Instant Breakfast

If you want my copy, just say so. I mean it.

          A few years ago when I complained I had nothing to read, Norm inquired quite reasonably “So what are all these books in the house for?”  It started me thinking: what indeed?  Years ago, one reason for keeping every book was the chance that a kid might be interested and pick it up.  But now, unless I may want to read it again, why keep it? So I’m going through the shelves, with stacks of discards and a sign reading
                      BOOK SALE $0. 
 Son Avi, who has a degree in Economics,  suggested last summer that I'd get rid of more with a sign reading:
           “Book Sale $1…two for 75 cents…3/.50…4/.25 …5 free.”
Take more than five and I suppose I’d have to pay you.
          I’ve placed a lot for adoption already, and the rest go to the library book sale.  Meanwhile, I’m getting visitors to pull down volumes that have lived up by the ceiling for half a century.  Lots of memories.  This morning I came across “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”.  Just had to go back and find one scene that stayed with me from more than 75 years ago.
          Yes, here it is.  The aunts with whom Rebecca lives are laid up with “feverish headaches,” some traveling missionaries are overnight guests, and Rebecca,  who is 13 or 14,  wakes before 6 a.m. and sets about making breakfast.  Aunt Miranda struggles down to the kitchen and surprise!
          The shades were up, and there was a roaring fire in the stove; the teakettle was singing and bubbling…The coffee pot was scalding, the coffee was measured out in a bowl and broken eggshells for the settling process were standing near.  The cold potatoes and corned beef were in the wooden tray…[with] the chopping knife.  The brown loaf was out, the white loaf was out, the toast rack was out, the doughnuts were out, the milk was skimmed, the butter had been brought from the dairy.
          Yes, as I remembered, it was an impressive amount of work, building the fire, milking the cow (?), chopping the potatoes, and nothing even mentioned about setting the table.  But re-reading today, I find myself analyzing that 1903 menu.  A bit strong on the carbohydrates, wouldn’t you say?  There’s some protein in the hash that’s ready for frying, but not a bit of fruit or vegetable in sight.
          Okay, I’m done with it.  If you’d like my copy, please let me know.  I really mean it.  Take four more and they’re all FREE!!

More Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes

While we’re on the subject, here are a few more rhymes my sister and I got hold of somewhere when we were kids.  How we enjoyed reciting them! and faulty memory or no, I have no trouble recalling these: 
             In the well the plumber built 'er,
             Aunt Liza fell.  We must buy a filter.

 Little Willie in the best of sashes, fell in the fire and burnt to ashes.

             The fire went out and the room got chilly,
             but nobody wanted to poke up Willie.

I had written Aunt Maude, who was traveling abroad.

            When I learned she died of cramp just to late to save the stamp.

 

I just made the mistake of googling to see if anyone else had ever heard of these – I should have known!  Should have learned my lesson that time  I went looking for an illustration of a buttonhook and ran into a large and active Buttonhook Society.  It seems these verses are known in some circles as Little Willies.  Right now there's a newspaper running a competition, a Little Willie Invitational. With prizes.  I’m not entering.
             It looks as if someone has collected 29 Little Willies.  You can see them at www.ruthlessrhymes.com.

 

Have We No Heart?

 

Now that the excitement has died down, I realized something interesting about that episode last week, in which the hawklet that hadn’t yet left the nest suddenly realized the cute baby starling could be captured and eaten.  Like many of the more than 3,000 real-time viewers, I’d been following this young hawk since it was an egg.  My reactions and the ones posted on the live chat line were almost all about pride in our young protégé:

“Wow, and it hasn’t even flown yet! …Acting like a grown-up hawk!..That’s instinct for you…Brought home her own lunch…Way to go!”

Few of us concentrated on the parent starling that yelled its head off and dive-bombed the hawk, or on the appealing tiny chick that looked up so hopefully at its destroyer.  Evidently our normal sympathy with the underdog had been wiped out by those months of  living with the hawk family.  Reminds me of one of the verses from that Victorian collection of “Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes” –

 

                                                      Little Willie killed his sister

                                                      She was dead before we missed her.

                                                      Willie’s always up to tricks!

                                                      Ain’t he cute?  He’s only six!

