Author: psross@ameritech.net

It’s a relief to have the conventions over.  I’ve read the speculation about Trump droppping out, and I know that Johnson and/or Stein are looking attractive to some people, but those things feel marginal.  We’re hosting a Clinton staffer, and I see how hard she is working, for which I am glad.  Until November, I’ll keep making modest donations to Hillary and I’ll keep worrying, but for right now it feels okay to turn my attention elsewhere.  Mostly to domestic affairs.

Waste, especially food waste, is anathema to me, so what with the herbs from garden, vegetables from the farmers market and, especially,  the produce from our CSA, I’ve been cooking even more than usual.    I love the colors of this green bean salad with nasturtiums.

Our CSA includes fruit as well as vegetables, so I”ve been practicing my pastry skills.  Tonight I made a plum and nectarine galette:

I’ve even put up jam from the 15 pound of bulk peaches I bought, and I’m looking forward to sharing with all my kids and some of my friends:

And despite the high pain price I pay, I’ve been pulling weeds and fighting aphids like crazy, because somehow I need the combination of order and wildness that results.  Somehow I like seeing this in black and white:

Long ago we invested in garden infrastructure, so now it’s mostly maintenance. That seems like a resonable metaphor for life right now, too.  Orderly, a little wild, and quite satisfying. Not all black and white, but sometimes….

Three days above  90 degrees, and I’ve succumbed.  We live in an old house with good air circulation, designed to create cross-breezes.  For most of the year we are fine as long as we open up the house at night, with fans, and close the shades during the day.  This week that isn’t cutting it, and we  have chosen comfort.  The portable air conditioner set to 72 will probably keep things not too much warmer than 75, so who cares about the electric bill and I’ll salve my environmental conscience by minimizing my driving.  It’s all trade-offs, and we do our best.

Sometimes even then we make things tougher than expected.  Last year I planted dozens of milkweeds, because of course I want to help the monarchs survive.  I did my research and chose varieties suitable to my zip code. So far no monarchs, but the small variety (butterfly weed or asclepias tuberosa, above) is beautiful and the large one (swampweed or asclepias incarnata, below) is covered with bees of all sorts.  I’m happy with these additions to our garden.

Unfortunately, some of my carefully chosen plants are also covered with aphids.  Ugly, slimy yellow aphids which are sucking the life out of the plants I hoped would nourish beautiful gold and black butterflies. Although I am willing to attack the aphids with soapy water, with a brush, and even with my hands, I can’t bring myself to take their picture.  But this morning I cut and bagged the worst-affected stalks.  From here on out I’m on prevention patrol.

Speaking of trade-offs, and although we say it every four years, this year is really, again, the most important presidential election of my life.  I am wholeheartedly with Hillary Clinton.  I’ve written some modest checks, and I am looking forward to providing housing for a member of her team.  Still, I know that for many of my friends this is a trade-off.  They would prefer someone more liberal or more conservative or bolder or more submissive or, for some, let’s face it – more male.   Hillary’s brand of pragmatic progressivism resonates for me.  I am stunned when I read about the decades of accusations, allegations, and attacks that have brought us to the point where mistrust of Hillary threatens to deliver the presidency to Donald Trump.

It has always amazed me that most people do not recognize elections as a choice from a limited menu of options.  In a few weeks it will be official. I forgive anyone who is waiting for the Republicans to rescue themselves and somehow block Trump or for the FBI or the Justice Department or maybe some Deus ex machina to find Hillary guilt of some new crime.  Absent that, however, this election is a choice between a smart a smart, competent, and experienced woman who is appealing to our best natures or Donald Trump.  I get the appeal of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, but neither is going to be our next president.  I get the need for change.  In a local race, why not make change your priority?  But this is the presidency!  The Supreme Court! The red button!

I’m with her….

 

My sister Francine visited last week.  Our niece Gina is getting married in August, and so we spent some serious time talking about her mother, our sister Martha who died in 1993, when Gina was 21 months old.   Gina’s wedding will be at the Sunburst Lounge in Casper, Wyoming.  Martha’s wedding was in my backyard in 1986.  Francine was matron of honor. Olivia was a flower girl.  Martha’s wedding bouquet was ordered from a farmers’ market vendor, and we picked it up at the farm. After the ceremony we served dinner to a few dozen guests.  I made chicken Marbella.  A LOT of chicken Marbella.

Chicken Marbella is trending again.  A classic.  Somewhere around the time of the wedding, maybe earlier, I splurged on my first Coach bag, a basic black.  This year someone admired my “vintage” bag.  I replied with thanks and an acknowledgement of my own vintage.

This week I made chicken marbella for a small dinner party.  And pre-dinner martinis.  And deviled eggs.  A chocolate cake.  Pretty much an all-boomer dinner, with the exception of a couple of  Millenial guests.

Sometimes  the old memories and the new ones get all mixed up…

 

 

I love my backyard garden.  It’s the first thing I see every morning from my bedroom window, soon after the sun comes up over the trees.  It’s where I like to have coffee in the morning and lunch on summer afternoons.  I’ve furnished it with estate-sale furniture and lots of big terra-cotta pots in varying states of disrepair.  The garden houses an eclectic and ever-changing collection of statuary, herbs, flowers and birdbaths. Occasionally it’s raided by racoons or the odd opossum.

 

 

John’s favored Weber kettle grill sits in the corner next to a table made from a salvaged piece of Corian from a long-ago kitchen remodel and a sewing machine base that I rescued when it was about to be thrown out from the Davis building.  We offer seeds and suet to a parade of birds.  A place of honor is given to the Buddha I inherited from Al Baldwin.  Not infrequently his head is a perch for a sparrow or a chipmunk.

I also love my front porch with a meadow view.  It’s where we sit after dinner to watch the whistle pigs, the swallows, the too-frequent deer, the occasional heron, and, once  this year, a bald eagle.

The porch is original to the house.  It’s built over sand, for drainage, and after almost 100 years it is full of cracks and many of the bricks have shifted.  Chipmunks live in it.  We’ve had to evict wasp nests from it.

We had the backyard garden built, first (30+ years ago) the two square patios and, maybe 10 years ago?? the slightly-raised beds, which I had built to celebrate the death of a neighbor’s tree and the new access to enough sun to grow vegetables.  The beds are lined with brick and separated by gravel paths and the center path is stone.

So, with all that brick and stone and gravel, there’s a problem. In addition to the many pleasurable hours I have spent in these two places, I’ve been on my knees pulling weeds for countless more.  We’ve worn out way too many weed eaters on the bricks.  Many years ago, when we let it get out of hand, one of my then-neighbors remarked that the unweeded porch was like a woman’s unshaven legs and similarly unacceptable.

My nature is expressed in my approach to my garden.  I have banned poison.  I have welcomed all creatures, except the deer who I try to discourage with a product based on pig’s blood.  I have patiently hand-weeded.  But no more!  Tomorrow I become the mother of dragons – er, mother of a dragon.  A red dragon garden torch, with which I plan to incinerate every weed and every blade of grass that invades my gardens.  Watch me conquer!

A dragon is not a slave.  Daenerys Targaryen

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
― Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

Almost every morning I sit/stand on my yoga mat in my home office to practice easy yoga stretches and twists.  Towards the end of the routine, there are a few moments of meditation (“sit in simple cross-legged pose”), and soon the view out the window through the slats of wooden blinds  reverses to look like those children’s blocks that stack to make a picture.  My picture is getting greener every day, with veins of light-red dogwood blosoms beginning in the forefront of the many shades of green and the grey which, for the last few cloudy days, makes up the background. Sometimes a bird flies through the path of my eyes, and everything flips back to trees and sky through the open blinds.

It’s a nice trick, that altered perception, and at this point in my life I much prefer Rodney Yee to Aldous Huxley as a companion and guide.  Sometimes the switch happens on its own.  Although despite my good intentions I can’t seem to avoid strong first impressions of the people I meet, sometimes a few words, a gesture, or an act can cause my feelings to reverse, just like the view through the window.  That annoying woman becomes insightful.  How could I have found that man attractive?  This situation offers an opportunity rather than a threat.

Being open to these kind of changes is one of the benefits of aging, I think.  I feel more able to let go of my own opinions, up to a point, and to let them re-form. It’s another kind of flexibility. It’s a kind of power.

One has not only an ability to perceive the world but an ability to alter one’s perception of it; more simply, one can change things by the manner in which one looks at them.     — Tom Robbins

 

 

 

Pathway Fatherhood Initiative:  Brothers United:  For the last three years serving on the Pathway board has been my main volunteer activity. We’re one of only a few dozen in the country to have won this grant.  After months of planning, it will launch soon and will provide a pathway to a better life for thousands of young low-income Toledo fathers and their children.

River House Gallery – I have no space left on my walls, and I’m not likely to be making major art purchases, but this is such a cool addition to downtown Toledo! I look forward to future visits. Drinking a mojito while admiring the drawings and paintings by Cuban-American artist Augusto Bordelois was just what I needed yesterday.

Antivillains at the Ark –  So proud of these incredibly talentedToledo musicians for their first performance at one of my favorite venues.  Hoping to attend and to get to A2 early enough for dinner before the show.

Continuing My Birthmonth Celebrations:  Dinner parties.  Lunches with friends. Wearing my new earrings, a gift from my husband purchased at the Toledo Museum of Art.

What are you looking forward to?

