THE FORK

Let’s open Fibber McGee’s closet and see what falls out - hey folks, watch out - that’s a fork!  

Hospitalityguild.com says that the kitchen fork goes back to the ancient Greeks.  I’d think it went back to the first ancestor of ours who found a pointed, forked stick came in handy for grabbing his chunk of meat out of the fire. Table forks didn’t come into regular use until the seventh century, and it took several centuries more for the use of them to spread across Europe. The tool of choice - not counting fingers - was always the knife. Anyone who could afford even a crudely made knife used it to cut and then bring food to his mouth. In days of old when knights were bold, it became less and less desirable for folks to come armed to the table. It made for some nasty dinner hours. Thus the fork, handily provided by a genteel host or hostess, came into favor.

Forks started out two-tined, like the forked stick, and then tines were added to make handling food that much easier. In the Victorian era’s spirit of invention where dining became an all-evening event, the upper echelons of society came up with all manner of forks. They did it because they could, and because it provided a bit of one-upmanship in a time when it sometimes seems like that was all those folks had for amusement. I suppose it did make serving and eating easier. One wouldn’t want to eat the meat of an oyster with a dinner fork, or serve a slice of roast beef with a pickle fork, now would one? 

With all those forks - not to mention spoons and knives of various sorts - the Victorians also came up with what they decided was the proper setting for a table: knives and spoons to the right of the plate, forks to the left, glass ware of all kinds, starting above the point of the knife and working to the right, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth.  There were rules for the placement of salad dishes and bread plates, for wine and water glasses, for side dishes and centerpieces. No wonder Upstairs needed all that help Downstairs. It became good manners - and also a good idea - to wait until your hostess took the first bite of any course: you could look to see what fork she used and then do the same without fear of embarrassment. It’s still a good idea today, though now we use table and serving forks of a lot fewer sizes.  Even at a state dinner at the White House they don’t eat as many courses as did some of those elite Victorians, but if you get invited to one and are unsure of the table protocol, be sure to watch the First Lady.

I’m not sure if it is a step in the right direction, but today they’ve come up with the ‘spork’: a utensil combining a spoon and a fork. And then they went a step further to deliver the ‘sporf’. This last one combines a fork, a spoon, and a knife. I think I’d be dribbling my soup through the ‘tines’ of either utensil, or slicing my cheek with the knife part of the sporf.  Until I’m on a rocket ship to Mars where space is at a premium, I think I’ll pass on those.  

Heaven help us, there’s even an Ode to the Fork.  In a spirit of silliness, I googled “ode to the fork” and, I kid you not, up popped a very poor poem with that title.  It reads like a columnar run-on sentence, but someone - the poet is not named - felt passionate enough about his fork to pen an ode to it.  Ah well, I do suppose that such a sturdy, utilitarian object deserves some recognition.  We use it with hardly a thought for its presence: there is no National Fork Appreciation Day, alas.  So give a passing ‘thank you’ to your fork as you have your dinner this evening, and tell this tale to the other folks at the table.  If nothing else, it will make for some interesting conversation.

Addendum: I just read a marvelous, much more extensive essay on the fork. Sara Goldsmith has written The Rise of the Fork, and I do recommend it to you.   June 20, 2012 

 

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY STANDS UP

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As a born and bred New Yorker it seems strange, but I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty.  I may have seen it way off in the distance, if you can see it from the Brooklyn to Staten Island ferry, that is.  Even then, I was on the ferry only several times when I was about twelve years old, in the pre-Verrazano Bridge days. I probably wasn’t aware that the statue was there: the ferry trip was much more exciting. Typical New Yorker, I lived there but missed a lot. But then I remember that I wasn’t just sitting around twiddling my thumbs – I had a lot going on.  I did once get up to the top of the Empire State Building, but that’s another story.  On with the essay.

The eighteenth of this month marks the 125^th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.  First conceived in 1865, 145 years ago, it had a hard time aborning. Frederic Bartholdi first got the notion from a law professor who thought it would be a great idea for the French and Americans to get together to raise a monument to American Independence. Yes it was a great idea, but what with one thing and another, a war, design problems, and financial setbacks, the work on the statue didn’t begin until the 1870’s. 

By the first Centennial of American Independence, Lady Liberty’s forearm and the torch were on display in New York City’s Madison Square Park. Two years later, in 1878, the head was on display in Paris. After a bit of fuss gathering the funds in America for the base, the body and its parts were finally united and raised and dedicated.

