Fog

Warm day, got up to about 70 f. These pictures were taken around 4PM after it cooled back down to the 60's and a blanket of fog rolled in.

1. Trees fading into the mist

2. Hooded mergansers take refuge at our end of the marsh, from duck hunters who are limited to the far end.

3. American egret

4. Great blue heron, with a muted rainbow of autumn marsh color.

Twenty marbles

Today is my friends' 20th wedding anniversary, and whoops! they'll get their gift late, since I only mailed it this morning.

That means it's also a big anniversary for me: 20 years sober in AA. 20 years ago today I got loaded for the last time, at my best friend's wedding, and made the biggest decision of my life.

Hey, you'd drink too if you had to wear this dress!

In AA, as you rack up time in the program, you occasionally get a chance to get up at the podium and tell your story. According to the basic AA text, "Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.”

Some peoples' stories are funny, some are scary, some make you want to cry. Mine, I was always embarrassed to admit in meetings, is boring. I helped clean up after the reception by finishing off everybody's leftover wine on all the tables. Pretty gross. So that's the story: I acted like an asshole, I drove home snockered, lane lines seeming to writhe like snakes, my hands on the wheel and my feet on the pedals refusing to coordinate with one another. I got safely home. I sobered up as the afternoon wore on and thought: Oh. My. God. What did I just do? That's it. Low entertainment quotient.

There was another gathering at the bride and groom's house that evening, so I didn't dare hit the sack. For the rest of that afternoon I wandered around my apartment, swigging diet coke, picking things up and dropping them at random (with even less focus than I normally manage) and mulling over where I came from, and where I really really did not want to go.

The short version is that my family is rife with alcoholism. Most were genial Elwood Dowd types. Occasionally, someone would manifest the nasty, violent type, but by and large my older generation of relatives were wobbly, giggly bourbon-soaked southerners. The smell of Christmas, to me, was bourbon and water, mixed strong, radiating from every glass and wafting off every breath along with the equally ubiquitous musky Marlboro Filter smoke, till it filled the rooms of my grandmother's house, family Grand Central. I liked it. I found it spicy, warm, festive and comfortable.

I was more of a Gin Girl. Sloe gin and orange juice was my drink o'choice, though I could never bring myself to ask for the drink by name. I was relatively old the first time I got plastered, judging by my fellow AA-ers -- I was a college freshman -- and I experienced that wonderful feeling of being at-ease and socially confident. This! I thought, this is what normal people get to feel like all the time! Relaxed and happy to be themselves. After all my years of resenting God's depriving me of it, this is His gift to me.

After the wedding I somehow, for the first time, saw the brokenness of that promise. Saw that the "gift" had come from somebody I have no problem calling the Father Of Lies. Because after that first time, I never again managed to engineer the right amount at the right intervals to regain that pleasant feeling. It's a feature of addiction that one does not apply logic and say "This isn't working." One keeps trying. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

I kept at it, but it never gave me that delicious sensation again. At parties I'd try to tell jokes and somewhere between my brain and my tongue the words would twist into a nasty insult and make the listener blanch, while I felt like a victim of some kind of Star Trek Disease that mangles language. More often I just felt depressed, unsociable and lousy. Well then, obviously I had not had enough, or else the cheery feeling would be in full operation, so I'd swill some more.

I can't even explain why, on December 27th , 1987, I realized I was headed down a path that those older relatives, so charming and loving when I was a little kid, had taken later, as their lives deteriorated or ended too soon. Maybe the blessing was that I got drunk so early in the day, and had all day to think about it as I sobered back up, instead of conking out. Or maybe it was simply the right time.

I decided that the only way to avoid ever having to belong to AA was to quit. This is the part of my story that gets the only real laugh. Most of us discover that the decision is only the beginning, and that we need help from others who get it.

How can I do it? I worried. How can I explain this big change to people? This friend, for whom I was a bridesmaid, was also kind of a drinking buddy. We would meet for drinks and a plate of Ruby Tuesday's Super Nachos and share all the life junk that was going on. Was I ruining that?

Friendships often end when one makes such a big change. Bless her, she never questioned my decision, merely asked about it, then let me do my thing while she did hers. That's why we can tell each other anything, and why she's still my friend.

And dating?? How was I ever going to date, if I couldn’t do normal things?

Within days -- coincidentally? or by act of a Great Designer? We each have to decide that for ourselves -- people began to come into my life. People whose guidance, whose stories, and, sometimes, whose failures, all knocked me here and there but always forward. Kind of like a pinball.

