?`s and ANNEswers

Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

July Oneth

Posted on July 1, 2024

How quickly the summer season passes. It’s already July. Granted, there are two full months to go, but it seems as if the days pass with the speed of light.

I looked up the definition of the speed of light and it is the fastest speed in the universe, And, if you’re older, it’s got you in its grip. More than one of my friends comment that they don’t know where the days go. I don’t either.

So what to do about July Oneth?

Maybe stop and consider the clouds? Today it was in the mid-seventies here; perfect weather for just enjoying the weather. Maybe watch the sunset; there haven’t been many good ones this year – although I don’t know why – so we should enjoy those that are. Maybe smell the roses. Or the lilacs. Or eat a tomato from a farm stand.

Or stop and appreciate all simple things because the speed of light waits for nothing.

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Book Club

Posted on June 30, 2024

Tonight was my monthly book club meeting, and I was the moderator. We read A Doll’s House, written by Henrik Ibsen in 1879. I chose it because its themes of feminine servitude are relevant today, especially with recent Supreme Court rulings.

Book clubs are curious things. I’ve been in two over the past twenty years, and each is markedly different from the other. The first one I joined had a lot of members. So if you didn’t read the particular book, you could hide in the weeds. The books were interesting, for the most part, but the conversation wasn’t. It wasn’t even about the book sometimes. After about fifteen years, I resigned.

My idea of a book club is that you analyze the book. You consider the plot, the dialogue, the characters. You talk about the writing. For instance, what person is it in? Who is the protagonist, the antagonist? What do we learn from the experience?

The book club I’m in currently has only five members, which means we all show up having read the work. The others would know if one of us tried to fake it. And we actually discuss the book in the way I alluded to above. It’s a wonderful thing.

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Farmer’s Market

Posted on June 29, 2024

Every Saturday during the summer St. Joseph has a farmers’ market on the bluff. When I think of a farmer’s market, fruits and vegetables – maybe eggs too – come to mind. But this market has a variety of other offerings.

There’s the couple that sharpens knives and charges by the inch of the blade. My friend A got three knives done for $22, cash. There’s the boba tea stand and the hard cider stand, the frozen meat purveyor and the fresh flower merchant. And the hot dog stand. Yes, there are fruits and vegetables; but they don’t seem to be center stage. Perhaps it’s because it’s relatively early in the growing season. As July appears and then August, there could be more produce vendors.

I support a couple local farm stands that are open seven days a week, so I usually don’t purchase items at the farmer’s market. It seems to be more for the tourists who storm our communities in summer and are enamored of Michigan produce. Trust me, it truly is something to treasure.

But at the local farm stands, there are no knife sharpeners or hard cider options. It’s all about the produce. And about supporting local farmers.

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Aftermath

Posted on June 28, 2024

I understand the media are all atwitter about last night’s entertainment featuring Biden and Trump. Although entertainment is probably not the right word. Perhaps it’s ‘drama.’

Earl and I watched about twenty minutes before deciding a good book would be a better use of our time. In that brief period, what I saw was two old men, one who lies and the other who appeared distracted.

I refused to read opinion pieces about each person’s performance this morning, although I’ve heard that this group said Biden won while that group said Trump won. Regardless of which camp you are in, this “debate” probably didn’t sway you to join the other.

I look at it this way: No matter who wins, our country just has to get past the next four years; because neither man will be eligible to run again. Perhaps younger talents will then prevail.

However, if I look at the team Biden has surrounded himself with versus Trump’s team when he was president, I am struck with the contrast. One man, whether you like his policies or not, seems to have hard-working, knowledgeable people in place. The other, when he was president, had a variety of future felons.

It’s something to think about.

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Tonight’s the Night

Posted on June 27, 2024

This blog’s title is the name of a famous Rod Stewart song, but don’t be misled. I’m not channeling  Rod.

I’m writing about the face-off  on CNN between Biden and Trump which will occur at 9 PM eastern time. Perhaps it’s politically incorrect not to put their titles in front of their names, but everyone who doesn’t live on a deserted island already knows them. Perhaps it’s also politically incorrect to think this ninety minute program is really not necessary except for the media hype. Sensationalism sells.