We all know about the French connection, but here are some facts, some arguable, surrounding the statue that may interest many of you, especially if your origins are in:

        Egypt - the body of the statue was originally conceived by Bartholdi for a lighthouse to be at the entrance to the Suez Canal. Obviously, it was never built, but it was to be in the form of a robed Egyptian woman, holding a torch aloft.

San Carlo

Hermannsdenkmal

        Italy and Germany - Liberty’s 151 ft. construction, copper sheets hung as a curtain wall on an armature, is in the same method as the Colosso de San Carlo Borromeo, a 77 ft. statue of St. Charles Borromeo in Arona, Italy on the shores of Lago Maggiore (I've been to this one, and it is quite imposing.); and of the 87 ft. Hermannsdenkmal memorial to the ancient Germanic hero Hermann, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

       

Norway - The copper for the cladding was mined in Visnes, Norway. For a while this fact was in dispute because no records of the purchase could be found, but spectrographic analysis performed in 1985 confirmed it. Strangely enough, in 2007, a bike was commissioned from Orange County Choppers (O.C.C.) by the company licensed by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation to handle commemorative items made from materials salvaged from the 1986 restoration of the statue. Among other salvaged pieces they used, O.C.C. had most of the bike plated in copper from some of the original copper saddles that held the cladding sheets to the armature.  I think this bike, after touring around the country, finally would up on display on Liberty Island. Nevertheless, I still file this one under "why wouldja?"

        New York and New Jersey - though the island where the statue stands is federal property, it is actually in New Jersey. Sorry, New Yorkers! Just the docks are in New York (close, but no cigar!), so transport to and from Liberty Island, formerly Bedloe’s Island, is handled by the City of New York. Starting in 1986, the 100^th anniversary of the dedication of the statue, New York began using the icon of the statue on its license plates. Though it was a minor faux pas, nobody minded much. They changed the design in 2001.

       

Way back in history when few people could read, symbols, like pictures, were worth those thousand words. In these days of big corporate logos and emoticons we regularly use only a few national symbols: the flag, and the bald eagle, and Lady Liberty herself, but nowhere near the symbols that are there to be deciphered on the statue and base. From the thirteen original colonies represented by the thirteen layers of granite for the base, to the seven seas and seven continents represented by the seven points on her crown, they packed in a whole lot of symbols.  Today these may strike some as being a bit hokey and contrived, but the meanings are still strongly representative of us and our history.

       

The full name of the statue is “Liberty Enlightening the World”.  The torch and arm was the first part Bartholdi built. Were it the only part built it would still be as strong a symbol for America as the entire statue is today.  Lady Liberty strides forth, her torch held high, to light the way for the world.

           

                                               

ON LEIF ERIKSON AND SOME OTHER NORWEGIAN THINGS

“Ya vi elsker dette landet”

               “Yes, we love this country”

This is the first line of the Norwegian National Anthem

        

October 9th is Leif Erikson Day. Let us now celebrate the Scandinavian stalwart - and he had to be stalwart to sail in one of those open Viking ships - who, as far as we can tell, brought the first Europeans to North America.  You can set up a fine debate among those favoring the Celts or the Phoenicians or even the Israelites as being the first, but it is sure as shootin’ that Leif Erikson’s early eleventh century voyages beat out old Chris Columbus in the late fifteenth.

              Leif was born a Norwegian in Iceland, and was the son of Erik the Red, that consummate salesman who named a not-too-green land Greenland, to entice settlers there.   Unfortunately, Leif couldn’t do the same sales job for Vinland, and the settlement lasted only a short while.  If it had prospered, we’d all be speaking Norwegian today.

Well, as it happens, we speak a lot of Norwegian or Old Norse words today:  starting the alphabet we have aloft, anger, awe, bylaw, cake, egg, gun, husband (but not wife), knife, law, odd, race, run, lots of S-words such as saga, score, shirt, skill, sky, starboard, and steak, on to take, trust and, of course, Viking.  There’s quite a list if you care to look further.  They all merged with the rest of the contributors to our English language, making it one of the richest and hardest to learn in the world.

