Sneezles!

Book by Patricia Wallace, Illustrated by Wallace Tripp. Harper Collins image.

I’ve been feeling a little congested and lethargic. My eyes are itching and my head is a tad heavy. I feel like reading Stand Back Said the Elephant, I’m Going to Sneeze! It is a fun little book in which the elephant sneezes and every other little creature is blown about.

I feel like that today (and yesterday, and the day before) and I’m sure many of you feel the same way right now.     Aaaaaaaaachoo!

After working outside for several hours yesterday in the glorious sunshine, still raking leaves out of the beds, and still discovering all sorts of things the deer didn’t find that are poking through the soil, I was pretty congested last night. In between sneezes that told me I was going to be inside more than out for awhile, I was thinking about some things I’ve been meaning to do – like downloading pictures from the digital camera.

I take most of the photographs you see on the cutoff. I borrow a few from Tom, aka Antler Man – stay tuned for a report on an antler discovery one fine day soon – and I attach all of  them to my postings from my desktop.  Until today, however, Tom has been downloading them for me from the camera to the desktop.

Today, however, tada, kaboom, sheezam, and hurrah, I did it myself. I did it! I really did it! Not a big deal for most of you out there in internetland, but for me, Ms. Technologically Challenged, it was a big deal, and I wanted to share my achievement with you.

My point is that we are all challenged in one way or another and from time to time and we should always strive to move forward and learn, whatever our challenges may be, and try to help each other along the way. Don’t you agree?

So, today, I went from this rather forlorn looking bump in the log, sneezing and wheezing and wandering around with my head in a fog,to this lovely little heart leaf, hidden under the winter blanket, that has burst forth with color to brighten my mood.

Brunnera Langstree alive and well on the cutoff!

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Rod McKuen & Jean

Janet and I had just exchanged a few comments on poetry and Rod McKuen came up. If it had not been for that, I might have put the book back in the box and moved on. I was looking for a picture of my great-aunt. Instead of the picture the book popped out of the box. It was McKuen’s  The Twelve Years of Christmas. I had given it to Tom the first Christmas we were dating in college.

Rod McKuen was a popular poet of our college years, with best-selling books and albums, concerts and television appearances. He had a quiet, raspy voice and a safe bit of defiance that appealed to both sexes and a large audience of admirers who enjoyed his type of poetry.

When the book appeared, instead of the picture, I of course opened it and read a few of the poems and then did some internet investigation. I was a bit surprised to find that he is still alive and that he was a prolific song writer. His songs were performed by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings. My last blog was long, as my blogs often are,  so I’ll let you investigate Rod McKuen for yourself. He has his own website and there are many more about him. Maybe you will enjoy some of his poems or recall some of his songs, like “Jean” from the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall. Warner Bros.

Long before Maggie Smith became recognizable for her role as Professor Minerva McGonagall of Harry Potter fame, she played Jean Brodie. It was quite a performance. Click on the website below if you want to listen.  Me? I’m going back downstairs to see if I can find that picture.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggkU9Ke2Nc

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National Poetry Month

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/98

Did you know it was National Poetry Month?

I didn’t realize it until a few days ago.

I enjoy poetry, but, it needs to be read aloud to be fully enjoyed, don’t you agree?

I did not like the poetry poster for this year’s celebration. This one is of a dress of Emily Dickenson’s. I rather liked it instead and since I control the keyboard, here it is for you to see.It is a poster from 2005. Information can be had at www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

Do you like poetry?

What kind of poetry?

Do you have a favorite poet or poem?

I read the poem below in Tongue and Cheek’s post at www.willows95988.typepad.com/. I had not heard it before and there it was, early Sunday morning, in a lovely posting. It really called to me. I sat here at my desk, a little stem of bleeding hearts from our emerging garden dangling in a vase, the quiet of the morning surrounding me, and I read it aloud. I think it is a hymn. Hymns and songs are really poems put to music. This one moved me today and I thought I would share it with you. So, without wasting any more of your time and in observance of National Poetry Month, I’ll borrow from Corey this touching poem.

I Remember You as Loving Me

Deep the joy of being together in one heart
and for me that’s just where it is.

All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you.
All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you.

As we make our way through all the joys and pain,
can we sense our younger, truer selves?

Someone will be calling you to be there for a while.
Can you hear the cry from deep within?

Laughter, joy and presence: the only gifts you are.
Have you time? I’d like to be with you.