Every region has its own traditions for AA members. Mine gave out "chips" for successful time in the program. A blue chip for increments of a year.

But I heard, can't remember where, of a group someplace where they give you a marble each year. The symbolism is that as a drinker, you've pretty much lost your marbles, and now you can start getting them back. I love this idea. Quitting is only the start. One can make some

insane decisions and generally act like one has lost one's marbles, even some time after quitting. I was 4+ years sober when I began to date my ex, 5+ when we married. Somehow, with the help of a Higher Power who, at my lowest point, enfolded me in a peace that passed all understanding, and the help of some of those same 12-step friends, I got through that whole episode without using.

So I can say I've got 20 marbles back. No, it's not my achievement. You can tell me how swell I am to have managed it, but that's bull. What got me to this point was a concept that I ran into in Christianity, but other traditions have versions of it. Whatever others think, I know that the strength does not come from me. It's grace. And no day is promised to me except today, by God's grace.

That's it. Coffee, doughnuts and free literature are at the back of the room. Thanks for the marble.

Christmas wish

Its dark-brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

Description of The Ghost of Christmas Present

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

They work!

Two strings of tree lights:

The green string is modern K-mart stuff.

The beige string is from, probably, the 1940's.

Better view below with flash.

And they work! Undoubtedly they will go off when a single bulb burns out, as they were wont to do back then. We'll need to surf eBay for more bulbs.

We have them plugged in separately

for special-occasion use.

Nifty, eh?

It's time

It got pretty cold last night!

Harvest time.

The logic escapes me

[This piece's draft date says December 15, 2007. The ordination was, I believe, on the 13th]
--

For someone who's kind of vocal about her identity as a Christian, I must admit I rarely go to church. The church in which we were married has become an "Anglican Network" parish in opposition to gay marriage and ordination, and withholds member pledge money from the Episcopal Church of the US unless the congregant makes formal request of the minister that his money go in as always. Swell idea -- I mean, Peace and Justice Ministries and Episcopal Relief can always cut back.

Anyway, I can't stomach it. And the liberal Episcopal church down the road is all into promoting the creation of a government Department of Peace. Sorry, fellow liberals, I think that's ridiculous. And all these things may just be my excuses to sleep in and not comb my hair on Sundays.

But since Dad's down with bronchitis and my mom can't drive at night, I said I'd take her to the ordination of a friend of theirs. The about-to-retire Bishop is a family friend too, so she wanted to be there, and enticed me with declarations of how ceremonial and medieval it was. I can get into that.

And Oh! It was. Conservative it may be, but this church has real grab-you professional music and puts on an exquisite ceremony. And it's Advent so we got some hymns of the season, in, really, a richer, more mystical ceremony than I'd have gotten in a regular Christmas service, and in a church shimmering with candlelight and draped in evergreens like some kind of Russian fairy tale.

My church attendance has been sporadic enough to ensure that I hadn't heard one of my favorite hymns, "Holy Holy Holy," in well over decade. (YouTube alert: This link goes to a 43-second once-through on the organ, for those who might be unfamiliar with the piece.)

I love this hymn. "Holy Holy Holy" dips and soars with the drama of an epic movie's climactic fade-out. I was singing along, having a childhood-nostalgia trip and savoring the words. Till they changed them.

They effing-A changed them. Last time I sang it, Reginald Heber's 1826 lyrics (Don't be impressed. I looked that up.) were intact:

Holy holy holy! Though the darkness hide thee.
Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see.

So when the line came along and people were singing:

Though the sinful human eye thy glory may not see

I began to do my fire-breathing act. The simple punch of the original accented words "eye, sin-, man," turned into multisyllabic ooze. And now it's not the person who's sinful, it's his/her gendernonspecific eye.

I'm a liberal. Which means I'm also anti-censorship and to me that trumps the inclusiveness thing big time. Censorship may seem like a strong term but, God blast it, it's one of the all-time classics and it deserves to stand as he wrote it. If we need to change our speech patterns for this more enlightened era, OK. Changing the church service liturgy does that. The service isn't a finished work of creative art (though the poetic language of earlier versions grants them literary status in their own right for a lot of people), it's a working handbook. But don't rewrite the past.

Hey, we're so much smarter than the creative artists of the past, so let's rewrite Dylan. "She takes, just like a person, yes she does." (Bob Dylan YouTube alert)


If the song is unacceptable as written then quit using it. I mean it, I have no problem with letting a favorite become a museum piece, nor do I have a problem with rocking out with modern songs. Keep each song's integrity intact, dammit.