Truth be known, you could celebrate things Norse on almost any day of the year. October 9^th was chosen for Leif because on that day in 1825, the immigration ship ‘Restauration’ arrived in America from Stavanger, Norway.   One of the most wonderful people I ever knew emigrated from Norway.  She was my mother-in-law,  Mary Mortensen.  A lovelier, more gentle, giving woman there never was, unless, according to my husband, it was her own mother, Anne Tonnessen.   It was in honor of these two ladies that Frank and I ventured to Norway back in the eighties.   We visited their home in Ny-Hellesund, an island in off the southern tip of the country.  We visited the Statsarkivet, the state archives, where we researched the family and came upon some interesting entries.  Among them were the beautifully handwritten records of both their births.  

MV MIDNATSOL

We visited Stavanger, the home port of that first immigrant ship, and found it a bustling town.  It is now home to much of Norway’s off-shore oil industry.  They build the drilling platforms in Stavanger, and they are truly huge.   On our Norwegian trips we visited the coast from Oslo, down around the southern tip at Kristiansand, on up to Stavanger. Then further north to Bergen, port for the late-middle-ages Hanseatic League, and the home port of the Hurtigruten, pronounced hurtie rooten,  literally ‘the express route’ or hurry or hurtle route. (See, you could understand that!).

The Hurtigruten ships, ours was the MV Midnatsol, take an eleven-day cruise along the Norwegian coast.  Carrying the mail, passengers, and freight, they sail beyond the Arctic Circle to the northernmost town of Kirkenes and back again, stopping at wonderful towns along the way.  Before the fall of communism in the Soviet Union, it was eerie to be able to see over into Russia from Kirkenes.  It was also strange to realize that, far north as it is, Kirkenes is further east than Constantinople. 

The Gokstad Ship

Our stalwart Leif and his companions braved the seas in those very open long ships.  We saw the Oseburg ship and the awesomely beautiful Gokstad ship at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.  The Gokstad ship has places for thirty-two oarsmen.  They say a ship of the same size usually carried around forty men, but could carry up to seventy people.  Can you imagine all those people on the cold Atlantic in an open boat?  It gives me the shivers just to think of it. 
The Norwegians have given us many things in addition to their contribution to our history and our language. There’s the aerosol spray and the cheese slicer, both very handy inventions.  Of course you know about the humble paper clip. Simple, but elegant.  

Simple, but elegant could also describe those great penny loafers we all wore way back when.  I’m sure you remember Bass Weejuns - that’s short for Norwegians, of course - still the best loafers around.

             

So now when you see that other beautiful red, white, and blue flag - the flag of Norway - remember Leif Erikson and the wonderful Norwegians.

 “Ya vi elsker dette landet”

             

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Since I started this blog I often check the lists of holidays, anniversaries and observances for new topics to interest my readers.  In my search for the new and unusual, October comes up trumps. Of all the months of the year, it has the longest list of celebrations.  They range from the sublime and the expected, such as Columbus Day and Halloween, to the ridiculous and really unusual like Babbling Day and National Mole Day.  This last one isn’t about moles on your chin or under your lawn, but is an effort, they say, to increase interest in chemistry by celebrating Avogadro’s number, 6.022141527 × 10²³: the mole. An unusual holiday, an unusual number, but has it increased your interest in chemistry? No, I thought not.

The holiday that first got my attention was Mad Hatter Day, which Carnegie Melon University’s website says is to be celebrated on October 6. It’s is an attempt to give the year a second day of silliness, six months later than April Fools’ Day. Why the sixth of October and not the first? Because in Alice in Wonderland, the Hatter has in his huge top hat’s band a label that says “in this Style 10/6” Ten shillings, sixpence.  Someone clever noticed the convoluted connection of dates and madness and took off with it. 

Foodie celebrations are rife this month: angel food cake, apple jack, bologna, brandied fruit, candy corn, cookies, country ham, eggs, frappes, mincemeat (you’d think that would be in December), nuts, pasta, pickled peppers,  pizza (isn’t that every month?), popcorn, pork, pretzels, pumpkin cheesecake, seafood, spinach, and, not in alphabetical order, eew! Moldy Cheese Day. Yes, of course bleu cheese and others are moldy cheeses, but mold, like mole, has unpleasant associations. Added fun for foodies can be found on World Vegetarian Day, the end of Oktoberfest, Cookbook Launch Day and National Dessert Day. 

How ‘bout Babbling Day?  On October 21, it is the day for endless conversation, not a day to be quiet.  There’s little to be found about the origin of this celebration, but it’s sure to be loved by teenagers with cell phones. 

