Feeds:
Posts
Comments

The Diet Diatribe

December 19, 2023 by mountainmornings

I just had my annual physical with Dr M, an internist/palliative care doctor I love. She sits and faces me, not the computer, she talks about life in general and listens to me, she asks questions about my health and the family (spoiler – she’s a friend of the Bride and Groom). My doctor looks in my ears, listens to my heart and figures out what immunizations I need, like the pneumonia vaccine. Ouch, that hurts going in! Then just before giving me a clean bill of health, right as I was about to hop off the table, she looked at the weight her nurse had noted in my chart that day.

In fact, she flipped all the way back to 2016 and spoke aloud my weight each year…

It wasn’t an actual surprise and I should have seen it coming. After all, I rarely get on a scale and the past 18 months has seen my mobility greatly compromised by my bone density. In other words, I knew I needed to work on building up my strength and endurance, on walking more and starting to lift small weights again. And I’d just gone through my closet for the winter, unearthing sweaters that did feel a bit snug. Subconsciously I knew it was time to move more and eat less. Still, having my doctor point out the obvious facts in such a kind, non-judgmental way was edifying.

I need to lose weight! My AHA moment had arrived. No more blaming the incremental, ballooning pounds on a Mr T presidency, a Pandemic, and my osteoporosis. It’s time to try to pull up those big girl pants and get down to business. Dr M suggested smaller portions while also telling me not to worry about it until after the holidays. Sure, right at the bell of a New Year I could join the throngs of people starting their weight loss journey like salmon swimming upstream. Until then, don’t worry about it.

Well if you know me, telling me NOT to worry about something is a perfect way to keep me worrying, especially since I hadn’t been worrying about my weight so much to begin with. I was just avoiding scales! Call me a humbug, but I’m not starting a food journal, never did and never will. I’m not paying someone else to keep me on track, like Weight Watchers (WW) or Noom. And I told Dr M that I absolutely won’t take Ozempic, and she immediately agreed with me… even if Oprah has decided to jump onboard the diabetes drug weight loss train.

I’ve watched Oprah pull a wagon of fat across the stage in her heyday. Oprah is the Phil Donahue to my generation of women; the second wave of feminists who threw out pantyhose and girdles but decided to try and emulate Twiggy anyway. The big O is still on WW’s Board and stands to make millions more by endorsing an easy fix – the shot that costs hundreds of dollars and promises to curb your appetite. It’s like our whole country has just given up, willpower and lifestyle be damned. And Oprah has given us her blessing to shoot up (It’s not a magic pill, it’s a once-weekly injection for Type 2 diabetes). Let’s see what Sima Sistani, the new CEO of WW had to say when she spoke with All Things Considered:

Ms. Winfrey, along with the rest of our board, stands by our business vision and our program offerings. But we all know that her story has been one that has been a generational story and one that mimics so many people who, on a day to day basis, struggle with the same shame and bias where weight loss has been associated with a preoccupation around thinness. And what we’re trying to do is reshape that conversation around weight health. It’s not a matter of vanity. This is about the degree to which weight impacts your health and your quality of life. And for decades, we’ve discussed weight and dieting and obesity in terms that isolate people and often demotivate them.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/18/1219710239/weightwatchers-oprah-ozempic-drugs-wegovy

When I confessed my conversation with Dr M to the Bride, she said, “DIETS DON’T WORK!” She knew Sistani at Duke; they were undergrads together and Sistani belonged to the same sorority as the Bride’s roomie. Disordered eating was everywhere on the Duke campus in the 90s, but when wasn’t a woman trying to fit into her culture’s idea of beauty? Tattoos, piercings, foot-binding, neck-lengthening chokers, corsets. Even Egyptian women wore eyeliner! So why shouldn’t we starve ourselves today? The thing is, I’m already injecting a drug to build back bone, I’d rather not inject something else for a disease I don’t have.

I’m not here to shame you if Ozempic or Wegovy are your golden tickets. Just don’t think any of these companies are acting as your fiduciary. Maybe the problem is simply capitalism. After all the pharmaceutical industry wins, Weight Watchers wins, and the consumer pays to lose weight. I told the Bride to fight back, weave her yoga teaching into her medical practice for an integrative approach to health and wellness. Borrow from the East and practice preventative medicine. Let’s all eat like we live in a Blue Zone. Break the next generation of feminists free of body dysmorphia, our last self-loathing trap.