While I’ve been in Chelsea the media has ramped up its rhetoric about the “debate.” Over the past twenty-four hours, there have been articles and sound bites regarding five tips to win for each person, the liabilities each must overcome, and each man’s oratorical style. There are also diatribes about their ages, their backgrounds, their children. And their approach to the southern border. And student debt. And the economy. And . . . and . . . and.

I, for one, am tired of it all. It’s style vs. substance, because the audience most likely will take the debaters’ comments at face value instead of checking them in the morning light. If they did, they’d see that many statements are not really accurate.

Still, I’ll record the program because I want to see how it unfolds instead of reading an opinion column tomorrow. I don’t need a filter to tell me what to think. Instead,  I’ll base  my judgment on the opponents’ behavior – smirking, head shaking, etc. – as the evening wears on.

Come to think of it, maybe I should search YouTube for Rod Stewart’s rendition of “Tonight’s the Night,” It would probably be more enjoyable.

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On the Subject of Sleepovers

Posted on June 26, 2024

Our friendship was only a few years old when I moved from Detroit, where both N and I lived, to Chicago. But it was forged in the kiln of our mutual interest in learning about almost anything.

Which is why when I moved, we decided to schedule adult sleepovers. Leaving husbands and children behind (We both had two preschoolers at the time.), we met overnight in a motel to catch up on each other’s activities and opinions.

We’ve been doing this regularly for almost fifty years and have never run out of things to say. Perhaps it’s because there were phases. There was the stay-at-home Mom phase when our children were young and we were into crafts and kids’ sports and women’s magazines. This period was punctuated by visiting shopping malls, Bill Knapp’s restaurant, and chocolate covered pretzels. Only chocolate covered pretzels remain today.

There was the era when each of us returned to graduate school, N first, to stimulate our brains that had been on hold during the previous phase. And the middle-aged meetings that traded conversations on women’s fashions for health regimes. By then our children were moving out the door, and our husbands were moving toward retirement. Well, at least N’s husband was. So we spent hours wondering what that looked like.

And so it went. Currently we are in the I-can’t-believe-we’re-old phase. But that hasn’t stopped us from talking about politics, religion, our families, and various aches and pains. And yes, our friendship. Our childhoods were markedly different as was the trajectory of our adult lives. Yet, we’ve remained staunch friends.

I have a couple other friends I’ve also known fifty years or more. We work hard to keep in touch and  I cherish each of them for their unique qualities. But N and I are the only ones who have had fifty years of sleepovers. Which, by the way, is really a misnomer.

Sleeping is the least of it.

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Chelsea

Posted on June 25, 2024

I’m leaving in about an hour for Chelsea, Michigan, just west of Ann Arbor where I’ll meet N, a friend of sixty years. She lives in a northern Detroit suburb, and Chelsea is a convenient meeting place almost halfway between our homes.

We’re having a girlfriends’ sleepover, something we started in the 1970s when I was getting divorced and she was not. Over the years, we’ve met in many different Michigan and Indiana locales; but Chelsea is our favorite.

If you look the city up in Wikipedia, you’ll learn the basics about its history, geography, climate, and demographics. If you visit the Chamber of Commerce website,  you’ll learn about its current economies, major industries, and nearby tourist attractions. But if you really want to get a sense of this charming town (the home of Jiffy Mix and its famous cornbread), you should visit firsthand.

Our favorite places include The Potting Shed, which doesn’t offer potting services and is so crammed with items it assaults the senses (But it does have the funniest lines of greeting cards); Zou Zou’s, a café that we have watched expand and thrive over the years and was named for Jimmy Stewart’s youngest daughter in “It’s A Wonderful Life”; and Bumble, a stationery and curio shop with a rabbit as its logo and the saying “Trust the Rabbit” as its motto. The rabbit has never steered us wrong.

We have our favorite eateries too: Coney Island, which is simply a diner; Cleary’s, an Irish pub, and Smokehouse 52, a barbecue place that used to serve the best frickles on the planet. Unfortunately, the recipe was changed after the pandemic, so we don’t trust the frickles anymore.