 

Wildlife Adventures

Along with thousands around the globe, I’ve been watching that red-tailed hawk’s nest high up on a light tower on the Cornell campus, since the eggs were laid in March.  Some foolish starlings picked a hole in that dark support on the left, six inches up from the hawks, for their nest.  It’s been fun watching the dark starlings dart in and out, feeding their chicks,  ignoring the danger. But it wasn’t fun a few days ago, when the youngest hawklet was alone in the nest after its siblings had taken their first flights, and the parent starling flew in with lunch in its beak.
Young hawk on the right, chick peeking out lower right of the dark support.  Parent starling yelling. To see what happens, click below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HE_ujv18sg&feature=youtu.be

(thanks, Connie)

 If you can't find a way to respond, there's always edithlank@aol.com

Senior Moment

Well, it finally happened.  Anna phones to tell me I’ve repeated myself.  Seems I had already posted the story of My Political Career last November – on election day, actually.  Wrote it in much the same words too.  And completely forgot I’d done so.  Only consolation is that a mistake like that is probably appropriate in a blog about getting old -- and it gives me an excuse to post the Scream.
I’ve deleted the evidence -- went back and removed that old post – the one from two days ago has much better pictures.
I keep hearing from people who can't find a way to respond -- if you have trouble, try email to edithlank@aol.com

My Entire Political Career

           When we moved to this suburb in 1954, The Other Party was running the town so completely that some of our friends timidly registered as Independents. That meant Our Party had some trouble finding enough people to serve as Election Inspectors, so my sister and I felt we were really doing something useful once a year.

I was home with three kids in those baby boom days and the legitimate excuse to get out with adults was wonderful.  We had to be there at 5 am – that’s how I found out Orion rises in the western sky in the fall – and didn’t quit till votes were tabulated and the metal boxes locked, often close to midnight.  Both parties dropped off doughnuts and boxes of candy for the inspectors all day long. And I got to dash out to Howard Johnsons ALL BY MYSELF for supper.

Then years later -- in the 70s? 80?s -- my sister, who paid more attention to what was going on than I did, mailed a letter to the editor of our local daily.  This year, she wrote, there wasn’t anyone worth voting for and one might as well stay home.

It took two days for Our Party’s local committee to phone and fire her.  An hour later, I got the same phone call.  My services were no longer required.  A clear case of Guilt by Association.

        They’d made a big mistake, of course, firing someone who’d already demonstrated that she liked writing Letters to the Editor.
                 Because she promptly wrote another one.
        

 

Breaking News

I try to post every other day, but this won't wait!

 

Even if you haven’t been watching the Redtail Hawks' nest at Cornell, I think you need to see what happened yesterday when the second of the three chicks, now as large as their parents, ventured out along the floodlight tower that holds the nest.  The oldest baby had already taken a first flight, but this one hadn’t yet.  So here are the exciting moments, as watched live by thousands of viewers around the world, who had followed these hawlets from before the first egg laying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh3NMg_fFOY&feature=youtu.be

and if you want to try catching the third one's maiden voyage  in real time, you can always take a look at http://www.livestream.com/cornellhawks -- but better do it pretty promptly.  What’s great about these two webcams is that they’re being controlled live by ornithologists who have those cameras chasing the new hawks around the campus to see where they land and what they look like after their first flights.
 

 

 

Best part of being a writer is you can do it sitting down.

     Finally returning to the ostensible topic of this blog – Being Old.  I’ve decided to list the doors that have closed,  and when I put them all together, it’s an impressive collection.


Yes, I wore these!

Wearing high heels – old ladies wear those sneakers for good reasons.
Teaching  -- can’t stand for 50 minutes (can’t stand for five minutes if it comes to that) and it’s exhausting as well. 
 Scuba – took my last dive on my 80^th birthday, did not enjoy it.  Can’t depend on the muscles.
     Playing in the band -- sitting in front of the trumpets, even with earplugs, damaging.  And my back couldn't make it through rehearsals.                   
    Making music at home -- lips have lazy muscles too.  Oboe and both clarinets have gone on ebay.
    Going to the movies  – dialog escapes me.  With Netflix at home I can pull up captions.
    Lectures – I keep trying, but it all depends on the timbre of the speaker’s voice.  Hearing aids can only do so much.
     Live theature – see above.  I get about one-third of the dialog.
     Music – this is a big loss.  Doctor says it’s not the ears, it’s the brain.  Orchestras sound like so much jumbled cacophony.  Singers sound off-key.  Sometimes individual guitar or cello is okay, but that’s about it.
      Concerts – see above.
      Records, CDs – see above.
      Late-night radio -- Used to listen to our PBS station when I couldn’t sleep, but now they broadcast the BBC all night, and it’s hard to understand even the slightest accent.
     Cosmetics – trying to do anything beyond lipstick was a poor idea once the wrinkles got serious.  No great loss.
    Guided walks – the last one I took several years ago (fascinating tour of the city’s largest cemetery) I barely kept up, and I noticed one guide was evidently delegated to drop back and worry about me.
     Bird Walks – yes, these are slower if not completely stagnant, but I can’t stand up that long.
     Binoculars – yes, I can use them but not standing up – balance problem.
     National conferences -- see Lecture problem above.
     Shopping -- that's out, but buying on the Internet was invented just for me.
     Visiting the kids. This involves Airports – I’m still conflicted on this one. Resolved never to fly again, but then decided to give it one more try next week. Stay tuned.
      So if any of this rings a bell with you, do click on that little blue word "comment" below -- your responses are very much enjoyed. 