Under the heading “Why Would They?” can be found days like Bald and Free Day, Moment of Frustration Day, International Skeptics Day (are you sure?), Wear Something Gaudy Day, Count Your Buttons Day, and Punk for a Day Day. You can bet your buttons that the guys in this picture are Punks for more than a day. Those are coiffeurs to make the “Saturday at the Salon” set envious. Those hairdos take time and work, and a definite loss of sleeping comfort.

Under the heading “That’s a Nice Idea”, we’ve got International Frugal Fun Day, Sweetest Day, Smile Day, Dictionary Day, Mother-in-Law Day, Family History Day (get the details from your Mother-in-Law), and Make a Difference Day.  In October we celebrate custodial workers, teachers, physicians’ assistants, TV talk show hosts, and the clergy.

There are many observances to make us aware of conditions like depressions, Down’s syndrome, and spina bifida. If you are of Filipino, Italian, German or Polish descent you don’t have to wait for Halloween to have a party.  Just be sure to serve some of the foods on the October list.

There are celebrations and observances for every day, every week, and for the whole month of October – many more than could be included in this piece, which has become something akin to a shopping list.  Some of these should be shared with December and July, the months with the fewest observances.  If I’ve mentioned any holidays that appeal to you I’m sure there’s an ecard you can send for the occasion. 

                               

1066 AND ALL THAT LANGUAGE **

There are two reasons to celebrate September 28^th this year. It’s the 37^th anniversary of my wedding. (No gifts, checks to your favorite charity will do!) It is also the 945^th anniversary of the arrival in England of William II of Normandy, known to us all, after the ensuing Battle of Hastings, as William the Conqueror. 

My wedding has had little or no effect on the great state of things in general, but the Norman Conquest had an extremely pronounced effect on all of us reading this article. Within a few hundred years of the battle, thanks to the French, the language spoken in England went from being mostly Germanic to one with a heavy mixture of the Romance or Latin languages. The Romans did invade the island in 55 BC, and more or less messed about there for about 450 years, but at that time they left little of their language behind. The subsequent invasions by all sorts of Germanic tribes saw to today’s English being classified as a Germanic language. The Latin of the Romans, along with a lot of Greek, came back to England via the Normans.

Language is fascinating to me. A representative map of just the major languages would have the colors of a small box of crayons. A map of all the languages of the world would have more colors than the paint chip racks at the local hardware store. I wish I knew more than English and a soupçon of French. In my European travels I’ve been able to get along with spoken and written language because of the similarities to the English words. I remember seeing the sign ‘Apotekit’ in Oslo - of course: apothecary – a drug store. I was pleased with myself for that one. I was also humbled when I learned that I was entirely off base with my assumption* that few Norwegians would speak English.  Four of us were standing on a street corner in Stavanger, going through the Norsk:Engelsk dictionary, looking for the translation of ‘battery’ because our Brit friend had forgotten to bring some for his hearing aid.  A Norwegian gentleman tapped one of us on the shoulder and quietly enlightened us: “Don’t worry, they speak English in the shop.” Too true. The study of foreign languages, especially English, French and German, is compulsory in Norway and many other European countries.  

When someone apologizes to me because of their poor English, I always apologize in turn.  After all, they speak my language, but I don’t speak theirs. The world seems to be using more and more English. It has become the default language for air and sea traffic. Though the Chinese are catching up - after all, they do have it over us in population - the highest percentage of internet users speak English. While the teaching of other languages in our schools may be declining, our own language is quickly absorbing new words from all over the world. It’s not the same old Germanic/Latin base it once was. Pity the poor editors of the Oxford English Dictionary - 22,000 pages or so, and increasing every day. From pajamas and khaki, safari and coffee, to gung-ho and feng shui, and origami and karaoke, our language just gets bigger and better.

* Of course you know what ‘assume’ does - it makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me‘



** September 26th - by coincidence, this came up today on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac": Today is the official European Day of Languages, which is a yearly event begun in 2001 to celebrate human language, encourage language learning, and bring attention to the importance of being multilingual in a polyglot world. On this day, everyone, young or old, is encouraged to take up a language or take special pride in his or her existing language skills.

There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe, which may sound like a lot but is only 3 percent of the world's total. Children's events, television and radio programs, languages classes and conferences are organized across Europe. In past years, schoolchildren in Croatia created European flags and wrote "Hello" and "I love you" in dozens of tongues while older students sang "Brother John" in German, English, and French. At a German university, a diverse group of volunteer tutors held a 90-minute crash course in half a dozen languages, like a kind of native-tongue speed-dating, groups of participants spending just 15 minutes immersed in each dialect until the room was filled with Hungarian introductions, French Christmas songs, and discussions of Italian football scores.

