We are finally here in Italy, touring the country again with Marco and Claudio, but this time from their home in Viareggio. We awaken to church bells and cafe Americano in the garden. Flowers are blooming amid buzzing Vespas and even the sidewalks are arranged like quilts. A baby girl, Bianca, was born next door the day before we arrived and so her front door is festooned with pink ribbon.
We stroll just a few blocks to the Ligurian Sea where the sand is not too hot, yet. Only the Pumpkin has jumped in the gentle waves. We visit ancient cities and discover small, Bronze Age statues of people in a province of Lucca. Castle walls surround this whole town in Tuscany, as if to say we value every one of our people, not just royalty. Art is everywhere.
Did you know that because of the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834), Jews brought the tomato to Italy?
Of course we are learning to cook the traditional food. Yesterday we made green lasagna noodles with two different sauces – a Bolognese and a Bechamel. The grands are enjoying the desserts, tiramisu and bignes, like profiteroles only better. Today Bob and I finally ordered a pizza for lunch on the Promenade, but it was like no other with fresh prosciutto and funghi.
If I were to define happiness, it would be now, this time with my whole family. Watching the Bug fill tiny ravioli while the Pumpkin works the dough through a pasta machine. Sitting on the sofa with Pietro, the truffle/rescue dog, and discussing design with Kiki over an Aperol. Walking in the rain with the Bride and Groom, and suddenly the Rocker takes my hand.
And Bob, forever mi amore, celebrating today our 45th Wedding Anniversary by doing laundry and caring for me. This cold I brought with me has turned into an infection. It’s OK. It’s life, I guess even this virus wants to survive in this beautiful country.
Someone at the Seder table asked the Groom about the outbreak of bird flu, aka H5N1 Avian Influenza, in cattle. He had just finished his shift as an attending physician on the Intensive Care Unit at his hospital. He was still seeing patients recovering from severe post-Covid complications. My brave, Intensivist son-in-law was about to dig into my specialty Passover brisket when he put down his fork, looked up and said, “Don’t ask.”
Despite the fear of another pandemic on the horizon, and the growth of anti-Semitism on college campuses, our family’s Seder went off without a hitch! The Bride delivered her traditional matzoh ball soup, the Bug chopped up a delicious charoset, and cousin Peg made all the yummy veggie fixings, with a broken toe no less. The little Emperor never left my side since he knows I’m a soft touch. Listening to the Bug read the Four Questions – Why is this night different from other nights? etc – in Hebrew – made my heart melt.
Lately, I cannot shake the feeling that this time is NOT very different to other times. SCOTUS news may be all about Mr T, and his so-called immunity case, but I’ve heard enough about the disgraced ex-president. The Supremes are also looking at the state of Idaho and exactly how physicians may practice their craft. Remember when I wrote about EMTALA? https://mountainmornings.net/2024/01/09/emtala/ It’s an Emergency Medicine cardinal rule that no one may be turned away from a hospital’s ER.
If SCOTUS strikes down EMTALA, because of the Dobbs decision on abortion, we will all return to the ‘good ole days’ of doctors refusing to treat patients for any number of reasons – like the wrong insurance… When Bob first started out in this field, clerks at the front door of an ER could toe-tag a patient, one who may be critical, to be transferred to a public hospital. Triage by socio-economic standing.
If EMTALA is struck down, ER docs would lose their license and end up in jail should they happen to save a pregnant woman’s life but lose the developing fetus in the process. Yes, once we women had no bodily autonomy at all. We had to use clothes hangers, or hire stealth nurses if we were lucky; or, if we could afford it we’d fly to another country. Today red states are passing trafficking laws under the guise of trafficking minors for commercial sex, like TN Section 39-13-309 in order to prosecute anyone trying to cross states’ borders for an abortion. Who will be (or was) the first woman to die because of these horrendous laws?
If this sounds dystopian, it’s because it is. But back to the other question at the Seder table, the one about bird flu. Who will be the first person to die of H5N1? The USDA has found the virus in milk but it is not monitoring it for some reason. Is it spreading via milking machines? Nearly 40% of cows in the Texas panhandle tested positive. Are they testing the water supplies? Nope, I guess we’re just waiting for the next pandemic to show up in Emergency Rooms.
I had to read that twice. So my daughter, and all her Emergency Medicine colleagues, may be prosecuted for doing their jobs and will be on the frontlines of the next epidemic. It will certainly be too late for prevention. Bob’s brother nearly died from Swine Flu. Have we learned nothing from history? There will always be threats to our liberty. There will always be a Pharaoh and plagues, and questions. But next year, will we still be a democracy?