Lovely Plumage

In case you lost sleep last night worrying about the deer that was reclining in the back yard yesterday -- turns out that unhealthy-looking swatch of white fur was its underbelly.  I could see that when it stood up, regained its lovely tan sides, and dashed away, after having been frightened by -- a squirrel.

Just resting ??

At first I was delighted, just now,  to come home and find this deer (doe?) relaxing outside my office window.

Then I looked with the binoculars and realized that white patch is not sunlight.  Does anyone have any information or advice?  Is that deer sick..or just marked that way?

 

To respond, click on that little blue word "comment" below.

Le Mot Juste -- Right Then!

          Today I read that there’s a Yiddish word  for “the right thing, said at the right time.”  Sorry, can’t remember what I was reading, can’t find it again.  But it’s a word we need in English, though it would be used rarely.  Most times you think of what you should have said hours later, perhaps in the middle of the night.   That’s why I remember clearly one time when I gave the perfect answer right then and there.
             

Betty and David

          My cousin Betty’s twin was as big as she was little.  She was about my height, and what with the elderly shrinking, I’m hard put to make five feet lately.
          Over the years, when Betty told people she had a twin brother, every so often she’d get the question
           “Identical or fraternal?”
           But that’s not the point of this story. 
           So Betty and I met for lunch, discovered we were dressed alike.  Neither had bothered to fuss – we were both in blue work shirts, faded jeans, clunky old-lady white sneakers.
            Lunch was fine, then we decided to stop at a supermarket.  In we went, she turned up one aisle, I started up another, and a woman tapped my arm.
           “Excuse me, but I’m curious.  Are you twins?”
            And I replied without a moment's hesitation!

“She is.  I’m not.”

 

Possibly Plagiaraism

Only one month till midsummer, saw an enchanting production of

"A Midsummer Night’s Dream”at our regional theatre yesterday. Music, lighting, diction, movement, costumes, all near perfection.  Magic.

           If one had to find a fault, the weakest link may have been the playwright.  There’s not much about him in the program notes.  It does say that he based some of the plot on the work of other authors – writers like Chaucer and Plutarch.  That confirms my suspicion that he is a lazy writer, who sticks in timeworn clichés when he is at a loss for words. 
 
  "Lord, what fools these mortals be!”  Come on – you know you’ve heard that before.

 

 “The  course of true love never did run smooth.”  That's as old as the hills!

 He uses single phrases, also, that are shopworn from being used by others – things like “single blessedness” , and “ill met by moonlight.”  And on top of that, he simply makes up his own words when he feels like it – “moonbeam” for instance, and “swaggering.” 

But aside from that, it was a really fine production.
(To respond, click on "no comments"  or "comments" below)

 

Gymsuits (that's one word)

Speaking of bloomers – I remember wearing genuine old-fashioned ones for gym class in some early grade somewhere.  They were made of a thin light brown material, that, if I remember right, gathered BELOW THE KNEES.

A few years later,the gymsuits we were required to buy ($2.50?  $3? -- or you could have a pattern to sew your own) were more modern snappy one-piece affairs.  They still had bloomer-type elastic hems for modesty, but up where today’s shorts are likely to end.  In one school I attended, each class wore a different solid color, and in another school the gymsuits had striped fabric for the top sections.

But everywhere, it seemed in those days, the material used was tough plain Indian Head cotton.  Raise your hand if you remember Indian Head cotton!  It required ironing, of course, but it bore a label bragging that it was SANFORIZED.

             Whatever that meant.

 

Fourth Dimension

6 pm. Hot muggy evening.  Sitting at my desk, window open, lily of the valley fragrant, cardinals calling loudly.  Flash back to a morning in May just after we built this house, wakened early by bird calls, Norm and the kids sleeping, decided to go out and see what was making the noise.


Back yard in 1955

Put on my housecoat, out back across the barren sun-baked yard to the trees over by Westland, found a bright red bird. No idea what it was called.  And then Dottie came out from next door – wakened by the bird calls, her husband and kids asleep, she was coming out in her housecoat to see what it was.  Beginning of birding for both of us.