At least my shoe size hasn’t changed! Merry Christmas Everyone, be kind to yourselves.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Give Me Liberty!

December 12, 2023 by mountainmornings

It’s the American way, right?

To live freely: to practice your faith without the fear of being swept into a pogrom, or for that matter NOT to practice any faith; to speak your mind in a public square and maybe on the internet too; to care for and cherish your very own bodily autonomy so that you may procreate or NOT, depending on the context. I’m referring of course to the Kate vs Ken case in Texas. Kate Cox is 31 and she was carrying her third child when she found out the baby would never live.

Enter the TX Attorney General, (R) Ken Paxton. Despite Cox’ physician warning that forcing her patient to carry an unviable fetus to term would inflict not just emotional damage but true physical harm – meaning a total hysterectomy at best, death at worst – Paxton believes that only he and his Republican zealots should decide Kate Cox’ fate. He is willing to send any doctor to jail for administering life-saving care. In fact, he threatens to prosecute anyone trying to help Cox leave the state to procure an abortion.

And since the TX Supreme Court overturned a ruling allowing the procedure, she has been forced to do just that – pack up and leave her state. Maybe it’s time we developed a new type of travel itinerary – like adventure travel, destination weddings, or river cruises. Let’s call this post-Dobbs journey the “MY STATE LOVES WOMEN TOUR”: short stays in boutique, medically supervised AirBnBs close to hospitals and/or Planned Parenthood clinics in an actually sane state that allows reproductive health care and freedom to all!

No woman in 2023 in this country should have to ask permission of a judge to receive any kind of healthcare! This bears repeating: No woman in 2023 in this country should have to ask permission of a judge to receive any kind of healthcare! In fact, no person should be put in this position!

And yet, here we are. According to Yahoo News “…a little over 92,000 people in the U.S. traveled to other states in the first half of 2023 to receive abortion care, more than double the 40,600 who did the same during a similar period in 2020.” 

OK so let’s double that number to nearly 200 thousand for a full year and then let’s add all the poor women who cannot afford to travel out of state. I cannot understand how this is happening today to half the population of our country!

While we are lighting the menorah Bob made when he was 12 in summer camp, these are the thoughts swirling around in my mind. Our country is going backward. Books are being banned in our TN schools and I actually had to think twice about putting our electric menorah in the window. Should I be advertising our religion? With blow up santas, snowmen and lights galore in our neighborhood, I bravely plugged our kitsch orange menorah in and turned her on. She’s shining behind our lawn sign that says “Hate Has No Place in our Neighborhood.”

Even though our liberty is in jeopardy in our state houses, I have to believe our country, our democracy will survive.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Cold Snap

December 4, 2023 by mountainmornings

It’s December already. Bob and I try to walk after lunch since it’s too dark to walk after dinner. Yesterday was a record day for Welsh Corgi sightings on our park’s greenway. We met at least five of both the Pembroke and Cardigan variety, and thoroughly enjoyed talking to one young woman who was walking two Corgis – one a beautiful brindle and the other a tri-color like our Tootsie Roll. You might say I am missing having a dog. Nobody greets you at the door like ‘woman’s best friend!’

Speaking of canines, I have to confess my latest streaming obsession. “The Secret Life of Dancing Dogs” is on Hulu and is throughly worth watching. A reclusive woman from Norway and a young British woman with juvenile arthritis will steal your heart along with their dogs. I guess this is the closest thing to reality TV that I actually like because it combines my two great loves – dance and dogs!

https://www.hulu.com/series/the-secret-life-of-dancing-dogs-4df02fde-ad1d-4b73-97a2-ed52772d3469

The first time I saw a woman dancing with a dog was on the Gram. I tend to follow authors on social media and I’d just read Ann Leary’s book “The Good House,” so I was surprised to find out she is married to actor Denis Leary and lives on a farm with lots of animals. You know when we first moved south to Cville I’d wanted to raise alpacas, and so I envied her bucolic life. Leary’s videos were nearly always outside in New England weather of all sorts showing her horse whispering or dog dancing skills. How hard could it be I thought, to teach a dog to dance?