Persons come into the fiber of our lives,
and then their shadow fades and disappears.

All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you.

written by Gregory Norbert, Weston Priory.

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The Book Wizards

I used to love sitting down to the Chicago Sunday Tribune. I would save two sections for “later” – the book section and a section about women. These were entirely separate sections of the paper. They would go on a special pile, something to savor and I would save them and give them my undivided attention.

The women’s section wasn’t the society page, debutante , coming out party sort of section, though those types of features were printed on its pages. It was, instead, a healthy read for and about women and carried all sorts of stories that I would clip and file, or put on the to file pile.  There were articles such as how alcoholism affects women differently than men or about women who broke barriers, like  Jill Kerr Conway, the first female president of Smith College, who wrote The Road from Coorain. In its pages was once an article about Beatrix Potter and her life and what she overcame to become one of the most beloved authors. Most articles were written by women and had depth and real content and by their words encouraged me to learn more.

The other section was the book section, which was efficiently altered by me with snippings of articles about books and authors and publishing and words. New bookstores were highlighted and there was a wonderful little section on the bottom of a page that listed antiquarian and used book stores. I swore I would visit them all. One shouldn’t swear.  Both sections are now long gone and I mourn their passing each and every Sunday.

The book section became a weekday feature and then, more recently, was relegated to three or four pages of the Trib on Saturday called Printers Row and part of the sad state of the Chicago Tribune in particular and daily newspapers in general.

Saturday’s book section, however, had me searching for the scissors and a manilla file folder. I read a little feature each week called Chicagoland book club (really, no caps). Most folks I know in a book group in these parts read it. We like to discover how other groups got started, how long they have met and where, and, most importantly, what they read. I have found that we all read basically the same books, though a few will pop up that I add to my TBR pile.

The Book Wizards were Saturday’s featured group. Isn’t the name great for a book discussion group?  The Book Wizards is a group of young men and women who “share three things: the love of reading, a strong friendship and a cognitive disability”. Their name is evocative of one of their favorite authors, J. K. Rowling, and the Harry Potter books.

I hope you will take a few moments, click on the site below, and read this short article about the Book Wizards. I think you will find it uplifting.

featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/printers-row/2010/04/chicagoland-book-club-book-wizards.html

Taken from the Saturday, April 10, 2010, section 1, Printer's Row, of the Chicago Tribune. Members of the Book Wizards book club of Libertyville. A group of real heroes to me.

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Stuck in the middle

I can only imagine what it must have looked like from inside the gas station.  There I was, at the oasis in Rockford, like a giant plum stuck at the bottom of the produce drawer in the refrigerator.

Stuck.

I had taken a different route to get onto 90 as I headed up north to spend some time with our new granddaughter. It was raining hard and I was trying to read the signs off in the distance. I find I need my glasses at night for clarity – and during the day when the rain is falling in sheets on interstate highways linking up here and there. I put the glasses on and rounded the clover leaf onto 90 when my left lens popped out. I heard it hit plastic. I knew I would have to eventually stop to find it, but, continued west through the rush hour traffic, now sure of my route and planned to stop in Rockford to get gas, so, would search for it there.

I was certain the wayward lens was somewhere on the left; the floor, the door pocket, the seat. Nope. Nowhere.  It wasn’t on the passenger side either. Dang! Where could it be? I rolled around a bit, finding all sorts of interesting pieces of stuff and fluff that manage to get onto a car floor on long trips, but no clear lens in sight. I threw out a few pieces of stuff and fluff, finished getting the gas, and began a more earnest pursuit of my missing piece.

As I slowly moved the seat back, there it was, nestled in between the seat and the console, firmly wedged in and looking up at me. I thought I could reach it. I slipped my right hand down while slowly using my left one to edge the seat back. I felt it! Aha! Oh no!  Oh dear! My hand was stuck, my left leg now hanging precariously out the driver’s door -  and the car alarm issuing a warning.  I accidentally hit the tiny red panic button while squirming around. There I was, my left arm flailing to grab the key and get it into the ignition to stop the alarming  noise, trying in vain to get my right leg out from under me, my purple coat bunched up, my left foot dangling, my hand starting to hurt . . .

. . . Isn’t it amazing that no one would help a squirming woman hanging out of a car door, head bobbing up and down with the car alarm blaring?

The attendants did look at me rather strangely when I finally walked into the station and purchased a little lens cleaning kit.