 I sit here this evening looking at the same spot of earth -- her kids and my kids far away, all the others gone, my eyes are the only link to that morning in May.  For the first time ever I understand Time as the fourth dimension.


Back yard this evening.

             Hard to believe, but if “Bloomer Girl” really opened in 1944, then I was already 18 before I first saw any professional theatre.  Blame it first on the Depression, and after that, on living “out in the country”.  Then  when I was visiting relatives in Boston, they took me to see the musical..  I was completely enthralled, devastated when the lights came up, overjoyed to hear that this was simply an intermission and there was going to be a second act.  Still remember my disappointment on learning there are no third acts in American musicals.
             Not just because it was my first, that was a really good show.  It’s hard to see why it hasn’t been revived – you may never even have heard of it.  One would think feminists would embrace a story that involved the “dress reformer” Amelia Bloomer and a thinly disguised Seneca Falls, Birthplace of the Women’s Rights Movement.  One problem may have been the challenge of elaborate costuming.  Take a look at the bloomer outfit that shocked the neighbors so:

          That rig was intended to give women freedom of movement and simplify their lives.  It’s not a theatrical exaggeration, either – here are a couple of genuine outfits, ready for your dressmaker to copy – if you have the courage!

:

Rerun: Henry and Louisa

Some weeks ago, in an attempt to discourage a scammer,

I deleted an old  post I'd like to restore today, because it contains a sentence you need to see:

For 99 cents I downloaded the complete works of  Louisa May Alcott to my Kindle, to see how it all strikes me 75 years after I first read those novels.

Rose in Bloom is a sequel, what today we'd probably call Young Adult fiction.  In it, Louisa gives one of the Eight Cousins a very Victorian death and marries off several others.  At one point, to demonstrate a young couple's moral compatibility, she has them discussing inspirational authors.  Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Thoreau, Emerson.  I’m thinking that’s a typical Victorian canon, and then I pull up short.  Wait a minute -- when Louisa May Alcott was a child, Thoreau took her and her sisters on nature walks!   As a worshipful teenager, she left wildflower bouquets on Emerson’s doorstep. For some reason it gives me the shivers to see the mature author letting her characters discuss them as dead authors.

          Characters in this novel are given to long prissy speeches.  I started skipping a lot, wondering why I was bothering to finish the book, and then I found out why.  The narrator steps out of the story to say this about her old friend Henry David: 

“Thoreau, who, having made a perfect pencil, gave up the business and took to writing books with the sort of indelible ink which grows clearer with time.” 

That gem of a sentence is buried in an obscure Victorian novel, and I don't know who'll ever get to see it. Just had to share it with you here.

The Cabin, drawn by Thoreau's sister Sophia

 

 

Muguet Memories

The lily of the valley came out yesterday.  I’m particularly fond of it because it's one of the few things I planted myself, back in the days when I could bend down.  Wish you could smell these little ones on my desk.

They always remind me of my college roommate –that scent was her favorite perfume, and she’d go around quoting Coty’s advertising slogan:

               "When You’re in Love, wear Muguet des Bois.”

     She married the first man I ever kissed.  (He survived more than 50 missions as a bomber pilot over Germany, ended up a dentist, served with the Flying Doctors.)
They moved to California, frequented Sandstone --if you’re my age, you may remember it was a clothing-optional "swingers" community associated with Dr. Alec Comfort’s book The Joy of Sex. 

In recent years she developed Alzheimers. Last time she phoned me, the conversation was pretty incoherent. She’s gone now.

Boy, you can find just about anything on the Internet!

 ..

That's Keuka Lake, 1949 Kodachrome

            As the 1940s approached, so did World War II, when the frantic production of war materiel led to full employment and a labor shortage that ended the Depression for our family as well as the rest of the country.  And with a little disposable income, my folks “took” the Saturday Evening Post.   The magazine had all those wonderful Norman Rockwell covers, excellent poetry I pretty much ignored, and short stories by the finest writers of the day, men (of course men) like Steinbeck, Faulkner and Fitzgerald.
            I paid no attention to the authors’ names in those days, but I read all the stories, and the one I remembered for years told of the space bum, a blind troubadour hitch-hiking on spaceships so he could get back to Earth to die.  At the final verse of his ballad I started crying, and I never forgot it

                          “We pray for one last landing

                            On the globe that gave us birth;

                            Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies

                           And the cool, green hills of Earth.”   

