Category: Uncategorized

We spent 16 days in Mexico this month. We had perfect weather.  For half the time, we had our whole family with us.  We moved around a bit, but wherever we were the toughest decision was pool or beach.  It was wonderful, and I feel very grateful for the opportunity and the experience.  For at least a part of every day I forgot about Donald Trump and global warming, and I am determined to capture that forgetfulness on a regular basis.

 

When we got home I found that our two fig trees, in the unheated and largely light-free basement for the winter, have begun to leaf out and even to fruit.  Like other aspects of this season, this, while a bad sign for the planet, is in the short term kind of fun.  We moved the pots to the kitchen and re-arranged the furniture to make room.  I’m looking forward to watching the figs ripen and hoping that they taste good.  It seems, from my initial research, that this is the breba crop, which may or may not be edible, depending on the variety.  A friend gave me this fig about three years ago and it’s always beautiful but has never before been fruitful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We live in an old house, and it’s  a rare winter that I don’t need to bring out the mousetraps.  Years ago, when we still had dogs, we saw a brave mouse run out from under the stove and jump eagerly into the dog food bowl.  In 2008, as we were getting to know a just-arrived organizer we were hosting for the Hillary primary campaign, she was the first to notice a small furry greeter.  Just a couple of weeks ago, a tiny quick mouse ran out of the kitchen just minutes before guests were scheduled to arrive for dinner.  While we’re watching television in the evenings, we’ve been hearing rustling and rattling among the brown paper bags I store under the sink.  Enough is enough.

We’ve tried live traps, but, well… Once I opened the compost bin we keep out by the garage on a particularly cold day to find a very happy, well fed mouse looking up at me.  Since they clearly have other options, I don’t feel too bad about culling the ones who set up housekeeping in the basement, with frequent forays into the kitchen. So last night I set my traps, a new and promising kind.  And this morning I checked them.  Although the trap under the sink was unspung, the bait well, which had been filled with peanut butter, was licked clean.  Although it won’t stop me from another sneak attack tonight,  I can’t help but admire that mouse.

We’ve just finished binge-watching Season 1 of The Man in the High Castle.  Last night I told John that I think most of the characters have at least some good in them, even the villains.  Maybe it’s the casting or the costumes, but how can you not admire Inspector Kido?  Or the Yakuza boss?  Or even feel some sympathy for Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith, as he realizes what his political affiliation means for his son.  They may be bad humans, but they are humans.  I am not in the “wait and see” camp when it comes to the new administration, and I am not ambiguous about the real, historical Hitler, but within a wide range of humans I do find something to admire and, most of the time, some reason to feel affection and to hope for some good.

Lately that makes it hard to cope with reality.

 The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why. Eleanor Roosevelt

I’m not at the women’s march, but I’m celebrating its success and hoping it is the beginning of something.  I may be feeling confessional because I’m not marching, and I may be looking for ways to do something useful.

Since it’s warm, I went outside to check on the fish in the backyard pond.  Since I’m pretty sure the melter has been less than effective, leaving them under a solid layer of ice a few times this winter, I was worried.  But there they were, all three of them, swimming around.  Oh, the joy of small victories!  As long I was already out there, I decided to toss out the sad remains of last summer’s floating plants, too, a task that should have been completed several months ago, but better late than never.  Probably my shoes were wet.  Certainly the stones were slippery. I was almost ready to come into the house when I found myself IN the pond for the first time in the 20-or-so years it’s been in my backyard! It’s only a couple of feet deep, but somehow I ended up wet to my shoulders. 

I climbed out and came into the kitchen, dripping, while John, laughing out loud, got me a towel.  Only my pride is hurt. I have always had a hard time laughing at myself and I dislike having others laugh at me.  Probably because he’s used to my sometimes-obsessive need for privacy, and trying not to laugh out loud, John promised not to tell anyone what I had just done.  In fact, trying hard to keep a straight face, he promised to take it to his grave.  So I”m confessing:  I FELL INTO THE POND THIS MORNING.  Clumsily.  Hilariously.  Apparently without lasting ill-effects for me or the fish. 

I come from a family of serious women.  My mother was serious. Her four sisters, with one possible exception, were serious.  I don’t remember my mother laughing often, and I wonder if she would have been happier if she did.  I don’t laugh as often as I would like, and I suspect that if I can learn to laugh at myself I may be happier. I read a lot of mysteries, and I am convinced that I learn a lot from them, event those that are non-pure escapism.  One book taught me about laughing clubs.  And laughter yoga.  Maybe I should consider it.

The fish are still swimming.  I’m showered and clean, and the clothes are washed and drying.  She shoes may take a while.  I hope that I can find drier activities to laugh at until I’m somewhere warmer.

For the last few days my desktop (a relatively old Dell) has been randomly shutting down and giving me “watchdog violation” error messages.  I googled that and decided there was some kind of driver incompatibility and kind of put up with it or just switched to my new Apple laptop for most tasks.  Then yesterday the problem escalated and every time I turned it on it entered sleep mode and wouldn’t come back.  By last night I had given up on the CPU and was becoming resigned to dealing with the one-at-a-time file recovery from my Norton backup.

Today I managed to run diagnostics, resulting in several new error codes that, when googled, warned that I had better back up my data quickly.  But I couldn’t turn on the computer to back up.

On about the 15th try it worked, and I have just finished transferring all my documents and pictures to USB flash drives.

Either this is a very good sign for 2017 or I’d better watch out for some very bad luck to balance things out.

 

I’m heading into 2017 with a new computer (finally making the switch to a Mac), which is a good thing because my old computers have almost certainly become boat anchors, the laptop a few months ago and the desktop today.  So as the bubbly chills, I am trying to remember, retrieve, and construct passwords.  I am resolving to sign up for one of those password-generation thingies.  I am thanking my lucky stars for my backups but kicking myself because I have to retrieve one file at a time.

So in 2017 I will (in no particular order)

• clean up my digital life at least a little bit (passwords first)
• write more handwritten notes
• continue (and expand) efforts to de-clutter at home
• explore more places away from home but nearby
• connect with more people and connect them to one another

I could go on, but I think I will work on these five things and give myself a break on a few others. I have a feeling that there will be a lot of challenges in 2017, and beyond these goals I will simply try to do what I can where I am with what I have for as long as I can.

Who’s with me?

 

 

I am always aware of my privilege, but usually that awareness is not accompanied by guilt. Since November 8th, a low-level guilt hangs over me all the time.  I’m sending money to groups and candidates I believe in.  I’m adding my name to countless petitions.  I’m reading, somewhat obsessively, to understand WHAT HAPPENED.  But I’m also vacationing, seeing beautiful sites and eating delicious meals and reading novels.  I am enjoying myself. How is that okay? But, on the other hand, how is that not okay?

I know I’m not alone here.  We’re all struggling to understand and adjust and resist.  I don’t really want to talk about it, but I can’t stop thinking about it.

Thanking the goddess for a grandchild, the opportunity to do a few worthwhile things, and a healthy sourdough starter…

Calvin: There’s no problem so awful, that you can’t add some guilt to it and are it even worse.  Bill Waterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

It’s been a rough month.  Like everybody else, I am scared, no matter that the Blade says I shouldn’t be.  I’ll do what I can with what I have where I am.  Enough said!

On Thursday, we had guests from not-quite-one-and-a-half (my grand-daughter Aloisa Daschbach) to just-past ninety five (John’s mother Bunny Ross).  We had family and old friends and new friends.  We hosted a UT graduate student from Nepal with his wife and their daughter.  Fifteen at the table including two in booster seats.

Highlights:

• As our Nepalese guests were vegetarian, we (my SIL Robin contributed lots of side dishes and desserts) managed everything except the turkey, the gravy, and the pumpkin pie without meat or eggs.  It was delicious.
• Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish with horseradish is awesome.
• Bunny insisted throughout the dinner, even to the Nepalese, that Nepal is part of India.  She expressed a worry that next year I might invite someone Chinese and she doesn’t know how to use chopsticks.
• The third dishwasher load was finished by 10:30 Thursday evening and everything was put away by noon on Friday.
• Johanna and Aloisa stayed 2 extra days so we got to enjoy grand-parenting. They’re safely back in Chicago this evening.

Since we had hosted a Hillary staffer from July until after the election and a couple of volunteers for the last 2 weeks, it feels really odd to have an empty house.  We’re doing the post-guest cleanup and the pre-winter cleanup and getting ready to pack for an exciting trip.  More to come on that.

 

I like to think of myself as an ethical consumer, but… I pick and choose.  Buying most of my food from farmers is a joy.   Having become used to knowing how my food is grown and who grows it, I no longer even think about going to Kroger.  Most of my furniture has a history or at least a provenance.   I have come to prefer buying handmade jewelry where the workmanship is worth far more than the materials. Clothing is tougher, but I try to pay attention to sustainable practices at least most of the time.

So why had it become so tough to choose a coffee shop?  My farmers don’t advertise their religion or their politics, and I don’t ask.  When I need outdoor furniture, I trust Downtown Home and Garden in Ann Arbor to sell me stuff that will not be taking up space in the landfill for many years, and that’s enough for me.  When I buy a new necklace,  I am free to assume that anyone who spends her time weaving copper wire around little rolled-up pieces of gray felt is probably not voting for Donald Trump.  “Made in America” clothing made from natural fibers is a feel-good purchase, even as I avoid looking too deeply into where the profits go.  To some extent I am shopping my conscience and, to be fair, to some extent ignorance is bliss.

These days, I have all the time in the world and plenty of money to indulge in a morning espresso or a mid-day latte, and there are lots of new places in Toledo to do it.  I wish that I could visit all of them without knowing I was indirectly supporting anti-choice organizations.  I wish “Christian coffee house” was not a thing.

 

I was 17, a (supposedly)smart kid from a small town in Northern New York, enrolled in a 6-week summer AP program at Cornell.  I was lonely and had come home for the weekend. That night, the man across the aisle in the Greyhound bus taking me back to school calmly unzipped his pants and began to masturbate.  The bus was pretty empty.  I got up and moved to another seat.  I was supposed to change buses in Syracuse, and while I waited in the bus station there I was approached by a policeman.  Another girl, braver than I, had reported the offender, and I was needed to corroborate her story.  By the time I got a later bus and arrived back to my dorm, I had missed curfew.  Shortly thereafter, I had to tell my embarassing story to a discipline committee, which in the end decided to forgive me.  I didn’t talk about it much. I felt vaguely dirty and guilty.

That was a long time ago.  At the time, I thought I was alone.

I’ve been thinking about joy.  Joy was the first Lucinda Williams song I ever heard.  So raw.  So powerful.  I think joy may be one of those indescribables, something you can only recognize by feeling it and that you kind of forget about in between times.

I’m happy when Nate Silver’s forecast is favorable.  I feel relief, but not joy.  I’m happy when my apple crostata come out of the oven looking and smelling perfect.  I feel pleasure, but that’s not joy either.  Politics, volunteering:  often satisfaction, but never joy.

I’m pretty sure that in fact the white tail deer have stolen part of my joy by limiting my gardening potential.

I won’t be seeing (and enjoying) my grand-daughter for a couple of weeks, but between now and them I’m going to pay attention.  Or else I’m going to quiet my mind.  Either way I’m going to be looking for joy.