This is us, two writers and a doctor, prepping for the Seder.
This has been the winter for strengthening one of my super powers – SOUP! During the pandemic, while Bob honed in on his sourdough bread, I discovered a delicious Asparagus Vegetable Soup recipe courtesy of Jamie Oliver https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/creamy-asparagus-soup-with-a-poached-egg-on-toast/. I don’t do the egg on top nonsense btw. Now, due to unforeseen circumstances, I’ve been experimenting with more healthy and hearty soups. My take on these liquid elixirs is usually thick, like a stew.
But I’d rather not label these gastronomic efforts; or maybe I should just call everything I make in one big pot “chowder”? Thinking chowder was meant only for fish stews, I went in search of its meaning and yes, it’s mostly fish, but not always – https://www.foodandwine.com/soup/chowder/chowder
The problem with Bob is he’s not happy when I whip out the immersion blender. He likes a chunky soup, he wants to identify the vegetables. Maybe it’s just that we still have all our teeth? I did manage to win him over with a beautiful, cauliflower soup from the New York Times: Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Rosemary Olive Oil!https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020764-creamy-cauliflower-soup-with-rosemary-olive-oil that surprisingly has no cream whatsoever!
I’m probably best known for the soup I deliver to new moms and friends recovering from an illness. We have a cousin who was in need of some Jewish penicillin, so last week I taught his wife, Peg, how to make it, Reform Jewish Style. When I was in the middle of converting to Judaism, the rabbi arranged a cooking class for me. You guessed it – Real Chicken Soup! No matzah balls, no noodles or rice, just the basics. I’ve never felt so professional as I passed on my secret recipe to Peg in her new kitchen! She was a delightful sous chef, while also archiving the lesson for all eternity.
I brought my Starbucks apron and we traded tidbits of of gossip, chopping away, slowly perfuming the air with chicken fat. Maybe the world needs the next Southern Jewish French Irish Julia Child? My cousin is also a writer, a prolific expository health journalist, for major digital and print news outlets. In fact, she already has a cookbook… and I might have major writer-envy… but in a good way. I’m so happy Peg and her husband moved right across the river.
The Bride’s famous Sweet Potato Soup was recently discussed in detail here https://mountainmornings.net/2024/01/24/gray-swan-events/ and it continues to be a favorite in my winter soup rotation. Don’t despair if you don’t have any V8 on hand, you can substitute a can of fire-roasted tomatoes. I love the dollop of peanut butter you add at the end. This might be my favorite soup of 2023, and next on the list?
I’d like to try my hand at Pasta e Fagioli, a classic Italian pasta and bean soup. The Flapper used to make this all the time. I asked my brother and sister if they remembered a favorite soup from their childhood, and they both said Pea Soup. They like to remind me that their early years were much harder than mine. After our Year of Living Dangerously, Kay told me she had to do all of the housework, including cooking, while our mother was “… lying on the couch in the kitchen.” Jim told me if they had a ham to eat during the week, they could count on pea soup made with the bone that weekend.
They had no TV in 1949, and the radio was stuck in a big box in the front parlor, so the Flapper read aloud poems from a little red book, “A Thousand and One Poems.” Kay has all these poems stored away in her brain that she can recite at will. Just ask her! Occasionally a nurse would visit the kitchen in Scranton, trying to stretch out the Flapper’s legs, while I imagine my Mother screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs. Poetry and cursing in motion.
Making soup has become my antidote to cursing the media for leading every story with you know who. What about calling anorexia “terminal” so that patients can enter hospice? “In Colorado, a state where medical aid in dying is legal, [patients] would also be eligible for MAID (medical aid in dying) drugs…” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/26/terminal-anorexia-mental-illness-diagnosis/
What about Alabama calling embryos “babies”? “In a recent court case over embryos accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled under state law that all embryos are “children”. However, the global medical and scientific consensus on when reproductive cells become human life says otherwise.”
I’ve finally chiseled my way out of the ice palace. Last week the state of TN suffered from an extremely long, sub-freezing, snow event. Every day was a snow day; schools and most businesses closed down and since we live in a western, residential part of Nashville, our roads were free for sledding. I didn’t see a plow until the day before yesterday, 8 days after the first snow. The truck tried going up our small hill, which was a sheet of ice at this point, then it backed all the way down our road, beeping its disappointment.
Climate scientists call these crazy weather events “gray swans,” meaning they are predictable and still unprecedented.