Speaking of kits, well a different kind, I got back on the long road before me and am here, up north, adoring the newly born kit in our family. Glad to have made it up, still in one piece if slightly bruised – and no longer rolling around in the produce drawer. I am loving every moment I get to spend with her.

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While away from home . . .

We took a walk one recent warm day to see if the horses were out at the stables, stopping for a while to chat with a neighbor who had just retrieved his mail. We caught up on some neighborhood news, and then continued on. The day was perfect and a few horses and riders were out enjoying the sunshine. We walked up the drive and stood, and this beauty came to say hello.

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Warm memories

I have a linen jacket that has hung around on the pole in my closet for quite a few years now. It is one of those “go to” pieces of clothing that works and plays well with a variety of skirts and slacks and dresses that hang out together. The jacket needed pressing after a long winter, so, there I was, early Easter morning, ironing the winter wrinkles out, which gave me some quiet time to reflect and I thought about my mom.

Ma loved to iron. Some women like to iron, others wash floors or straighten closets. I like to polish silver. Ironing is on the bottom of the list of chores for me. Maybe because my mom always did it or because I just needed to like to do something different. Mothers and daughters are like that sometimes.

I was thinking about her early this morning as the steam from the iron drifted upward and the wrinkles worked their way out.

When I called a cousin to tell her our granddaughter had arrived, we talked a bit, as cousins do and MJ recalled bringing her baby home and how all she had to do was take care of the baby. My aunt, who was her aunt as well, helped out, but it was my mother, she said, who brought over food for weeks and weeks.

My grandmother was such a wonderful cook that my mom, I think, was sometimes overshadowed. That happens at times when more than one woman share a kitchen. My mom never complained, nor did my grandmother, but it must have been a challenge from time-to-time, especially with a language barrier.  It was pleasant to hear my cousin, so many years later, honoring Ma for the help she carried in warm pans tented in Reynolds Aluminum Foil and tightly burped Tupperware overflowing with comfort.

I thought of her again, later in the morning. as I started to make the delicious bread that comes with Greek Orthodox Easter. The timeless scent of the yeast, the color of the buttery center and the deep brown crust with sesame seeds sprinkled around a bright red Easter egg is a treat most children of Greek descent appreciate more and more as they get older. The aroma of it baking and the taste on my tongue but once a year brings me back to our little kitchen in Maywood, filled with family and food, and it is a symbol of so much of what I hold dear.

If it were not for my mother, I might not be baking this bread today. My mother wasn’t Greek, but, she adapted to the culture of my father  - and she took the time to write down many of my grandmother’s recipes. My own Yia Yia, you see, could not read or write in English or in Greek. My mother wrote many of them down and when the time came, she shared them with me, many in her own handwriting.

One April more than 25 years ago, she told me she wanted to bake bread. Either her birthday or Katy’s, just days apart, fell on Greek Easter that year and everyone was coming to our house in Elmhurst. Ma said she would like to make it, but needed help. Her hands couldn’t work the dough. We went to the store together for ingredients and then, in our own small kitchen, we worked, she explaining, me measuring and mixing and kneading and I still remember the magic that day of the yeast that leavened the dough like the rising of the dead as it grew larger and rounder in the old crockery bowl than she said she ever remembered. We punched it down and formed it into two pans, instead of just one, and watched the loaves bake growing yet bigger in their pans. It was a special day and golden and I remember it still, especially today, and I sent up a prayer of thanksgiving for time we spent together and the lessons learned and the traditions carried on by this woman whose hands were gnarled with pain and whose own education was sparse. She was the one who saved for me the recipes of my childhood and I knew again today just how much I have been blessed.

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Who gives a Peep?

lovelylissie.wordpress.com/

PEEPS!

Our darling Jennifer has loved Peeps from the first time her Yia Yia, my mother, brought candy over for Easter. Ma would routinely haul in bags of candy and I would say  ”I really don’t want the girls having a lot of candy and sugar” to which she would innocently reply “But, Penny, this is good chocolate. It is Fannie May!”, which would infuriate me, too late, of course, as the kiddies knew there were sweet things in her bag.

Now that I’m a Yia Yia, I wonder if I will do the same.

Peeps were a departure from the Chicagoland chocolate bunnies of yore  and Jennifer seemed to prefer these little yellow marshmallow fluffs better than anything else in her basket and she would take them out, one at a time, and break a piece off and roll it and roll it and then plop it into her sweet little mouth.

She still does.

How about you?

Are you a Peeper?