Why am I making such a big deal about a line? One line?

Because we also sang "O Come O Come Emmanuel." We sang every single one of the 6 verses with the familiar chorus between them, which took about one glacial epoch to get through.

Here's the thing: the men and the women of the congregation were instructed to sing alternate verses.

By gender.

The verses the men were to sing were about power and achievement:

2: "Free Thine own from Satan's tyranny"
4: "Make safe the path"

The ones assigned to the women were: wisdom, nurture:

3: "Cheer us by Thy drawing nigh."
5: "O come thou wisdom from on high."

So let me get this straight: it's Terribly Important to banish any and all so-called male dominance from an 1826 hymn. Why, somebody could get the idea that the Christian church doesn't give women credit for their share in bringing sin into the world! Wouldn't want that. (No, giving up sarcasm isn't gonna be one of my New Year's resolutions.)

But assigning traditional gender roles in singing is okay??

It's getting ridiculous. And I want my hymn back.

A Quick One, While Winter's Away

DECEMBER 14, 2007

A closer inspection of
the Bradford Pear
that I keep documenting
reveals that:

It's shedding its leaves

and budding

at the same time.

Writers' Group flashback

Talk about draggin' old dusty stuff out from under the couch!

Writers' groups have their value. I've been in a couple of them. I was lucky to attend one led by a pro, and she balanced the hand-holding aspect, which can take over some groups, with some truly valuable feedback. They're also a great place to find exercises that actually help a writer sort out plot and character. "Write about the thing you most do not want to write about." That's a disquieting but very good one for dredging things out of the unconscious that may be short-circuiting something you're trying to articulate. And the exercises could bring out cool, interesting stuff: "Interview a character in your story. What would you ask the character, what would she say to you?"

But there's no denying that a writers' group can foster the production of stuff that I can only describe as: Writers' Group-y. I'm not even sure what I mean by that. It's more like venting than it's like truly telling the world something it needs or cares to hear.

But therein lies a challenge of its own: To take one's piffly little personal experience and convince the reader to care, to relate.

This is an old group piece of mine that I turned up awhile ago while looking for something else, and have had hanging around in draft mode. While I still like some of my imagery, I don't feel like I quite pulled it above Writer's Group-yness level.

Warts and all, just as I wrote it in 1993:

--
SUMMER OF '64

In the summer of 1964 I was too told to catch fireflies.

By day I was still a kid. I read Roller Skates and Dr. Dolittle. I walked to the neighborhood swimming pool with my four-year-old brother and waited with adult patience when he crouched in the exact middle of the street to pop the hot tar bubbles in the asphalt.

But in the evenings I donned my full blue skirt and a sleeveless white blouse, crammed my bare feet into Pappagallos, and walked to Sally's house. My friend Sally and I had turned ten years old during the winter. By June, the thrill of gaining a coveted two-digit age had worn off. We wanted more. We wanted to be teenagers.

Sally's side porch was enveloped in thick magnolias and hydrangeas. I watched fireflies flicker in the bushes, and sipped my RC Cola in a restrained, adult manner, as Sally and her older sister Patsy performed the Sacred Teenage Record Player Ceremony. They strung extension cords out the doorway onto the porch. Patsy, on her knees, would plug in the little square box, reverently open the lid, and place a stack of 45's next to it. Then Patsy would teach us to dance. She was fourteen, and enjoyed our deference to her teenage wisdom.

Languidly we swayed our hipless bodies to "Every Little Bit Hurts," and "Don't Worry Baby." It was important to look weighed down, as though we fully understood the tragic emotions of the songs.

Then Patsy would show us her newest acquisitions. Patsy's record collection was more than marvelous; it was chosen with mysterious knowledge gained from some secret cultural network accessed only by teenagers.

"You mean you haven't heard of the Beatles?" she said, with a touch of pity in her voice, knowing full well we hadn't.

"They're funny-looking," I said, gazing at the record jacket.

But the sound blew me away. It pounded with pure, confident joy. The exquisite pain of teenage angst had attracted me, but this carefree sound seemed to promise a world of fun. It gave me hope of leaving my childhood insecurities behind at the moment of hooking my first training bra.

The world had already changed, but we didn't know it that summer. The shock of November's assassination had worn off. The intolerable knowledge that nobody was safe still floated below our conscious minds. Our daily lives hadn't changed. We still had two parents apiece, our own rooms, and Wonderful World of Color on Sunday nights, on our black-and-white TV's.