Very hard as I have learned from Hulu. Another sensational series on Apple is “Lessons in Chemistry.” I absolutely loved reading the book by Bonnie Garmus and although it’s true that the movie version was not quite like my imagination, it was enjoyable and cathartic nonetheless. A love story between two scientists with an actual talking dog – I mean…..

There was no dog featured in the latest Parnassus signed first edition, “The Absolution” by Alice McDermott. If you too are not fortunate enough to have the company of a furry friend, you may want to consider curling up with this book on a cold winter night. A seminar on power both personal and global, and its malignant consequences, it is compelling. She writes from a feminist perspective about our early build-up to the Vietnam War… which had me thinking of those Israeli soldiers, the young WOMEN who tried to warn their superiors about the uptick in Hamas activity before 10/7.

I’m beginning to wrap Hanukkah presents since latkes will be served the first night, this coming Thursday, December 7 (WHAAAA)! We decided to gift the Grands their first present early – warm puffer coats! This year will be a bittersweet holiday season for Jews around the world. We will light candles to illuminate yet another war, another moment in time when Jews were not assimilated or extinguished entirely.

In the second century BCE, the Holy Land was ruled by the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks), who tried to force the people of Israel to accept Greek culture and beliefs instead of mitzvah observance and belief in G‑d. Against all odds, a small band of faithful but poorly armed Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks from the land, reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of G‑d.“

https://www.chabad.org/holidays/chanukah/article_cdo/aid/102911/jewish/What-Is-Hanukkah.htm

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Authentically Yours

November 28, 2023 by mountainmornings

“This above all: to thine own self be true.”

This was the Hamlet quote I penned in the Rocker’s high school senior yearbook. It follows that if one is true to oneself, then telling the truth to others should come easy. Just like all those Republicans who have decided not to run for reelection are now spouting the truth. Of course Joe Biden won the election, although they may still follow that up with a conspiracy theory or two. Rep (R) Ken Buck of Colorado, who was evicted from his Capitol building office after voting against Jim Jordan for Speaker said:

“Our nation is on a collision course with reality and a steadfast commitment to truth, even uncomfortable truths, is the only way forward,” 

False news and disinformation have become ubiquitous for this generation. Maybe that explains why the word of the year is, “Authentic.” It was 2023’s most searched word in this country, “…driven by stories and conversations about AI [artificial intelligence], celebrity culture, identity, and social media”, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary. They define “authentic” as:

… not false or imitation; true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character; worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact; genuine, bona fide, being actually and exactly what is claimed. authentic implies being fully trustworthy.” 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authentic

Wouldn’t an “authentic politician” be an oxymoron? The Flapper certainly thought so; it was all downhill after FDR.

My son must have followed that yearbook admonition of over 20 years ago. because he and his wife Kiki are as authentically legit as it gets! We had the best quiet Thanksgiving week with them cooking, hiking, making music, playing board games and generally chillaxing. The Pumpkin is learning to shred a guitar like his Uncle, and the Bug wowed Kiki with her basketball prowess. The little emperor commonly known as Watson the Frenchie kept us all laughing while watching the National Dog Show. I was rooting for the Welsh Corgi of course!

When I was young, I’d hear girls say they could “be themselves” around some boy. A good sign I thought, to be able to trust someone else, to be vulnerable. But then, did that mean that most of the time this girl was not being herself? Being true to yourself is a high bar. Still, I wish todays’ young girls didn’t feel the need to conform, or compete with each other. Granted I was a knee sock, Weejun wearing preppy in high school. New penny loafers had to be blackened just so with polish before wearing; we all get to pick our own tribes. And for most of us, college and real life help soften the edges.

If we are all on a collision course with the truth, we better fasten our seat belts. There are still insurrectionists masquerading in Congress; in fact 147 Republicans (139 representatives and 8 senators) voted NOT to certify the election on the evening of January 6, 2021… after running for their lives during the insurrection. The ringleader of this kooky coup, Jordan, was nearly elected speaker! Plus, we have the many trials and tribulations of the Republican front-runner to suffer through.