How do you Peep?

Do you have a favorite Easter candy?

www.marshmallowpeeps.com/

Happy Easter. Xristos Anesti!

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Library eggs

I walked tentatively into the little brick building just off of the corner of 17th and Madison Street in Maywood, holding a little decorated Easter egg in my hands. I have never forgotten the library paste and paper smell that greeted me as I entered and the special aura of that little oasis on that spring day deep in the 1950′s.

greekfood.about.com

My Aunt Christina, who lived next door, had gathered us up like a mother hen to decorate Easter eggs for a contest. No big deal for most of the kids in our neighborhood in Maywood, but a very big deal for Dottie, and Teddy and me. Greek Easter eggs are traditionally only one color, beet red.

http://www.swamppolitics.com I know, I know, who would have thought? but the picture was good for what I wanted to depict.

Our friends had the yellows and pinks and robin’s egg blue ones, while our table held the bright red eggs of the Greek Eastern Orthodox.

I don’t know what possessed my favorite aunt to attempt this project with us, but, it seemed like fun and we all went along with the plan. I remember a sense of urgency – probably because it was the last day to enter the contest. We tinted the eggs and then decorated them and off we went in her black and white sedan with Pegasus wings to the little brick branch of the Maywood Public library.

The building was formerly a real estate office and had huge display windows in front. You walked between them to enter through the large, heavy glass door. There were already some elaborate eggs on display. Not fair, I thought, as I had not even seen Easter eggs colored this way before. Mine wasn’t a winner, no way and no how. I draw like I sing, off-key. Ted’s egg, however, brought home a ribbon.

It didn’t matter to me, though, for nestled in amongst the eggs on display were books. More books than my little toy chest could ever hold.  To enter the contest you had to have a Maywood library card. Not easily daunted and a product of the once famous Chicago Public School system, when it was among the best in the nation, my aunt knew the importance of libraries in a young child’s life.

And so, you see, I left that day with my very first library card, paper and pretty in pink, hatched, it seems, out of a fun little plan to decorate eggs. I loved my aunt even more that day than I thought I ever could as she gave me my passport to an even bigger world through the doors of that little branch library.

http://www.polyvore.com/.../ thing?id=3201245

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Commonplace books

http://www.library.yale.edu/ beinecke/compb.htm

Commonplace. The recording of words and ideas in a common place. It was started many hundreds of years ago and became known as commonplace in the 1600′s. It is used to this day by writers, poets, speechwriters and songwriters – even scrap bookers. I started thinking about the practice of gathering ideas in a commonplace book as I was reading a blog about books.

Do you have any idea how many blogs there are just about books? There are blogs about mysteries and children’s literature and authors. There are Pearl Buck and Jane Austen blogs. There are blogs about decorating with books and making books, and, of course, many authors these days have their own blogs.

They are all commonplace.

I have kept card files on books I’ve read since my first Kiddie Lit class. I no longer include such things as publisher and copyright date, but, I do write a brief synopsis of the book, what it was about, the month and year I read it and sometimes, when I’m really full of myself, I rate it. ★★★★★ Commonplace.

I also have kept a book with quotes for some 15 years. If I hear something notable or read something, I will write it down and cite the author. Sometimes, I will cut a quote out of a magazine or on a greeting card and paste it onto a page of my quote book.  Commonplace.

Emerson and Thoreau, Jefferson and Whitman, Hardy and Twain all kept such personal books. Many even learned the practice of commonplacing at Oxford or Harvard – or at their tutors direction.

My mother kept scrapbooks of pictures and memorabilia  that I enjoy today and my father kept succinct books that recorded good fishing spots and articles.

I first heard such a collection of phrases mentioned as a commonplace in Tasha Tudor’s Heirloom Crafts. Tudor was, among many things, a crafter of dolls. Her dolls lived in intricate, homemade doll houses, so famed that they

Image of photograph by Richard Brown, Heirloom Crafts of Tasha Tudor, Tovah Martin and Richard Brown. Notice the tiny book the younger girl is holding.

were attracted to the folks at the Smithsonian and displayed there. Her dolls, clothed and appointed with furniture evoking the 1800′s, had their own commonplace book with tiny writing on the pages.

I love the idea of a commonplace book and was intrigued by the realization that I have kept such books not knowing their origins for much of my adult life. Quite exciting for something so common to me.

Do you practice commonplacing?

Do you keep a journal, special notebook, scrapbook, or log?

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