Healthy First!

My refrigerator does not have an ice maker or even the little compartment in the freezer section for stowing ice trays and since my freezer is always stuffed full, it is hard to find a place to make ice cubes.  A few years ago while leafing through a catalog of gewgaws and kitchen gadgets, I found just the ticket!  It was a sort of bottle with half-circle bulges along one side.  You poured in water to fill the bulges, laid the bottle in the freezer and before you knew it you had these cute little half-circle ice cubes.  Perfect!  Of course, it didn't work and after several tries, I threw it out.  But I saved the little brochure that came with the product and the other day while going through some old papers I ran across it.  Here it is, verbatim:

"The latest style of Instant ice-maker
 Healthy Non-taste Ice-maker

ice of shape Half-circled & flat so that ice dropout from ice-maker directly that while ice-making & taking out ice without applying hand to touch ice.  Healthy First!

knock lightly and it comes soon the ice.

keep together with other food. without contaminating with other taste of fishy or foul-smell. TO be a complete non-taste and delicious healthy ICE.

put into the alcohol or drinks so much corn for table & marvellous taste.

keep in ice-box while outing all suitable for recreation fishing picnicking & baking (Bar-B-Q) applying.

while inputting water into the Bottle pls up till the indicated level

while putting/refrigerator Be sure keep it Balance

press un-flat part ice drop down one after another

the finished ice non-taste cooling & Healthy so much wonderful!  most suitable for cooking picnicking & recreation applying.

while ice-making finished put whole case in a recreation applying ice-box while outing for fishing or picnicking it can always keep long-terms freshing!

if that ice melt to water the water either leaking out of ice-maker so that the food conserved in the refrigerator can apply as watering can the melt water cooling and thirsty refreshing.  There's non-exist color-elements problems that actually proceed with environmental protections."

I never figured out what the non-exist color-elements problems were.  And I don't know about that corn in the drinks, but I bet if the thing had worked it would have been most suitable for cooking picnicking & recreation applying and that the melt water would have been thirsty refreshing, too!

Ooh! Look what I found!

After Erik died I worked for a number of  years as a volunteer at our local Hospice Thrift Shop.  Now I have to confess that before going to work at this shop, I had never in my life set foot in a thrift store.  I knew they existed and had made contributions from time to time, but I had not considered them as a real alternative to the commercial retail establishments where I shopped.

And I still don't. Not for me.  Because I am a destination shopper.  I do not window-shop, I cannot spend a couple of hours browsing just for the fun of it.  I am not a shop-'til-you-drop shopper.  I need a purse, I go into one of the big department stores and pick out a purse among the many offerings.   I need a pair of shoes, I do the same. Then I go home.  Shopping bores me.  Sorry, girls, but that's just how it is.

But thrift-store shopping is another thing.  You cannot go in with a preconceived notion of what you want to buy, because you probably won't find it.  Someone will ask."Do you have a....?"  And the answer will be, "I think we had one a week or so ago.  Keep trying."  If you have your mind set on something specific try another source. But for the  the shopper with an open mind and a good eye, the thrift store is a treasure house!    People will bring a beautiful suit, or a brand new pair of name-brand shoes or maybe a lovely ceramic from our "boutique" to the checkout. Things I had walked right by without seeing. (A "good eye" is the key.)

Our local store is a pleasant place to shop.  It is clean, well-organized and well-managed.  There is a paid staff of several people,  and a large corps of volunteers.  It is a cheerful place.  My short-sighted vision of an under-privileged clientele rummaging through life's left-overs was soon thrown in the dust-heap where it belonged.  Our customers were of all ages and classes, just as in a regular retail store.  Craftspeople looking for materials for their projects,  collectors hoping to score a rare find, readers checking out the bookshelves, families stocking up on back-to-school clothing.  There is a large jewelry selection, always popular.  Racks of Halloween costumes, a fraction of the price anywhere else.  Need a few jigsaw puzzles for the summer cabin?  A second TV for the kid's room?  Bedding, dishes, furniture, toys, electronics, and lots of clean, up-to-date, attractive clothing for all members of the family.