Summer ended. In October, Sally and Patsy's successful attorney father connected a garden hose to the exhaust pipe of his car and ended his life. Their mother rebuilt her life around bourbon. The sisters had only each other. Patsy made a teenage marriage. Sally scavenged for love, briefly married an attorney 20 years her senior, divorced, disappeared.

There aren't many fireflies around anymore, but once in awhile I see one.

Allegedly December

It's now the double digits of December, and forecasters are predicting highs of 79 tomorrow and days following. But no, this is not normal.

By now we should have had at least one frost warning. And the drought is serious, rainfall down about 25 percent for the year, and barely a sprinkle in the last 30 days.

It's warm, dry day after warm, dry day, and not exactly Christmas-y, but The Respiratory Crud is making the rounds, and you can bet we both got it. I have to admit, warm weather does make bronchitis easier to endure.


Slowly the Bradford Pear divests itself of its leaves.

Those 4 tomatoes keep growing, though the drought won't let them get very big ...



and they've been joined by 7 (!) more, marble-sized.




A chameleon seeks out a patch of sunlight.

I'll hibernate, OK? But later.

All pictures taken today, Dec 10. Except the one below, taken last night.

Cooperating with others - D-minus [UPDATE]

Oh boy. Here it is. My third notice from Harris Connect, which has contracted with my high school to compile an alumni directory. They Urgently Need My Help. For my convenience, I may-- in fact, I really should, phone them and give them my data!

There are reasonable arguments as to why getting directory info over a phone is not a great idea. What about those of us with hard-to-pronounce (or spell) names? "It's not Smith anymore, it's Pastafazoola.... no, that's P-A-s-t-a‑‑"

What if my business website address is long and complicated? How many times have I been through this before on the phone?

"Noir-and-more, and don't use ampersands."

"Don't use what?"

"Spell out the word 'and.' It's Noir-and-more-b‑‑"

"Wait. Near and More?"
"Noir. N-WAHR. N-o-i-r."
"OK, n-i-o-r‑‑"
"N-O-I-R!"
"What's that mean anyway?"
"Dark. It means dark. Very dark."

Even with US phone-answerers names get scrambled, and you can bet that the call actually goes to a firm in Elbonia.

But my real, and totally unreasonable objection is that I hate the telephone. It's a great invention for calling emergency services or punching in the refill number on my prescription for later pick-up. But the longer I'm on the phone, the unhappier I get. Having to jabber socially on a phone, even to the people dearest to me, makes me want to shriek. Or pop bubble wrap into the receiver and say, "Darn, losing .. connection! [crackle] Catch you la-" [pop!]

Maybe it's an ADD need for me to see body language and facial expression in order to decode what I hear, or maybe it's just an estrogen deficiency. Women are supposed to l-o-o-o-v-e yapping on a phone. I can't explain it. A disembodied voice coming at me while I look at nearby inanimate objects -- Hey, there's my eyeglass screwdriver under the side table! What's this unpaid bill that's slipped under the chair cushion? 2006?! -- can't tell me much I want to hear by that medium, except that my Lotto numbers came through.

I put each card from Harris Directory through a thorough inspection for small print containing alternatives. When, I wonder, when is the final card going to arrive? The one where they give in and say, "Oh, all right, you win! Here's the [website] [paper questionnaire] [carrier pigeon] you may use instead, since you obviously hate the idea of the phone!"

But no, they never give in.

After the third card arrived on Friday, I did as much giving-in as I am inclined to do, and googled Harris Directory for myself. Navigated their website. Found a page through which directory subjects can submit their particulars, which required that Harris issue me a password. Navigated back to their contact information, went over to my email and, feeling very virtuous -- look how much trouble I'd gone to in order to compensate for their inadequacies! -- sent them this ladylike and softspoken request for a password:

I keep getting cards from you REQUIRING that I get on a TELEPHONE in order to give you information for your directory.

I can't understand why you insist on the telephone and offer NO other options. I despise the telephone. If you'd given a paper questionnaire or a website, I'd have responded WEEKS ago.

I'm willing to do it online. Your site (which I had to google for myself. How many will bother to do this??) requires that you issue me a password.

Ruth Pleistocene '72
Golgotha High School
Harris ID no. PRO27-15

Their reply yesterday surprised me:

Dear Ruth Pleistocene:

Thank you for your communication regarding the Golgotha High School Alumni Directory update. Please accept our apologies.