So put your thinking beanies on everybody. Let’s check the facts, and vote like your life and liberty depend on it. Because they do.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

Techno Turkey

November 20, 2023 by mountainmornings

Good Morning everyone. I wish you well if you’re traveling this week. We’ll be cooking up a storm here in Nashville with all the usual sides – my butternut squash casserole and the Bride’s baked sweet potato marshmallow confection. In fact I’ll have to make this short because it’s time to make the corn bread for my traditional corn bread stuffing; no jalapenos, or sausage, because I’m keeping it classic.

But before I head into the kitchen, I feel I’ve finally been vindicated! For a long time now I’ve been suspicious of my devices. Not to the point of roaming around Times Square with a poster, but I think that they are listening to us. Even when they’re not turned on… Why? Because almost every night I climb into bed and Bob starts getting ads on his iPad, like ads about cordless Dyson vacuums, or bras. And I understand, I really do.

But every now and then we’ll get targeted ads about stuff we’ve only discussed in the privacy of our home. It’s one thing to search the internet for a small bathroom vanity, followed by Wayfair vanity ads, and it’s quite another to have a conversation about “natural pools/ponds” and start seeing them show up everywhere. What I didn’t know is that Alexa was actually caught listening, recording and selling private conversations a few years ago, and they even archived the data. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-alexa-spying-scandal-creates-trust-problem-with-customers-2018-5

Oh and in this season of giving, guess how a reporter tracked the money trail from lawyers who had business before the SCOTUS to Clarence Thomas? For a Christmas party no less. They sent the cash via Venmo to one of his aides! “J’ACCUSE”, Mr Thomas.

“Just as surprising was the way the publication learned about it: from the aide’s public Venmo records. Brian X. Chen, the consumer technology writer for The Times, wrote that even he was surprised that such records of money transfers could be public.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/opinion/apple-google-privacy.html

I draw the line with technology and not cause I’m too old to understand it. I’ve never used Venmo. I refuse to talk to Alexa, I will only thumb-text. I’m off Twitter thank goodness, and I’m not going near Tiktok. Can’t quite quit the Gram, but using Facebook/Meta sparingly and only on my laptop. And anytime an App want’s me to sign in for some AI, I say, “No thank you!” That was way before today’s big news about the chaos at OpenAI since Sam Altman was sacked and promptly scooped up by Microsoft.

In a bit of good news, California and Colorado have enacted laws to allow for one single opt-out request to have ALL data brokers delete ALL your personal information. Guess every state will have to clunk along to catch up for us to expect any semblance of privacy. And I’ll just have keep the Flapper’s secret ingredients for her stellar banana cream pie to myself!

Here are the Grands baking (apple cider donut muffins) and making (a guitar) this past week.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

SLT and Me

November 14, 2023 by mountainmornings

My Zoom call with siblings ended Sunday on a funny note. I was recalling the Bug’s latest basketball game, and a conversation with some parents afterwards – it seems a mom was arranging for a past Miss Tennessee beauty queen to give a two hour “etiquette and table manners” lesson. I was listening politely, the Groom whipped out his phone and was interested in the date, and all of a sudden the Bride said, “NO!” It was unequivocal, this was not happening. Her reaction surprised me, but the Groom just shot me one of those, ‘you raised her’ looks and that. was. that. Kay burst out laughing.

My brother Dr Jim, the psychologist, put his palm to his forehead and suggested I read about social modeling. Albert Bandura was a pioneering psychologist in the 60s. After Jim returned from Vietnam, it wouldn’t surprise me if he and Al met up at a conference in Big Sur. Bandura synthesized the swinging sixtie’s cognitive behavioral models of learning. In a nutshell, he developed Social Learning Theory (SLT). Imagine a Venn diagram with “Behavioral Factors” in one circle, “Environmental Factors” in another, and “Personal Factors” in another which would include ‘…cognition, affective and biological events’; SLT lies at its intersection.

So if we learn best from observation and modeling certain behaviors, was my brother telling me that the Bride was right? Would teaching young girls the rules of etiquette be a modern day equivalent of binding their feet? And what would Barbie say about all this… Well she would want me to be grateful like a pageant winner should be. I have a few people to thank for teaching me table manners:

The Flapper taught me how to set a table and to cut meat one piece at a time. She also demonstrated which fork goes with what dish. Of course, NJ in 1959, when I was the Bug’s age, wasn’t Victorian England – we didn’t have to grapple with oyster forks.