“…the way to think about climate change now is through two interlinked concepts. The first is nonlinearity, the idea that change will happen by factors of multiplication, rather than addition. The second is the idea of “gray swan” events, which are both predictable and unprecedented. Together, these two ideas explain how we will face a rush of extremes, all scientifically imaginable but utterly new to human experience.Our climate world is now one of nonlinear relationships—which means we are now living in a time of accelerating change.”
In other words, the winds will get faster at a certain altitude as the temperatures rise, and these jet-stream winds will accelerate much faster than predicted. I believe our little storm was a gray swan. The south has never had such a prolonged period of extreme cold – single digit days mixed with snow and sleet. Ever since Covid, I’ve hated using the word “unprecedented” but it certainly applies here.
The heat on the second floor of the Bride and Groom’s house stopped working. My friend, Leslie’s heat downstairs also went out on strike, so we spent an afternoon making soup in my warm kitchen. Turns out Leslie has an old fashioned wooden sled that the Pumpkin enjoyed luging down our street at record speeds.
One night, the Grands had a sleepover – we watched Home Alone 3 with Alex Pruitt instead of Macaulay Culkin. After a slow start, the kids were ROFL. The next morning we had fun watching Watson the Frenchie, aka The Little Emperor, try to retrieve tennis balls we launched into the snow. Also hilarious.
Gone are the days of building snow people in the sun. We had enough snow to build an army last week, but single digit temperatures kept us house bound. Plus, Bob reminded me that nose hairs freeze at 15 degrees. Since I’ve been in full-on soup mode all week, I thought I’d share a most comforting winter sweet potato soup
Sweet potato soup. 1 onion, 2 sweet potatoes and 3 big carrots. 1 big tablespoon grated ginger and half teaspoon cayenne pepper 1qt vegetable broth, 2 cups V8, 1 teaspoon sugar and half cup of peanut butter Chop n Sauté onion and carrots Add ginger, cayenne pepper a dash of salt Add broth and V8 and peeled cubed sweet potatoes Cook for 25 minutes Add peanut butter and blend w immersion blender after it cools a little.
Thanks to the Bride for this recipe. Today we are warming up in Nashville, and I’m eager to get out and about. My fear of falling has finally subsided a bit. I hope you’ve all stayed warm and safe through our gray swan.
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.”
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.
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!
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…”
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.
To celebrate Fat Tuesday, the Bride joined us for a quick Korean lunch of Bibimbap!
After trying out an Uzbekistan restaurant with our Germantown crew last week, we all decided to meet for dinner every month at a new and/or unusual place. Bob and I get to choose the next March culinary pit stop, so I asked my creative daughter for her thoughts – and I am paraphrasing here but – this famous Nashville chef, Deb Paquette, who owns Etch and Jasper’s to name a few famous restaurants has said that Korea House is her all-time favorite! And it’s right in our neighborhood.
I thought about Ada and her friends meeting at a NJ diner every Tuesday, and how I used to join them when I was in town. It was sad to see their numbers diminish over the years, but that sense of predictability and camaraderie appealed to me. Also not having to cook was a bonus. Is this another sign that I am aging; like watching Jeopardy? I think it’s more of a need to stay connected with our Italian cohorts since we moved a few miles away.
My foster parents used to go out to dinner, at the other diner in town and yes NJ has LOTS of diners, almost every Sunday. I would order the exact, same thing every time, veal parmigiana. That was before I learned about veal being a baby calf only six to eight months old and all. I must say that shopping and cooking for your family was not layered with climate or ethical considerations back in the day. I was supposed to clean my plate and that I did because they, the Greatest Generation, endured the Great Depression.
Which meant that nothing went to waste!
I remember giving up PIZZA for Lent, and I remember a priest rubbing ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, and all the statues getting covered in purple cloth at Sacred Heart Church. I’d never been to a Mardi Gras festival until we started traveling, so the whole eat/until/you/burst idea never came up in my childhood… except for the cleaning your plate problem. And Nell never allowed booze in the house, so Shrove Tuesday, aka Fat or Pancake Tuesday, was news to me, but think about it. It almost feels like Yom Kippur.
The whole making your confession thing and asking for absolution – only instead of not eating anything for a day, Christians give up their favorite food until Easter arrives. And then watch out, it’s chocolate bunnies and Cadbury eggs galore! Fasting seems to be a big part of most religions, either for a month or a day; in retrospect, deprivation should lead us to enlightenment, or hallucinations at least. Fat Tuesday, yesterday, was the end of Mardi Gras season, and it makes sense that the custom of drinking and dancing and throwing beads around was just this new Christian faith adapting to pagan Roman rituals.