Of course, as a dedicated people-watcher, the customers were my favorite part of the job.  I was a "bag lady"...that is, I worked at the checkout counter, bagging the purchases in donated bags.  (Your second-hand coffee-pot could go home in a Saks Fifth Avenue bag, or a Dollar Store bag.)  Many of the people who came in were regulars.   One couple always came when there was a clothing sale and would buy $100 dollars worth, or more, of $3.00-4.00 dollar items, enough to fill several large garbage bags.  These things they boxed up and sent to relatives in the Philippines.  Another gentleman came periodically and bought many house decoration items, such as lamps, floral arrangements, book sets.  We figured he was furnishing rental units or something of the sort.  Another couple, who could only be described as aging flower children, came often.  She had long gray hair caught into a pony tail and he had a braided beard which reached to his waist.  They bought jewelry which they resold at flea markets.  A pleasant pair and we always enjoyed having them drop in.  There were the others:  One young man tried on several wedding gowns before departing, leaving the gowns in a heap on the dressing room floor.  Once a customer who did not agree with the shop's "no returns" policy, threw a telephone in a rage.   A lady who had not bathed in many moons was asked to leave.  Another time, a woman whose kids were running wild took exception to the manager's request that she rein them in.  We had a shop-lifter or two and some bad checks.  One lady offered to cover her bad check with another check!  I guess anybody who has ever worked with the public has experienced all this and more but it was all new to little ole me.

I often mused on all this merchandise and where it had come from.  It had once been chosen and paid for  by someone and then discarded or abandoned or maybe donated after a death.  We got many half-finished knitting projects,  partially sewn garments, abandoned art projects.  I thought to myself, someone once started these projects with a happy heart.  I wonder what happened to stop them midway, half-finished, sometimes with the needle still threaded and stuck in the fabric. The most poignant to me were the inscriptions.  In a book, "To Billy from Grandpa and Grandma."  Scratched into a copper pot, "April 10, 1935."  On the back of an old photo, "To May, with love." What happened to Billy?  What was the significance of April 10, 1935?   Who was May?    So many stories untold and now lost forever on the shelves of a thrift store in Lakeport, California.

But!  A new life for these items!!  Another Billy reading the book.  Someone else arranging flowers in the old copper pot.  A collector's album enriched by a pioneer woman's picture. We are a throw-away society.  Think of the bounty that goes into the landfills of our country every day.  Isn't it great that these shops exist to recycle and reuse all this valuable resource.......

Well, here I am prattling on and on again.  But, as I said when I started this blog, this is mostly for my own entertainment and no one has to read it.  So if you  have come this far, you have no one to blame but yourself.  But next time you are feeling a little adventurous, drop by your local thrift store and see what you might find that you absolutely cannot live without.  And at a price that you cannot believe!

Cleopatra

She was not beautiful, but she acted as though she were.  She was proud, shrewd, courageous,  supremely intelligent.  She was a murderess.  She was a seductress....or was she?

This biography of Cleopatra by Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff is a fascinating book about one of the most fascinating women in history.   I knew very little of Cleopatra before I started it except for the popular legends made famous by Shakespeare and Liz Taylor.  I came away very impressed by her.

This book is not a beach read.  It is a scholarly work and sometimes hard going.  Since I had no background in the history of that period, I found my self going back often to try to figure out all the family and political connections.  It was a grim time, murders and assassinations were commonplace, treachery seemed to be expected of one's "friends" and allies, family loyalties were paper-thin.  People murdered their sons, mothers, siblings.  Among the Ptolemies, incestuous relationships were so common that I gave up trying to figure out who was somebody's cousin or uncle or grandfather.  In fact, I gave up on the Ptolemies early on, there was no end to them!  Cleopatra's brother, and husband until she had him murdered, was Ptolemy XIV.  Cleopatra was Cleopatra VII. 