Mr B, my step-father the judge, would occasionally look across the table straight at me and bark, “Is your head tired?” So I learned not to slump or rest my elbows on the table, and therefore my head in my hand at dinner. Plus, I was never allowed to read at the table, that was considered just plain rude.

My big sister Kay always had a bit of wisdom to impart whenever we’d eat out in a swanky NYC restaurant. Most importantly she taught me to NEVER pick up a whole piece of bread and shove it in my mouth. “You break a small piece of bread off, butter it and voila.” These days I try not to inhale the bread bowl before a fancy meal; but at least when I can’t resist, like at Red Lobster, I’m breaking bread daintily.

In retrospect, I’m proud of my feminist Bride who said they don’t give boys etiquette lessons! Maybe if it was co-ed? When my daughter was a college student in Paris she did take some kind of wine and dine course, but it was for American students of both sexes. They learned which wine to serve with each course, and they learned about the history and art of haute cuisine. So very French, n’est ce pas?

Table manners are the least of most girls’ worries. Pre-teens must not only deal with the usual hormones and peer pressure of yesteryear, but also the voracious social media messages to chase perfection today, to filter their image and emotions; not to mention the potential for horrific online bullying. Makes me glad my foster mother Nell always said, “What would the neighbors think?” She taught me by modeling her insecurity, not to care what others thought of me. Some might argue, this wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

Does one keep one’s hat on at an outdoor beach restaurant? Mais OUI!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

How to be a Star

November 6, 2023 by mountainmornings

“Funny Girl” opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1964. It closed the summer of 1967, after my Freshman year in college. Barbra Streisand was my ‘shero,’ playing Fanny Brice in a feminist Horatio Alger tale. I met Barbra one cold night, after her brilliant performance at the stage door; she graciously signed my Playbill.

I had just played Adelaide in my high school’s production of “Guys and Dolls.” The drama club was an all encompassing home for me; I could easily lose myself in a ditzy, loyal and yes, funny character. On opening night, the laughter and applause was addictive. My friend Bess, the editor of our senior yearbook, wrote something like, “…destined for Broadway” under my name.

After all, I grew up listening to show tunes and studying ballet. The Flapper loved Ethel Merman almost as much as I idolize Barbra. I would sing and dance in our front parlor like everyone was watching. But the sixties had other plans for Bess and me. We both went to Boston after graduating from Dover Senior High School, where our young dreams were derailed by a war, political assassinations, an illegal abortion and even a cult.

Although I never became a Broadway star, I followed Barbra’s meteoric rise to EGOT status. She had always dreamed of becoming famous, while my dreams were limited to summer camp. I remember feeling flummoxed to learn of her stage fright. How could she not love the limelight? Streisand’s iconic profile is currently on the cover of Vanity Fair, and she was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday because she wrote her autobiography – “My Name is Barbra,” which will be released tomorrow. I just pre-ordered it!

Barbra wanted to set the record straight, and I want to find out what made her so ever-loving badass.

When I opened my BBC news tab this morning with coffee, one headline jumped out at me – “I haven’t had much fun in my life.” That Egyptian Queen profile wore a sardonic smile. And so I found out that a ME TOO moment onstage in her breakout hit “Funny Girl,” at the age of 22, was responsible for more than two decades of stage fright. Charlie Chaplin’s son Sydney, her leading man and almost 20 years her senior, had his sexual advances assaults rebuffed. He publicly became emotionally abusive, and tried to sabotage her performance every single night.

But like many women of our generation, she softened the story:

It’s just a person who had a crush on me – which was unusual – and when I said to him, ‘I don’t want to be involved with you’, he turned on me in such a way that was very cruel. He started muttering under his breath while I was talking on stage. Terrible words. Curse words. And he wouldn’t look into my eyes anymore. And you know, when you’re acting, it’s really important to look at the other person, and react to them.“

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67283909

Maybe Chaplin did us a huge favor by propelling Streisand to Hollywood, where she now lives in Oprahland, among the lapsed Royalty of Harry and Meghan. Live theatre’s loss became the silver screen’s gain. She insisted on being in control of her life, on having creative control of her contracts. She gained a reputation as a difficult diva, but I never bought it. If she wanted to change a scene, she was probably right. Barbra became a director in order to maintain her control over a project. She wrote the script for 1983’s “Yentl” and wasn’t paid for it; she directed the movie and was paid minimum wage; and her acting fee was cut in half!