“After Christianity arrived in Rome, old traditions were incorporated into the new faith and debauchery became a prelude to the Lenten season. This fusion resulted in a hedonistic period of boozing, masquerading and dancing with a heavy dose of religion.”
On Fat Tuesday the world witnessed our President standing in Poland, after visiting a war zone, and talking about meeting the Pope. He was met with a large cheering crowd, wrapped in blue and yellow Ukraine flags while he spoke about freedom. In contrast, the Russian imperialist sat while giving his state of the Russian state speech to a small group of elites in a strangely blue ballroom. He touted lies with impunity and said the West started the war in Ukraine, and I find it hard to believe the Russian people accept this nonsense propaganda.
Following the breakup of the USSR, the numbers of Russians identifying as Orthodox Christians has surged every year. Russian Orthodoxy was the main religion in Ukraine, until the Ukraine Orthodox church recently split from Russia… after 300 years. Instead of fostering healing, peace and diplomacy, Christianity has taken sides.
Ukrainians are not only giving up their brave men and women, their livelihoods and their schools and homes to Russian bombs, during Lent they are expected to abstain from meat, meat by-products, poultry, eggs, and dairy products! I wonder how many soldiers, on both sides, will be getting ashes smeared across their foreheads today. The online Britannica tells us that “The ashes serve as a memento mori and are often accompanied with some variation of the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” … Ash Wednesday is an obligatory day of fasting and abstinence, where only one full meal and no meat are to be consumed.”
We are all stardust, we are all peace seeking humans. But there are times to pick a side, to stand up to a bully. Silence and indifference must never win again.
I was reading one of those “end of the year” screeds about the cultural turning points for a new year. One of the writer’s admonitions rang true for me – there shall be no more offering up of a cell phone in someone’s face to prove a point! Or even to simply show a picture of your cat/dog/baby to anyone. Definitely. I’m guilty of this myself on occasion. We’ve all been a bit constricted by Covid in the past, but let’s keep those cell phones in our pockets, shall we?
And speaking of pockets, I will not buy another pair of pants without pockets, and I don’t care how “slimming” they might be. Even yoga pants have little side pockets for your phone. In fact, I shall do less shopping in general, online and otherwise. I will sift through my beautiful walk-in closet and delete the pants without pockets. There’s no need for any vintage shopping either since my closet is a veritable treasure trove of antiques. I’ve already sent Aunt Kiki some 60s sweaters so I’m well on the way to improving fashion industry’s waste.
The Bride was working on New Year’s Day, so I cooked up some of my famous Jerusalem chicken and had the Groom and Grands over for dinner. Of course I also spent the day soaking and creating a black-eyed pea concoction that was met with only some disdain by the Littles, but guaranteed to bring us Good Luck in 2023! And boy, do I need some of that luck this year. I asked the table what they had learned in the past year, and we all agreed to try very hard NOT to play the Blame Game this year – or as the Rocker likes to put it, you play the hand you get. You get Covid, you don’t get Covid, get over yourself!
Did you know the most searched word on Google last year was “Wordle?” I have to admit, Bob and I enjoy playing Wordle almost every morning. It’s short, fast and in an ER doc’s wheelhouse. I usually start at my desk, with alternating words; if you must know I use ADORE and PAINT don’t ask me why. Then I yell, “Help” plaintively. Bob will stop what’s he’s doing and come to the rescue. After all, I have to keep him busy since he retired. I’m pretty sure we will continue playing, but I shall stop posting my Wordle results to Twitter. I realize nobody on social media cares about my score – and in the dead of night I wonder if anyone on Twitter cares about me at all. The jury is still out about leaving Twitter since Elon Musk took over – check back with me in a few months.
The love/hate relationship with Facebook continues into 2023. I love hearing from old friends about their lives and this blog, but I hate the black hole of time it sucks out of my day. It shall remain only on my desktop computer… with all notifications turned off. So there!
Last year I wanted to be brave and chop off all my hair, but then my little falling incident happened. And because I was wheelchair-bound, I stopped visiting my fabulous Drag Queen Hair Stylist. My inner pixie is best left in last year. Ditto the whole bangs idea. Think Frances McDermott, not Goldie Hawn. Not that I have anything against Goldie, after all she started a foundation to help kids deal with anxiety: “Remembering my own childhood anxiety, I longed to show children everywhere how to rediscover their natural joy, understand the value of their emotions, and learn to feel empathy for others,” Hawn wrote in her book.https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/06/health/mindfulness-kids-goldie-hawn-life-itself-wellness/index.html
Now the locks are longer and of course Bob loves it. The longer the better! So I’m giving up my “after a certain age” rule of requesting only a predictable, short bob cut, and letting things go. And believe me, when Nashville froze over last week, I was happy to have some hairs on my neck.