A special attraction to N and me, that is probably not on anyone else’s top ten list, is the local cemetery. Since Chelea was settled as early as 1820, you can imagine how old the earliest headstones are. That section of the cemetery includes large monuments as well as modest markers, all shaded by giant trees that create a sense of time.

There are other sections that are newer, where the headstones include photographs, etchings, and knickknacks around the bases. The trees are more like saplings and contribute to the overall newness of the scene. We take the few pieces of information one can glean from a headstone and weave stories about the inhabitants resting beneath it.

It’s Spoon River Anthology brought to the twenty-first century.

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Clean House

Posted on June 24, 2024

My cleaning lady, A, comes every two weeks and makes our lives easy. Actually I have always liked cleaning my home, but as I get older and have less energy, it’s okay with me if someone else approximately 35 years younger does the heavy lifting.

A is not from a cleaning service such as Call the Mrs. or Molly Maids. While those companies bond and insure their personnel, which is a plus in case of some accident, that benefit is offset by the fact that you never know who is going to show up at your door. So it feels like a revolving door.

A has her own cleaning service, so she is always the one who comes. Since this is her company I assume she has bonded and insured herself, although I’ve never asked. She came highly recommended from someone who is pickier than I am; and I had to wait several months for her to have an opening.

That was six years ago. Since then, her three daughters moved from grade school through high school and beyond. Her father passed away, and she returned to Europe more than once to settle affairs.

Because Monday is my day for A, there are several times a year when a holiday messes with our schedule. In those instances, A comes on the previous Saturday instead. I doubt Molly Maids does that. .

Finally, A does not charge by the hour; she charges by the size of the house. This means if we want to chat a few minutes, there’s no meter running. There’s no “In at 9; on to the next appointment at 11:30.”

Of all the cleaning ladies who have crossed our path, A is definitely the best.

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Cauliflower and Broccoli

Posted on June 23, 2024

It was on a whim – well, maybe at the suggestion of one of the flower stands’ employees – that I bought four cauliflower and four broccoli plants for this year’s garden. Then I went home and studied the internet for what to expect.

It turns out a cauliflower plant grows one head per plant, while the broccoli grows a tall stem with many little bulbs on it. It sounded about right, because my husband does not like either cauliflower or broccoli; so I would not be inundated with either.

It’s been about a month, and so far both veggies have shown underwhelming progress. I’m not sure I’ll get one cauliflower from any plant; the verdict on the broccoli is still out. At the same time, there is a myriad of fruit stands around here, so if I have to purchase these veggies, instead of growing my own, I won’t feel bad.

But I’m a pragmatist. If these plants don’t come through, they won’t find themselves in my garden next year.

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Artwork

Posted on June 22, 2024

We live in a community on the banks of Lake Michigan where the décor is sand-drenched and sunny. More than one home has what I call a “beachy” appearance in line with the environment. It’s white Adirondack chairs on the porch, watery sunsets on the walls, and containers of seashells on the fireplace mantel. I like it a lot.

But Earl and I have a different vibe for our own home, one that would be hard to get top dollar for at an estate sale around here. We love Western art. And our walls are filled with it. It’s not Southwestern art either. There are no pastel colors or pueblo structures. No clay urns or cacti. Rather, our art depicts scenes from the old West, the one farther north of Santa Fe.

Case in point: We have a painting by Howard Terpning, a foremost authority on such things as cavalry uniforms; bridles, saddles, and other horse accessories; and indigenous peoples’ war paint. The artwork is titled “Night Before Little Big Horn,” and shows three cavalry men and two Crow scouts looking into the vast beyond. No one knows what will happen the next day.

But we all know now.

Another Terpning on our walls shows a cowboy heading out alone from an outpost, leaving the comforts of society– such as they were – behind. While the Little Big Horn painting is actually bright, this one is dark and ominous.

Every one of our paintings has a story, and many evenings I sit in my favorite chair to read. But I am always drawn to this artwork. I look at every painting every night —  there are 12 of them up at the moment – and I wouldn’t trade one of them for an Adirondack chair or a container of sand.

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