Mama can you hear me? I love Barbra even more now for not “fixing” her nose and rejecting Chaplin… for becoming one of my first feminist icons. But I’m not sure what to make of her Malibu basement stuffed with antiques and vintage dolls. Yes, dolls – Ibsen much? Still, she possessed a spark from a very young age, a need to become famous. And in her words, it was partially due to losing her father when she was a baby. “If you don’t have a source of unconditional love as a child, you will probably try to attain that for the rest of your life,” Barbra told the BBC.

I’d like to thank the Academy, and my foster parents for giving me the capacity to love unconditionally. Fame is fleeting, but stars can last for an eternity. Happy Birthday to the Pumpkin, our stellar 3rd grader!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Being Afraid

October 31, 2023 by mountainmornings

It’s Halloween. Some people like going through haunted houses, dressing up with ghoulish makeup, and tricking you into handing out candy. Perfectly normal women become sexy French maids. Not me. I won’t watch horror movies or anything with zombies. In fact, I was watching a trailer with Ralph Fiennes in LA that caught me off guard – what appeared to be a cooking contest turned into something else entirely. I closed my eyes.

Did I say LA? Yes, Bob and I took a short, stealth trip out West to see the Rocker and Aunt Kiki. We flew in to see their finished home perched on a hill. It was so sweet to sit and talk, watch Cooper’s hawks gliding above us, and play backgammon. We didn’t Go Go GO! Instead, Bob taught them how to make pasta from scratch. I found myself looking around, at their beautiful home, at the amazing life they are building together in California, and catching my breath.

Kiki came home with her studio’s new coffee table book, so I immediately ordered mine. The living room on the cover is divinely inspired…. “Shamshiri: Interiors.” I’m lucky to have such an outstanding designer daughter on speed dial! Then we went for a seaview walk hike and I saw my first wild coyote.

The coyote is a medium-sized member of the dog family that includes wolves and foxes. With pointed ears, a slender muzzle, and a drooping bushy tail, the coyote often resembles a German shepherd or collie. Coyotes are usually a grayish brown with reddish tinges behind the ears and around the face but coloration can vary from a silver-gray to black. The tail usually has a black tip. Eyes are yellow, rather than brown like many domestic dogs. Most adults weigh between 25-35 pounds…”

https://urbancoyoteresearch.com/coyote-info/general-information-about-coyotes

It actually did look like a skinny wolf. I wasn’t afraid of the coyote, but I understood why my son’s cats must stay inside. They are predators and usually hunt rodents and rabbits, not people. You’re supposed to make a lot of noise if you see one, and indeed this guy looked at us, turned around and slowly sashayed away. I could picture his text bubble: “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

We’re back in Nashville and luckily I bought tons of candy before we left. Our new/old house is in a neighborhood of young families. I didn’t count last year, but I hope I don’t run out of treats tonight. There’s a skeleton waving from my front porch rocking chair and that’s the extent of my spooky decorating skills this year. After a week that’s seen another mass shooting in Maine of all places, and more and more anti-semitic rhetoric on social media I’m feeling enraged – but I guess that’s better than fear.

I will not let fear dictate my behavior.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Quilting Pumpkins

October 23, 2023 by mountainmornings

It’s true, I’m just an old arts and crafts counselor at heart, who was masquerading as a boating and canoeing counselor at Camp St Joseph for Girls. Teaching water skiing by day, and knitting at night. Over the years I’ve tackled: crocheting Irish flowers; needlepointing fancy footstools; Celtic cable knitting; sewing pandemic masks; and quilting elephant crib toys. Those tiny grey elephants of differing shades and textures, suspended over a new baby’s crib, gave me the most pleasure. That is, until now.