There are interesting views of the life of Alexandria and Rome as lived by the powerful.  The Ptolemies were almost unfathomably wealthy and did not hesitate to display it.  No expense was spared for the pageants, feasts, festivals and other activities with which they amused themselves.  The royal barges, the sumptuous palaces, the rich tapestries, gold table settings, the strings of pearls which Cleopatra liked to wear in her hair....no wonder Hollywood loved this stuff!   Not to mention her relationship with the two most powerful men of the period.

Her life was short. She was only 40 when she committed suicide  (almost certainly not by an asp bite) after the collapse of her world.  But she  left enough myth and mystery to engage the world for over 2000 years.  She may have been the "wickedest woman in history" but she was also one of the most interesting and intriguing. 

A very good book, but not light reading. 


Cleopatra          Stace Schiff        Little, Brown and Company

"He who laughs, lasts."

Nothing is quite as individual as one's sense of humor.  What you find hilarious may go right over my head.  What knocks me out may leave you scratching your head.  In my case, this happens quite often,  as my sense of humor tends to be on the quirky side.  My family shares my idea of what is funny in the main, although there are some differences of opinion even there.  For instance, I cracked up over David Sedaris' book, "I Speak Pretty One Day."  I thought the first chapter, especially, was one of the funniest things I had ever read.  By contrast, another book of his called "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" did not appeal to me, but Erika found it hysterically funny.

My mother, a conservative, right-thinking Christian woman, often got the giggles.  I remember one instance when we were Christmas- shopping at a local store and she caught the eye of the establishment's Rent-a-Santa.  She absolutely collapsed.  Don't ask me why.   Something about the sheepish expression peering out from behind his scraggly Santa Claus beard,  I think.  She sometimes got the giggles in church.  My sister, Iris, was similarly afflicted.  I used to hear stories of how she would be sent away from the dinner table to compose herself.  Of course, the minute she got back she would break up again.  I do not understand gigglers, but,  man, what they do sure is contagious!  It takes only one giggler in a room to set everyone in the place staggering around hanging onto one another for support.

Erik and I did not share the same sense of humor, although we had many good laughs together.  He thought Jerry Lewis was fall-down funny.  I thought Jerry Lewis was a buffoon.  He loved Bob Hope.  I thought Bob Hope was a bore.  My opinion was not held by many people, as both Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope were run-away stars in the comedy field.  It was just that I could not relate to their brand of humor.  Each to his own, as they say!

Our family contains many truly witty folks.  The O'Rourke branch has a quick quip for almost every occasion. My Coughlin son-in-law often makes me laugh with his cogent comments.  My grandmother and aunts were triple-quick on the  up-take.  My kids have kept me laughing all their lives with their off-the-wall remarks and goofy antics.

In his book "Anatomy of an Illness", Norman Cousins describes how watching Marx Brothers movies helped him recover from a life-threatening illness.  Dr. Cousins says, "Laughter may or may not activate the endorphins and enhance respiration, as some medical researchers contend. What seems clear, however, is that laughter is an antidote to apprehension and panic."  Indeed.  Everybody knows that a heart-felt laugh is life-affirming and can make your view of the world do a complete flip.

Much of today's humor does not amuse me.  There is an edginess to it that takes away the pure joy of a good laugh.  I miss the old comedy shows of the 50's, 60's and  70's. ( Lucy, Jackie Gleason, Imogene Coca, Jonathan Winters, come to mind.  Dick Cavett,  the Smothers Brothers, Jose Jimenez, Dick VanDyke, Flip Wilson, Bill Cosby, Ernie Kovacs, gosh, I could go on and on.)  Some others, not so much.  But they were all funny without being hurtful or ugly.  You were left with a good feeling after these shows, a tendency to chuckle.


I love a good dirty joke.  I enjoy non-PC jokes, blond jokes.  But they have to be funny and they have to be amiable and not hurtful or vicious.  Humor should not be used as a weapon but as a healing, happy, wonderful gift.

Hey, did you hear the one about......?

What's in a name?

Not long ago Erika wrote in her blog about the tendency people have to misspell or garble other people's names, even quite simple ones.

Jeannie and Erik, for example.