 

I haven’t been eligible to vote in New York since 1972, but today I wish I could vote for Hillary.  Instead, I’ll pay some bills and balance the checkbook and do some other domestic chores, try to increase the number of steps I walk, and begin planning for a couple of weekend dinner parties.  I’ll re-start our annual doomed efforts to keep the deer away from the gardens.  Not very inspiring.  Not very inspired.

“Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
Jack London

I’m inspired by my husband, my children, my granddaughter, and a few friends.  I’m inspired by what is possible with flour, salt, water and yeast.  I’m inspired by the milkweed that is sprouting in my garden.  In most other things, I’ve been loafing and inviting inspiration.  Now I am looking for a club…  Ideas welcome.

I’ve been a Lucinda Williams fan for years, beginning when I first heard heard  “Joy.”  Like some of her former much-younger lovers Lucinda describes in this recent interview, I didn’t know how old she was, but I definitely thought of her as a young person.

Last night I saw Lucinda perform in Ann Arbor.  It was a great show, perhaps the best of the four I’ve attended.  In discussing her new album which, as many have noted, flirts with thoughts of death, she mentioned that she is 63, three years younger than I’ll be in a couple of weeks.  She also repeated a version the Bette Davis quote “Old age is no place for sissies.”  Double whammy!  Lucinda is almost as old as I am.  We’re both old.  Lucinda has been writing and singing all her life.  Her set list includes songs she wrote 30 years ago as well as brand new work.  She’s a master of her craft.  I can’t even articulate what my craft is, but I hope I’m getting better at it.  And I know I’m committed.

I’m fascinated by the whole concept of snake handling. When you read about the Pentecostal snake handlers, what strikes you the most is their commitment.

Lucinda Williams

 

What with presidential politics and global warming, lately I often feel the need to escape from real life for a while.  With few exceptions, televison doesn’t do it for me.  I read, and while I am reading I live in different worlds.  Not perfect, just different.  I have to be careful of what I read, because those worlds make a difference in this world.  I always bring something back with me.

Someimes I visit Venice with Vice Comissario Guido Brunetti and his wife Paola.  He solves crimes, she teaches English literature, and together they bemoan what Venice, and the world, have become.  Because of the Brunettis, my morning coffee is made in a Moka pot instead of the old Aero-Press (too plastic, too American).  The multi-course meals Paola serves her family (between her long sessions with Henry James) have inspired many ambitious meals at my house.  Venice, stinking and sinking but still glorious, is such a powerful metaphor!  The beauty and the rot.  The closest I’ve come to it here is New Orleans, another favorite escape.

I’ve spent a few hours in Three Pines with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.   In a recent book, in the middle of a tense investigation that involves the whole community, Gamache invites last-minute guests to dinner, knowing there will be enough.  He says of  his wife Reine-Marie:   “She was four courses upset and considering an amuse-bouche.”  That resonates.  Since I inadvertantly skipped from number one and number two in the series to number eleven, I expect that I’ll return to Three Pines often, a sanctuary that we all need from Donald Trump.  Three Pines is fictional, but the promise of Cape Breton is real.

Not that I’ve given up on real life.  But sometimes it’s nice to take a break from it.  Have to go now, the smell of butter and sugar and blueberries coming from my kitchen is irresistible.

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t hang out in bars a lot, and I don’t want to.  But there are exceptions.  Lately John has persuaded me to come with him to a few of the every-Friday night open mic/poetry sessions at a local club in the North End of Toledo.  I pride myself on being open to new experiences, and this fits the bill.  Stormi’s Trunk of Truth is at Franklin and Pearl.  The first few times we went the door was locked, which seemed like  a reasonable security precaution.  Since wine did not seem like a wise option, on my first visit I nursed a brandy.  The next time I failed to stop at the ATM and, despite the signage, we had to count out our change and small bills to cover a couple of beers.  Last night we went for a special show, a collaboration with some Michigan poets.  We were hungry and left at the break.  I was surprised that I kind of wanted to stay.

Clearly the building has been re-purposed from either a storefront or, more likely, somebody’s house. The floor is black and white tile.  The walls are paneled and hung with an assortment of posters. There’s a hand-painted mural (a tree, of course). The tables, chairs, and couches are frequently re-arranged to suit the crowd.  Last night the restrooms, framed in at the back of what may was once have been the living room, had inexplicably been switched, resulting in the curious presence of a condom dispenser in the ladies’.

John plays his guitar when we go, but mostly it’s poetry.  And with a couple of exceptions the poetry is wonderful.  My favorites have involved “Namaste,” written and read by Dan Denton and a long hilarious piece by Arnie Koester about a Bangkok sex show.  (I like a bit of humor with my poetry. ) I know I’m late to discover Bob Phillips, but I’m ready to listen  and read more.

I’ve lived in Toledo since 1972, minus a few years in the late 70’s.  It’s never boring.