Thankfully, the year of Real Butter is behind us. I never understood the whole charcouterie board of butter anyway. One of our small indulgences during the pandemic has been buying only Irish butter! Oh the color, the taste. But both Bob and I are trending upwards toward dangerous cholesterol levels, so we’ll be quite mindful this year about our eating habits. More fish, less red meat… and less butter. And the same goes for drinking. Last year’s dry January, has turned into 11 months of only the occasional glass of wine or canned cocktail.
Letting go of the devil may care, we’re all on the Titanic anyway, so why not just indulge days of the pandemic feels right. And in no way does this feel constricting; the opposite in fact. My mind and heart are opening to new ways of navigating this life – the road blocks, the speed bumps, the parallel parking. My dashboard light is getting brighter as I type.
Finally, I’ll keep some holiday decorations up all year long if I want. For instance, I strung some stuffed, felt letters across my Snug that spell out the Deck the Hall lyrics “F-A-L-A-L-A” in lots of different colors and every time I look at them I think Falafel, which makes me smile. But it also makes me hungry, so there’s that. Here is my secret recipe for Jerusalem spice: mix equal parts of salt, pepper, cinnamon, turmeric, coriander, and allspice. Happy New Year Everyone!
Happy Monday! This morning I was browsing the news online when I came across this article: “A Home Built for the Next Pandemic,” by Tressie Cottom. Future homes will be built differently, like Tomorrow Land.
The overriding consensus is that the pandemic has revealed that many consumers view the pandemic not as a one-off, but as a harbinger: They will need to work from home in the future. Not all workers have the luxury of working from home, of course. But for knowledge workers, the ability to participate in the economy will be conditioned upon their ability to be productive while working from their own houses.
Cue single mom working from home while trying to manage home schooling for her children.
In a nutshell, Cottom points out that these new Covid Concept builders are harkening back to the early paternalistic Twentieth Century, and handing out the task of cooking and childrearing and schooling in these post-feminist years to guess who – the WOMEN. A kitchen sits right in the middle of the home with her office adjacent, there’s a remote learning room for homeschoolers. And all I ever wanted was a Mud Room!
Grandma Ada had an office right outside her kitchen. She even had a greenhouse next to the garage! But remember that was the 1960s.
Today Bob and I are still in this ridiculous real estate market, and every night I’m watching Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood’s prescient dystopian nightmare about a society that slowly slips into a religious autocracy. Sometimes I wonder why I’m tuned into Gilead, a fictional Christian American country, NOW? The book has always been a top 5 for me, but a film is no longer escapist fantasy when it flirts with real life.
In Texas, women have lost their human rights, and I’m sure most southern states will follow. SCOTUS is at a tipping point.
June aka “Offred” is the Handmaid, and it is her duty to bear a child for the commander of the household. Therefore she lives a vivid inner life with lots of close-ups, and once a month she is raped in a ritualized way. I know, it’s more, much more than that with plenty of sub-plots, and snow. Women collectively named “Martha” man each kitchen, apparently men are not chefs in this world; the Marthas trade spices like nuclear secrets.
Speaking of secrets, I love how Zillow democratized real estate, still in Nashville it helps to have an agent. What should an empty nest house look like, how big a kitchen do we really need? Do I still need a room of my own? Bob thinks my notifications are driving me bonkers and he might be right!
Atwood’s feminist masterpiece is keeping me up nights. She named the commander’s wife Serena Joy! Shakespeare couldn’t have done it better. Serena is the head of the household; she is smart, too smart. We see her working on seedlings in a greenhouse, while June stays in her spartan bedroom. But then, she and June begin working together, drafting better policies for the women of Gilead. When the commander returns home after a prolonged hospital stay, Serena appears in his huge wood-paneled office to welcome him home. He beckons her to him with his outstretched hand,…
… and leads Serena Joy right out the door of his office, shutting her forever outside his power and influence.
It’s against my better nature to think negatively, to believe that our post-pandemic life will seem smaller, diminished. Ada would have told me, “We’re all in transition.” The reality is we’re not getting any younger. The “sell by” date on our knees is the same. But I’m determined to have a bigger office!
Ada teaching me to make matzoh balls in my SLUTS tee “Southern Ladies Under Tremendous Stress”
MountainMornings 