In addition to Jeanne, Jeanie, Jeanette, consider Teannie, Leannie, Geannie, Genia, Seannig and Jene.  And how about  Emik and Drik?  Sound like a colony of cavemen, or what?

I started collecting some of these examples years ago when it became apparent that the name Hagberg was just too much for some people to handle.  So far I have logged Hagsburg, Hagbert, Hatberg, Hugberg, Hogberg, Hadberg, Hagaer, Agbag, Hagberry, Hayberry, Hagberty, Hagberd, Hoaberg, Habgerg,  and Hayberg.   Plus Mrs. Earl Hagberg,  Mr. Orvin Hazberg, Mr. Ginney Hagber.

Some of these may be attributed to people misreading my poor penmanship, of course, but Agbag?

If a fairly straightforward name like Jeannie Hagberg can get so mutilated, what must it be like for those folks with long, complicated, or "foreign" names?  My eye doctor, for example,  is named Mark Buehnerkemper.  The mind boggles.  He has solved the problem to some extent by having everyone call him "Dr. Mark", but that can only extend so far.  As for the Zwetsloots, the Urquharts, the Azavedos, the Juntunens, the Stankiewiczes, the Giovacchinis, the Zwangs,  I can only imagine the carnage that careless humans and mindless computers inflict on their family names.

As Erika pointed out,  one's name is a very personal and intimate part of one's identity and personality. There are the old stories about people saying, "I don't care what you print about me, just spell my name right!"   This applies, I think particularly,  to first names.  I don't so much mind being called Mrs. Hayberry, but for gosh sake's remember the two "n's" in Jeannie!

John Anderson, my jo

My father was the gentlest, sweetest man I ever knew.  He was famously taciturn, hardly ever speaking unless he had something important to say, and then in a voice that was always quiet and calm.  I don't remember him ever getting excited or losing his cool. The most severe remonstrance we ever got as kids was if my brother and I were quarreling and he would say mildly, "Quit yer janglin'!" Once when he had nearly severed his thumb in an accident, he came into the house to ask my mother, "Mither, hae ye got a rag?" 

He was born September 25,1875, in a small town in Southern Scotland near the English border.  I have his birth certificate neatly inscribed in ink by the presiding official. He was about 20 when his family emigrated to the United States, the next- to- youngest in a family of  seven siblings, with their parents.  They settled in Southeastern Montana, about as far from bonnie Scotland as can be imagined, but good sheep country and the destination of many Scots, including some of  their relatives.  One of his older brothers had come ahead to scope out the place and prepare things,  and they came as a group, including my grandmother who, according to family lore,  carried her Blue Willow china in a basket the whole way.  One brother stayed behind for several  years to work out the lease on the farm which they had rented from an absentee laird.  None of these farmers owned the land on which they lived.  My father once told me that a family could live on the same farm for 100 years and never own it.  No wonder people emigrated to a land where you could become owner of a 160-acre piece of property just by living on it for a specified time and putting up a building or two!

Except for Uncle "Kemish" (James), who remained a bachelor his entire life, and Tom, who died shortly after their arrival in America, all the brothers and their one sister married and established families.  But not Jack.  He had set his eyes on a vivacious young woman who worked for his sister, Grace, as a "hired girl".  However, he was not ready to pop the question until he had what he considered enough means to support a wife in a proper style.  Whether she got tired of waiting (and I know she was interested because of some letters which I have) or for some other reason, she married someone else and became the mother of two daughters, Thelma, who died at age 22, and my beloved sister, Iris.  In due time, she again became available and my parents were married on July 14, 1918, in Ekalaka, Montana.

I remember my father as always being old.  He was 45 when I was born, and hard work, ill fortune and  bad health took their toll.  He was completely bald at an early age and the rim of hair surrounding his bald pate was snowy white.  He sported a full mustache which he  trimmed with a straight razor,  kept sharp with a strop which hung beside the sink.   I have the razor  as well as the soap-dish and brush with which he lathered his face before shaving.  He had bright blue eyes, the twinkly kind.

He was a Victorian  gentleman in an age when Victorian gentlemen had become mainly extinct.  Even in his later years, we had to stop him from rising from his seat on a bus to offer it to some young girl.  We felt his sense of hospitality bordered on the ridiculous.  He could never, for instance, turn away the itinerant salesmen and  Jehovah's Witnesses who turned up regularly at our door.  He would invite them in as guests and listen patiently to their pitches.  He once told me that in the Scotland of his youth even your worst enemy was safe as a guest under your roof.  (I believe some of the bellicose Highland clans did not extend their hospitality that far, but that is another story.)

He adored my mother.  Whenever they had been out somewhere together, he never failed to say, "Mither, you're the best-lookin' woman I've seen the day."  In return, my mother's friends adored him for his gentlemanly ways, sometimes at odds with the rough local farmers who inhabited our neighborhood.

Despite having grown up in such a different environment, he loved the Montana of those days.  The great open spaces,  "where you knew everybody within a hundred miles by their first names", the freedom of spirit and big-heartedness of it's people.  Even after the many years on the West Coast, he still remembered Montana as his version of God's Country.  He never talked much about Scotland although he remained a staunch Scotsman for his entire life.  I used to play the old Scotch songs for him on the piano, among them a beautiful old Scottish  love ballad called "John Anderson, my jo", which is among my favorites to this day. He would tap his foot and whistle along tunelessly under his breath.

He was christened plain John Anderson, but quite late in life he added the middle name of Beattie  (the maiden name of one of his grandmothers) to distinguish himself from the hundred other John Andersons in the phone book and on the mailing lists of advertisers. But he was known throughout his life as "Jack".

The Scotch are not a very demonstrative people.  They don't much go in for hugging and kissing and big displays of affection.  But I knew I was loved.  My father would often stroke my hair or pat my shoulder, murmuring "Lassie" in his gentle voice.  Who needs hugs and kisses?

He died nearly 70 years ago, but his warmth and quiet strength remain in my memory.  I am lucky to have known him even for the short time of my life that he lived.  Some people leave indelible impressions on your thinking, your character, your view of life.  John Beattie ("Jack")Anderson was such a person.

Raised Right

When I finish a big hearty novel like "The Lacuna" I like to read something lighter, sort of an amuse to refresh the palate, so to speak, before biting into the next one.  A mystery, maybe, or a romantic novel.  But all I had in my stack at that time was a book Erika had sent me called "The Whisper of the River" by Ferrol Sams.  It seemed at a cursory glance to be about a young man's experiences in college and I thought, "Oh, no.  Another harrowing tale of a boy's being shipped off to boarding school to undergo  agonizing, humiliating  torture at the hands of upper classmen and sadistic professors."  But it was the only thing at hand, so I plunged in.

Well, it was nothing like I had thought.  It is the story of Porter Osborne, Jr., an under-sized, under-aged, very precocious son of a strict Baptist family from  a small town in rural Georgia, the only white boy in all of Georgia with the nickname "Sambo".  He had been Raised Right in the best Baptist tradition.   It begins when he goes off to the Baptist university from which his father had graduated, and covers his four years there, ending with  the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  A kid more full of hell and high-jinx, you would be hard-pressed to find.  His college career is filled with stunts and pranks and light-hearted mischief.  But there is a lot to this boy, as well.  He proves to be a clear-headed thinker,  a top student, and a true and loyal friend and the book chronicles his maturing as a young man.

There are some good characters, especially one named Boston Harbor Jones, a black kitchen helper in the school's dining hall.  He is a true soul mate to Jones, the character in "Confederation of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole.  He and Porter become fast friends and partners in some of the goings-on.  There are some other interesting people, as well...... professors, Fraternity brothers, Mrs. Raleigh, the dining-room matron,  Mrs. Capulet, the house mother.

 I have one quibble, which is one I often have with novels:  At 528 pages,  it is about 200 pages too long.  I think several of the episodes could have been omitted entirely and many of the rest cut down.  But the book is entertaining and fun to read.  A very good palate-cleanser for the next one!


The Whisper of the River       Ferrol Sams       Penguin Books


































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