In respect to our contract with your school, an on-line questionnaire is not offered. Please take a moment to phone the toll free number provided on the postcard we previously mailed to you, to ensure the accuracy of your information, which will be included in the upcoming directory.

Seriously? My school signed a contract that does not allow -- uh -- a more accurate method of data gathering? Now, does this mean it's my school that's to blame? Or do I still blame Harris for -- could it be? -- charging more for using other methods?

Paper questionnaires are labor-intensive to process, but online questionnaires?? Why would it cost them more for me to type in the correctly spelled names and urls, than for the Elbonian operator to type it in from my spelling it over the phone? Can't they outsource online data processing to the same Elbonian firm just as cheaply as they can the toll-free number? And get a more accurate product?

Meanwhile, they now know my address is correct. They even have my email addy. That will have to do.

___
UPDATE 12/20/07 (if anybody scrolls back this far!) : I won! Sort of.

I emailed back:

OK, I guess i need to blame 
my alumni association for this idiotic 
decision not to contract with you to get
my data via any form but the phone.
 
Did they allow any provision for 
hearing-impaired alumni??  Are such 
alumni just out of luck?
 
I am not phoning.  My names and data
are impossible to spell correctly, as 
are the particulars of my web address.
Here is my basic data. Include it, don't
include it, I don't care!

--

I am in receipt of a genuine, authentic snail-mail letter confirming the

biographical  info I had emailed.  But no reply, either there or via email,

in return to my question about how they accommodate the

hearing-impaired.  A simple email address would at least let all

alumni make contact with that or any other question.

How to trap a raccoon

Probably more than you want to know about what we've learned from our animal-trapping experiences, but this all may to uselful to someone who drops by sometime. Brought to you by the Havaheart Trap, a wonderful invention.

Raccoons are particularly gifted at getting the food bait out without entering the trap. Few of us trap them on the first try, but some things will increase your odds.

You can check the Havaheart FAQ for lots of good advice, including ways to prevent trapping neighbor cats. Some might be worth a try. I personally will not recommend using the first suggestion: Havaheart says cats won't be attracted to peanut butter on whole wheat bread. It may depend on the cat -- I live with one who adores peanut butter and harasses me for a fingerful to lick off. Some of the other suggestions they make for baits that are raccoon-friendly but disliked by cats might be better.

Meanwhile, a little can of Fancy Feast [TM] worked for us. It's nicely fragrant and Rocky ought to make a beeline for it. A neighbor with outside cats might want to be notified on Trap Night and might be willing to make other arrangements for his cats for the night. He's motivated to cooperate, or he sure oughta be, because his cats are at risk from this raccoon as well.

So: The critter will work diligently and patiently, showing much more intelligence than do many of our elected officials, to get the food out through the bars and avoid entering the trap.

A huge trap makes that harder but has disadvantages. These traps are well-structured and heavy, even empty, and with an Occupant, they're a job to carry. Plus the Occupant will be scared and angry, and will express himself in rather smelly ways, so you'll be glad if you can fit it in the trunk of even a compact car for transport to Hundred Acre Wood.
Even if the trap is fairly large, the little ba- the critter will pull and shake it, tip it, and patiently jostle the food over to a reachable position. We wire the bait bowl or can in place to thwart that.

We place the trap against a wall and put the bait on that side,














...then block other sides with scrap wood, or whatever you've got. Voila'. An irresistible midnight snack and only one way to get to it.











And when you get him, have something disposable -- scrap cardboard? -- or washable (You will want to take it straight in to the washer) to put under the occupied trap as you transport him to his new home.

You'll then want to hose the trap down or leave it out in the rain!

On being told that we need to go outside and decorate the house today!

They call us The People of the Ding Dong

They say that when the world was new, there were sugar crashes and food spoilage in our ancestral homeland of Hyperinsulinemia. And the people cried out to The Great Refiner, for The Food of Eternity that never rots. The Great Refiner gave our ancestors the formula for the Ding Dong, and gave them the white flour and the sugar and the BHT. In visions he told them, a Land Bridge will form when the Great Sugar Rationing falls upon the land. Take the Food of Eternity and go forth and carry it to all corners of the earth. And they did so, and their civilization was built upon the Foods of Eternity, the Ding Dong, the Twinkie, the Moon Pie and the Convenience Store Honey Bun.

But we are forgetting the Old Ways. Our Traditions are being lost. We eat natural, even whole, foods.