The arts festival we bumped into on our glamping getaway is the reason my kitchen is doubling as a sewing room, again. The owner of a little shop had the cutest small, handsewn pumpkins I’d ever seen. If you’d rather have a real pumpkin slowly dying on your front porch read no further. Bob and I are finished carving pumpkins and roasting seeds. But if I were to decorate, and that’s always a big IF, for Halloween, I’d want something sustainable that can do double duty on Thanksgiving. So I paid attention when instructions were given on how to quilt patchwork pumpkins, and then I heard,

“You can always look it up on Pinterest, DIY Fat Quarter Pumpkins!”

What the heck are fat quarters? Well a fat quarter is a piece of fabric cut crosswise from a 1⁄2-yard piece of fabric – ie an 18×44″ rectangle cut in half to yield an 18×22″ “fat” 1⁄4-yard piece. And it just so happens the store had bunches of ‘fat quarters’ already cut in lots of fall colors and patterns ready to sell. Surprise. My next grandparenting craft activity, after mosaic birdbaths, was set! I hauled out the ironing board and iron and started cutting out cardboard ellipses as pumpkin templates.

It just so happens that the war in Israel and Gaza has been escalating in tandem with my pumpkin project. The Grands finished their pumpkins in a day last weekend, but then I couldn’t stop. In the middle of a brutal conflict half a world away, I’ve found some comfort in keeping my hands busy, in making something beautiful despite growing despair. Bob reminds me that I have no control over the Mideast; I remind myself that I do have control over needle and thread.

I walk through the Fall garden, still trying valiantly to hang on. The sage and rosemary are bountiful while the tarragon begins to wither. This is my favorite time of year – a time to think about new beginnings, for harvesting, a birthday season for my family. The unbearable heat of a southern summer is gone. This is the time of year to witness squirrels collecting nuts and cardinals standing out like sentries in trees.

Thankfully my Parnassus book arrived in the mail – “The Comfort of Crows: a Backyard Year,” by Margaret Renkl. Her words about nature, about the flora and fauna in her own backyard, are a balm. Her stories soothe me into sleep.

As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief. Joy at the ongoing pleasures of the natural world: “Until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will always find a reason to love the world.” And grief at a shifting climate, at winters that end too soon, at songbirds growing fewer and fewer.” 

https://www.parnassusbooks.net/comfortofcrows

And the universal grief of war. I have to believe, to hope that peace is attainable. So I’ll continue to quilt as a meditation.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Ring of Fire

October 16, 2023 by mountainmornings

The war invades my thoughts. It seeps into my dreams.

A friend from the midwest asked what I thought of the war because I am the only Jew she knows. I said, “And I’m an Irish one at that!” I try not to watch the images, still I can see the brutality in my mind. Dancing with the Torah at night, dragged out of your ‘safe’ room in the morning and loaded onto a truck. Grandparents, babies, and children, sisters and brothers all herded into Gaza.

Did you know that fourteen of the 199 hostages are citizens of Thailand? They are not just Israeli citizens, some are also Americans, Italians, and Germans. I wonder how you negotiate with Hamas; do you trade Israeli soldiers for Palestinian prisoners?

Israel has a well-proven expertise in hostage rescue, which it trains for intensively. Set up in 1957, its secretive Sayeret Matkal unit is broadly similar to Britain’s SAS or America’s Delta Force. It shot to fame in 1976 with its Raid on Entebbe where its commandos rescued hostages from a hijacked plane at a Ugandan airport. The commander of that unit was Yonatan Netanyahu, the only fatality amongst the Israeli commandos. Today his brother Benjamin is Israel’s Prime Minister and it is with him that the decision rests as to whether to wait it out in the hopes of a negotiated release of the hostages or go in hard in the hopes of rescuing them by force.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67084408

On Friday night, a week after the attack, we gathered at home around a live stream Sabbath Service from the synagogue. We listened to the Rabbi grapple with grief. In the Torah portion, we went back to the beginning, to the Creation story – a tale of the forbidden fruit. But what if the apple wasn’t a test? What if we were given free will, and the test is yet to come?

In other news, I’ve been sewing quilted pumpkins to keep my hands busy. Bob and the real Pumpkin – who wants to be Einstein for Halloween – made a pin-hole box in order to view the partial eclipse safely. It transformed the ring of fire into a small white ellipse on cardboard! And the Bug is starting to look like a California skater girl.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »