeling better. (I didn't mention that a few unfortunate women are still throwing up on their way to the labor room.) Now I'm relieved to know that she'll soon enjoy food and be full of energy again, and that she feels like wearing her red sweater.

Super-sized

2005-04-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

Each year during my annual physical check-up, the doctor has a serious conversation with me about loosing weight. A year ago, I told her I'd try to loose 15 pounds before I saw her again. Alas! I only managed to loose five pounds. But I'll keep trying, and making this public commitment may strengthen my resolve.

During my life-time, lots of other things have gotten bigger. Our grandparents raised large families in two- or three-bedroom houses. Our parents had fewer children, but felt privileged to have a bedroom for each family member. We raised two kids with a separate bedroom for each, plus a guest room, family room and office. Now in our neighborhood, families with only one or two children are building "monster" houses.

In the 1950s, our parents eagerly anticipated their first car and their first television set. Now we're in the minority with only one of each.

But I must admit that we have five computers, four of which are actively used. And this in spite of the fact that computer memories have gotten bigger at an incomprehensible rate.

My first personal computer held the equivalent of four or five typed pages before I had to download the memory onto a micro cassette tape. When floppy disks first came out (the 5 1/4" disks that really were floppy) they held an incredible 144 kilobytes. My second personal computer had a hard drive that held 10 megabytes, and my husband said I'd never need that much memory. I filled it in one year with text files --- before we had room for image files or color. When my husband brought home our first 3 1/2" floppy disk, it was strangely rigid. Since it had cost $15.00, the two of us shared one, and it took awhile to use all 1.4 megabytes.

Now I backup files to an iPod that stores almost 40 gigabytes. By my calculation, nowdays we get 1000 times more memory for the same dollar. Of course, software has gotten lots bigger, too, and I don't think anything of working with a single image that takes 40 megabytes.

As Americans, we work longer hours for larger paychecks, live in bigger houses, drive more cars, eat more food, buy more stuff, consume more electricty and burn more oil and gas. We think big. Maybe that's because we occupy a country with vast amounts of geographical space. Are we like goldfish? They grow as big as their environment will allow, whether that be a small goldfish bowl or a large pond.

Getting bigger is not necessarily bad --- I'm not ready to give up my iPod! But some kinds of super-sizing can be a selfish and ultimately distructive. And we can't super-size forever. Let's at least temper the present trend with a corresponding effort to super-size our compassion, our tolerence and our willingness to share with others.