Still, in each generation there is a One Who Remembers the Old Ways. One who eats the foods of our ancestors and Keeps the Traditions. As families gather to give thanks to the Great Refiner, and the holiday embers dwindle down to a warm glow, circles are formed around the fireplace.


And tales of The Old Days are told; and rituals are observed, of sharing the foods of our ancestors. And to the little children some is given, that they may know their place in the Great Chain of Being, and that they may bounce off the walls in their own Sucrose Vision Quests, and that they may someday in turn teach their own children The Old Ways.

November in SC

It really is not endless summer here. In fact we had some nights in the high 30's (fahrenheit) and cold coat-weather days just last week.

What happens here is that weather comes more in spells than in seasons. Single digit nights occur in winter, and days in the 70's are not uncommon any month of the year.

The past couple of days have been in the 70's.

Tomatoes are ripening on our vine. There could be a frost any night now and we have to watch out and go ahead and harvest them, green or not, if frost is due. These 4 (you can't really see the 4th one) will make a nice one-meal batch of fried green tomatoes.


But today, bees were still hanging out in
a sunflower.

Nights are chilly. A housefly takes refuge in a still-blooming rose, and another bud is ready to open. Scooter is more interested in the mice that rustle in the underbrush back there.

We're still seeing butterflies.




AND some fall color. Fall, like everything else southern, ambles slowly through the weeks. No big burst of color, but a flare here and there. This year's drought has affected it too, and has seriously dampened the color, but it's appearing.

All photos taken today, November 20th.

My Unillustrated Robert Goulet Post

One of these days I will blog about life as an unmedicated ADD. It's not self-deprecating humor, it's a real medical diagnosis. I hated the meds I was on and quit them several years ago. They didn't help much anyway, so life is only a little more chaotic without them, but I lose things. I have piles of unsorted junk mail and paper scattered everywhere. I leave tasks unfinished, and I often take something out of its logical location, walk toward another place where I plan to use it, and somewhere along the way get distracted by the inevitable Something Shiny, drop the item randomly and find it years later. An expired check stuck in a pile of magazines. Old photos among recyclable paper on top of the printer.

Every single object I had planned to photograph, to illustrate this post, is missing in action. Photos of myself and my cousin. The Game. The Autograph. Days go by. The news about which I plan to blog gets old. I search the house but no luck yet.

Meanwhile maybe the Wash Your Car And It Rains Law will work for me here. If I give up and post this without them, then they'll show up and I can update it.

This is my very own Robert Goulet story.

In 1968, when we were 14, my mom took my cousin Emily (the same cousin whose dad took us emerald mining) and me to New York City for a wowzer of a week. To give us the full NY experience, she took us by train and we began the the trip by disembarking in Penn Station.

Charlotte, NC, home, was no backwater, and my mom had seen to it that I experienced live theatre by age 8 (a tour company of The Music Man), and good professional stock companies at that. Betty Grable came to town in Hello Dolly. (Dad was in charge of my music education and took me to concerts by Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman.)

But real New York theater was still pretty impressive. We saw You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, The Fantastiks, Hal Holbrook in Man of La Mancha, and Robert Goulet in a little musical called The Happy Time.

Daytime was a wowzer, too. In the Metropolitan Museum I stood right in front of paintings I'd only seen in books. And we saw Central Park, the Automat, Times Square, Lincoln Center! Familiar to Emily and me from our favorite TV shows (That Girl! He and She!).

When I talk about my cousin Emily, it's closer to the truth if you think "sister." Our dads are brothers. She and I were the first members of our generation, were due together. She was a tad early and I was late so she beat me by a month. A few little brothers came along later, but Emily and I remained the only girls. The extended family, and most others with social ties to our grandmother, treated us like twins.

Our other favorite TV show was The Patty Duke Show. Emily and I look nothing alike. We are nothing alike, but we related, partly to Patty and Cathy's radically different personalities. Only a couple years ago she found The Patty Duke (Board) Game for me in an antique shop.

She's quick thinking, scientific (she's now a chemistry professor) and assertive. She walked into Big Name College and told them: "You need the courses I can teach," and they hired her. I'm timid and reclusive. She led, I followed, even in NYC which should have intimidated even her. But not much did.

We never considered getting autographs from the actors in the other musicals that week, but Goulet was Big Time Celebrity to anyone raised as I was, on Broadway musical cast albums, by a theater-buff mom.