A CURMUDGEONLY OBSERVATION

‘fI Were King of the Forest…

    …well, I’d never be king of the forest, but ‘fI had some more influence than I do, I’d take the Sun City Carolina Lakes HOA Board to task for not allowing solar panels within the community, South Carolina law not yet requiring they be allowed notwithstanding. This is from the latest HOA Board of Directors meeting (unapproved) minutes:  Discussion was held on whether to allow solar panels within the community if a request should be submitted through the modification committee.  The Design Guidelines deny the panels and there is no legislation within SC that required approval of solar panels at this time.  A motion was made and seconded and voted unanimously not to change the Design Guidelines in regards to solar panels.

Of course, I was not privy to the entire discussion or the thinking behind it, but I can guess that the main reason was that the solar panels might not look too elegant on the community roofs, and prospective buyers might think them a detriment to the area. (There’s no accounting for that kind of thinking, but it does exist.) Fate forfend that SCCL should look at all environmentally friendly. The board being composed of Pulte employees, their vision and version carry the day for now.
I must acknowledge that the Design Guidelines do allow for ground mounted solar panels in the "Private Area", but this option is difficult where sunward position of the house or the small size of the yard would prohibit installation. You could put panels on your patio if is gets the sun, but you'd have little room left out there.

Never mind the meek: the smart will inherit the earth, the boy- and girl-scout types will inherit the earth.  Come the day that a major solar flare aimed right at the earth knocks out all our mod cons, those with a bit of forethought will come out smiling.  Unless the power powers-that-be can detect the flare early enough to shut down world systems, the grids will fry.  Envied will be those who’ve got backup on water and food, or who’ve got suitcase-size solar chargers for their cell phones, iPods, PC’s, batteries, and radios – that is if there’s a worldwide web or a phone system working.  The man who has a generator and the gas to run it will be the man to know.  Were solar panels allowed here at SCCL, the house with them on the roof would be the place to go.  I’m not holding my breath on that one.   

 

IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS...

  ...not this fat lady, but read on about    A NIGHT AT THE OPERA 
             

No, we’re not talking Marx Brothers, we’re talking Puccini, Verdi, Bizet, Wagner – well, not too much Wagner, that’s a bit heavy.  We don’t usually go ‘round humming a tune from Tannhäuser, although the second act is a singing contest.    I remember long-ago Saturday afternoons, listening to Milton Cross present the live broadcast of that day’s production of the Metropolitan Opera.  I think I liked his voice as well as those of the singers.  This month marks the opening of the new season at the Metropolitan Opera. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be there?

Did you know that over these last decades many of our favorite popular tunes have been politely borrowed from the world of opera?   And many of opera’s popular tunes were originally borrowed from what were then popular tunes.  The music goes round and round.

For years, British Airways has used the music of the “Flower Song” from Delibes’s “Lakmé” as their theme. Nissan’s uses the “Ride of the Valkyries” from “Die Walküre”, yes, by Wagner.  The music for “Stranger in Paradise” and other songs in “Kismet” came from Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor”. For Jackie Wilson’s “Night” the music came from Saint-Saëns’s “Samson and Delilah”. Don’t be put off by some of the long titles of opera pieces: they’re usually just the first few words of the song.  That piece from “Samson and Delilah” is titled “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix,” and means “My heart opens at your voice.” You needn’t remember the title – just appreciate the music. There are many more examples, but then this article would be a list of songs, not an appreciation of opera.

My husband doesn’t want to sit through or even hear an entire opera, but his favorite listening is collections of popular opera favorites. He's worn out the LP of Pavarotti's Greatest Hits, and we were lucky to replace it with a CD.  I love the opera, and can sit through one just to hear the music and watch the production, the same as with a Broadway show. 

“Porgy and Bess” is the best of both. I must admit that I’m happier seeing a show because the dialogue is spoken. Dialog is usually sung in opera, and it’s generally in a language I don’t understand. It helps to know the story line. Though they can be distracting, today there are subtitles on TV opera airings, and surtitles running on a box over the stage for the theater-goers.  At the Met they even offer “Met Titles”, electronic devices mounted on the seat in front to show you the translations. 