 

  And then last week I came across a battered old paperback being offered for 25 cents (same price as the original PocketBooks of my childhood) -- a collection of short stories by Robert Heinlen.  I don’t read science fiction, wouldn’t even have picked it up – but there was the title “The Green Hills of Earth.”  And there was the story.

          Seems the troubador’s name was Rhysling – suitably Welsh, though that bit escaped me when I read it years ago.  And reading it again this morning, when I  got to that last verse – I found myself crying.

 

How to be a Gym Teacher

     In the early ‘60s school systems were desperate for teachers (can you believe it?)  With no education courses in my resume, I had all the substitute work I wanted, right in our own school district.  I was the high school  business department while the teacher had a nervous breakdown --all her lesson plans were in shorthand, which posed a problem, but I did learn a lot of useful stuff about bookkeeping. 

     I taught shop; one day I was the junior high nurse; I taught Spanish and history and Shakespeare and that foolishness known as the New Math.

     And one morning the kitchen phone rang while I was giving the kids breakfast, with a frantic principal on the other end of the line.            
     “Well, I’ve never done the lower grades, and I don’t know how to be a gym teacher.”
     Anna looked up from her cereal.  “Tell them you’ll take it, and I’ll tell you what to do.”
     You’ll understand what a strong personality Anna was, even at the age of eight, when I tell you that all I said into the phone was “What time do I have to be there?”

This is not me.

     “Just put on your pleated skirt,” said Anna.  (No woman would think of wearing “slacks” to school in 1951.)  “And stockings and sneakers.  And put Avi’s boy scout whistle around  your neck.”  And do you know, as soon as I did all that, I FELT like a gym teacher.
     “When you get to the school, go to the office and ask them for the key to the closet.  And tell them to bring the kids to you” – excellent advice, so I wouldn’t have to guide kids through the halls of French Road School, where neither Anna nor I had ever been.
     “Then unlock the closet and take out a ball and put it under your arm.  And when they come in, tell them to line up on the white line.”
     “But Annie, what if there isn’t a white line?
      'There’ll BE a white line.” (and there WAS a white line.)
     “You tell them to count off by twos, point to the tallest boy, say ‘You choose the first game,' go stand in a corner and blow your whistle.”
     Worked fine all day. 
     The point of the story is that an 8-year-old, because she was so close to it, could give me better instructions in two minutes than a whole department of early childhood professors could have done in a semester over at the Normal School.  (That’s the old name for a teacher’s college, kids.)
     Amy says it shows something else – that Anna, who much later became a member of Equity, was already thinking like an actress.  In just a few minutes she’d given me costume, props, script and marks to hit.
     Only problem was that as the day wore on I got over-confident, started playing Duck Duck Goose and threw my back out.

Orange Formica

        Neighbor recently died.  His kids came in from out of town and  I went over to pay my respects.  Walking in, I was transported back to the day in 1954 when we moved into this brand-new suburban development.  Time has stood still over there.  That house is still in original condition -- authentic Midcentury Modern (a term I’ve only recently learned).  It still has the orange boomerang formica counters, pegboard cupboard doors and brightly colored shag carpets throughout, except where it's black asphalt floor tile.
         Someone will buy that house and rehab it.  Too bad -- it belongs in a museum.

A few days later, the bereaved son recruited some old friends and brought in a dumpster.  I watched them all day, carrying stuff out -- and dumping it.  This gave me chills.  I’ve emailed my family:

           “Kids -- TELL ME WHAT YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED from this house.  Otherwise – watch out!  I just may put it up on eBay.”

I couldn’t find a picture of orange formica, so you’ll have make do with pink.  Pink was big in the 50’s anyhow – that house still has the original pink shower, bathtub and two toilets. 

The Drink of Astronauts!!

     Just came across a sentence in a new novel:  “They toasted their new-formed club with vodka and Tang cocktails…”

     And here I thought my sons were the only ones.

     I remember the evening back in the 1960s, not sure just where in the house I was dozing, overheard them out in the family room when their friend John came in and said “I brought some vodka, I  took it out of my father’s cabinet.  What should we do with it?”

     I heard our older boy say "I think you drink it with orange juice.” 
     “We don't have any," said the younger one, “but" -- helpfully -- "we do have Tang.”

     I didn't bother interfering, just went back to sleep.  Figured with any luck vodka and Tang cocktails might put them off alcohol for life. 

    Some of  you won’t know about Tang, and you haven't missed much. It was (still is?) a powdered substance that reconstituted into an orange juice substitute.  The big deal was that John Glenn took it into space.   You can watch an Astronaut Breakfast in this commercial –                       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTU4sKVmT6o