To me, Julie Andrews was a star before she ever made a movie. I ran outside one day circa 1963, after reading the showbiz gossip in the Charlotte News and announced to my friend Sally: "Guess what! Julie Andrews is gonna be Mary Poppins in the movie!" Sally gave me a blank look.

And Goulet had been Julie's Lancelot in Camelot!!

So here we are, filing out of the theater after The Happy Time. Emily's got an idea: "Let's go around to the stage door and get his autograph!"

How she even knew this was possible, I can't imagine. To me, celebrities exited their performances by special Celebrity Portals to their Home Worlds and did not exist in ours. But my cousin, at 14, knew where to go and knew autograph hounds hung out there.

The stage door crowd was small. We waited ages. Then actors started wandering out. Lord help me, I ignored Charles Durning and David Wayne (!) I didn't know who they were (Our Finian's Rainbow recording was from a later revival, not the original that won Wayne a Tony). People lined up for signatures from Goulet. Emily was ahead of me. Then I stepped up to him and handed him my program. Overwhelmed. This was the guy in the Camelot record standing right in front of me.

He asked my name. I answered and stared at the ground. He signed my program, handed it back and said,

"Let me see your eyes." He put his hand under my chin and lifted my face and looked me in the eyes with a big smile. If he said anything else, it was lost in the buzzing in my ears. My memory ends at that point.

Did he know how to charm a shy 14-year-old, or what?

The picture stayed on my bulletin board for years. It's still here somewhere. Really.

So is my brain, but that's another story.

Back to church

Oh, like a night in this %&$*ing trap isn't bad enough, now you get flash in my eyes?!

Come the revolution, your species? Servitude City. Count on it.

Another discovery everybody else knew about already

At this time of year, when the garage is neither too hot nor too cold to work in, I have a burst of activity, clearing clutter, weeding out, assembling sets of books to sell.

But I thought I'd take time out to share yet another of my Amazing Discoveries Actually Discovered Long Ago By Others: if you've got a yen for curried chicken salad and you don't have raisins on hand, dried apricots in it are yummo! In fact, I like it better this way.

The Episcopal Church Welcomes You!

Something had moved into our garage. We were keeping the back door of it open so Scooter could come and go at will, by day. Not a good decision. His food, his water, The Lifestyle To Which He Had Become Accustomed, looked fine to what we thought was a raccoon. Much knocking over of shelves full of our stuff. Several smelly messes.

Use of the Havaheart trap revealed that it was a little possum. We have relocated him to the perfect new home - After all, the Episcopal Church Welcomes You! We resisted the urge to name him Dumbledore. I mean, no point in putting up red flags.

The church sits next to a big undeveloped tract of forest.

A trip to the church parking lot.

In the trunk.

Naturally this would be a Sunday. We waited till past noon, but there were still people around. A group of kids enjoyed meeting our possum.

We walked him pretty far back into the woods, opened the cage and persuaded him to make his exit, which took a few minutes, while he got it through his head that he was not about to become our dinner.

GO, already!

OK, it's not real gem mining

I've probably spent too much time and money trying to replace things I lost in Hurricane Hugo, but i was determined to replace one more thing on this NC trip. I wanted to go mining.


When I was 14, my uncle brought my cousin and me to the mountains and, among other things, we went emerald-mining. The area is studded with old mines, whose main product was feldspar used for BonAmi cleanser and Fels Naptha soap. But they also yield various precious and semi-precious stones. On that occasion nearly 40 years ago (OMG) I though I'd hit the jackpot when I found a chunk of granite with a cloudy, rudimentary emerald (worth about 2 bucks) embedded in it. It's now out in the SC marsh, along with most of my childhood artifacts, where it can baffle some future geologist.

So Larry, good sport that he is, took me along a winding, winding road deep into the mountain, as we followed signs toward Little Switzerland and the Emerald Village mine. I'm happy to say he ended up having a fun day too.

Safety and insurance concerns have ended real do-it-yourself mining in most of these tourist tra- I mean, places. So what you actually do is buy a bucket of rubble and sort through it for any valuables. They seed each bucket with enough poor-to-medium quality gems to make it worth your while, and the rest of the rubble sometimes contains a surprise.






The price varies by bucket size. We got the $35 buckets, and each received a bucket full of rocks, a trowel, and a plastic cup to sort the good stuff into.









You trowel out some of it. Sluice it through the water. Examine each big rock on all sides.








Once the big pieces are sorted out, then I pick through the tiny ones. I pull out every item of any color at all, since even the worthless stuff can be pretty.

Trowel, rinse, repeat. It didn't occur to me to bring my reading glasses, so I examined each piece with a Mr. Magoo squint, for about 3 hours of sorting.

Then we bagged it to take home. The mine will also appraise it for you, but somehow we thought we'd get a better deal elsewhere, so now we've got two plastic bags of pretty varicolored rocks.

This was done in the lower mine. The upper mine is set up to tour and we did that, too, after a nice deli lunch which they also offer. Gift shop, displays, the whole tourist tr- I mean, nine yards.


As we walked to the the upper mine I found one of my favorite rocks-of-the-day for free, lying alongside the road. I've taken umpteen pix, but suffice it to say no photo really gets the multicolored and layered, textured, 3D -ness of it.










UPPER MINE SELF-GUIDED TOUR
(3 PHOTOS HERE BY LARRY)


According to the guidebook, the third photo shows a 12-horsepower steam engine, model name the "Eclipse," made by the Frick Company of Waynesboro, PA, "probably in the early 1890's." And it still runs.

This mine closed in the 1950's, as did many, though feldspar is still an economic force of some merit in those hills. The mine exhibit shows various miserable aspects of the job, including child labor, and a lot of original equipment, most from the 1920's and 30's.












And here's my take. (above)







A select array of colorful items from it is in the photo on the right -- and note the clear purple-tinted crystal at the very bottom of the picture. This may be the coolest thing I got, because that back speck in the end is a tiny fossilized ... something. Bit of seed or leaf. Maybe a tiny feather? This thing, I will definitely need an expert to identify, but whatever it is, it's neat!


ENLARGEMENT PHOTO BY LARRY









Overlook view in Little Switzerland











Last but definitely not least, a non-mine-related addition to the general documentation of the trip -- I just got back prints from my one role of conventional film, wherein can be found the Motel Cat. She seems to drift from room to room, visiting all who are amenable.

A week in the mountains

(Pictures should come up in a higher resolution if you click them -- be forewarned, the quilt photos come up extra-large to show detail to anyone who's interested!)



Yancey County, NC, week of Oct 1 2007.

This area is a little to the north of Asheville, NC. We didn't visit Asheville, or much touristy stuff (with one exception, to be covered in a followup post). What we were looking for was to sample everyday life, as a potential place to land. For the rest of our lives, maybe.

A place away from hurricanes,
with a mild climate but real seasons.
A place where our vote might actually count.

So you might as well know, I picked this county by pulling up an election 2004 political map, then looking into amenities and accommodations.



The local coffee shop, where we had tea, bagels with cream cheese, and delightful conversation with locals, each morning. We miss this place! We're now scouring local shops for approximations of the tea flavors we got there.


My best picture - a winding road between Burnsville and Little Switzerland. This one's going to be my desktop wallpaper for awhile. Not much fall color yet, just a hint.




SPRUCE PINE, NC

We were staying in nearby Burnsville, a nice little town that straddles a major highway. It's the county seat, has the chain restaurants and big grocery stores Spruce Pine enchanted us more. This is a view of the "lower town." Just over my right shoulder, the road splits and takes you into upper Spruce Pine, a similar, slightly busier street one step up the mountainside.



Close encounter with a freight train coming through Spruce Pine. According to the local newspaper guy --we stopped in the office and received giveaway maps and tourist info-- the Barnum & Bailey Circus Train also comes through each year, on its way to the circus's overwintering in Florida.




Spruce Pine has nice shops selling exquisite local arts and crafts. The glasswork in the art gallery was fantastic.

I was particularly blown away by this piece (right), about 10-12 inches tall, with what looks like a baobob tree inside it!

Closed! Will reopen at 10:00AM!

Well, darn!

PHOTO BY LARRY

The Mountain Piecemakers Quilt Show

Can't we put this one on the Amex card??

Back in Burnsville, a small but superb quilt show was on. All from local crafters. From the traditional to the very artsy. We were asked to vote for our favorites, and the one to the right got my vote.














On our last evening we had dinner at the Nu-Wray Inn. Built 1908, and pretty famous - Elvis stayed there! Its recipes show up in southern cookbooks. Delicious country-style dinner, which reminded me of Scarlett O'Hara's reminiscences, during the hardship years at Tara, about the opulent meals they used to have in the prewar days. The dishes just kept coming, and I gave in, fell off my sugar-free wagon and sampled the peach cobbler.






Mist in the mountains, as we drove out.



Sunset on our last evening

Since this post is unwieldy enough, I saved our Wednesday excursion for a post of its own!