Though there are several comic operas, most operas are dramas and their music can be very moving.  The opera “Norma”, for example, is no “My Fair Lady”. Norma has a secret lover by whom she has two children that, in her despair, she is about to kill. What with one thing and another, Norma dies with her lover on a flaming pyre. I’ve never seen that staged. Not too light, is it? Yet one piece from it, “Casta diva,” was one of the most popular tunes of its day

One of our neighbors doesn’t like all those screaming ladies in the opera, and I can’t blame him much. Out of context and just heard in snatches, it can be quite unappealing. Today, many opera newbies would consider “Casta diva” a screamer, and I’d think them right if I didn’t appreciate the power in a voice like that of Maria Callas.  Hearing a recording of her singing that aria, or “Suicidio” from “La Gioconda”, will either give you chills or send you, screaming yourself, right out of the building. 

Larger-than-life characters with wonderful voices, like that of Callas, sustained opera. In recent decades, singers like Luciano Pavarotti helped to popularize it.  He was about as colorful and large a character as was ever seen in the world of opera. Thanks to him and others like Plácido Domingo, or Beverly Sills, who brought acting to opera, there is a wider audience today. New listeners have come to appreciate the great range of opera music from light, lyrical pieces like “The Bell Song” from “Lakmé”, one of my favorites, to beautiful duets and stirring pieces like the “Anvil Chorus” from “Il Trovatore”. 

            

From other disciplines, people like movie producer and director Franco Zeffirelli have brought modern staging, design, and costuming to update many of the classic operas. Opera, once found outside of the great cities only on the radio, has blossomed in productions all over the country.  It’s regularly offered on television and it can be seen live, in HD, in hundreds of movie theaters.  Near us, a series of eleven works, live from the Metropolitan Opera, will be shown in Charlotte at the Stonecrest 22 at Piper Glen. You can check it all on line at metoperafamily.org. 

Try it, you might just like it.


-

A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Andy Warhol's version of our Birthday Boy

Ah, yes, August 28^th. Can’t you just hear the cheers? Can’t you just see the fireworks?  You are, of course, very aware of whose birthday we celebrate today, aren’t you?  You really don’t know?  Why it’s Johann Wolfgang von Goethe!  I’m sure you just forgot that momentarily.  Goethe, we rarely use his full name, born in 1749, was what they call a polymath.  He wrote works in drama, poetry, literature, science, theology, and philosophy. This guy was interested in everything at a time when, such as it was with da Vinci, it was still possible to know a lot about a lot of things. Not too many of us can go through life without hearing a reference to Goethe’s most famous work: Faust.

What I want to bring to your notice is a line of his, a thought for the day that can be of use to us all: “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” I keep a small collection of ‘pithy’ sayings, and that one is one of the best. Written in the eighteenth century, it can easily be interpreted for today’s mode of living. I don’t interpret it for today to mean that you have to do all those things, but do break out of your quotidian routine to do something inspiring, or educational (look up ‘quotidian’), charitable, or just plain fun.  

Part of my own quotidian routine is to check several of my favorite websites for thoughts or poems of the day. I do prefer rhyming poems over free verse, some of which read more like a novel than a poem. Thoughts, especially when you catch them at an early hour, can get right into the flavor of your day.  From ‘Anonymous’ to named sources, from ancient times to modern, valuable thoughts abound.  Here are some of my favorites:

“The wise man achieves balance by reducing his needs to the level of his possessions.” Anonymous (but sometimes attributed to Aristotle)

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”  William Morris

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”   Douglas Adams

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”   Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Don’t believe everything you think.”   Anonymous

“Do not be too moral.  You may cheat yourself of much of life.  Be not simply good; be good for something.”   Henry David Thoreau

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”   Bertrand Russell

“When people show you who they are, believe them.”   Maya Angelou

“Function in disaster, finish in style.”   Lucy Madeira

E. B. White said: “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” Get your daily fix, a daily thought, and try to do both: improve and enjoy the world.   

THE FIVE AND TEN CENT STORE

When I was a kid my Mom gave me a small allowance. The kicker was that I couldn’t spend it all and had to give her back a certain amount of it at the end of the week or she’d deduct that from my next allowance, and I’d still have to save the same amount for the following week.  It made a fairly wise spender out of me, I can tell you that!  I can also tell you that, unknown to me, she banked those savings.  One day she handed me a small, brown savings passbook (I can still remember the color) with a tidy amount in it.  I’m not sure why I got the passbook when I did; the occasion has been superseded in my memory by the fact that I had undreamed-of savings in my hands. I do remember wanting to have some of it to take to the five and ten.

The Spalding Pinky

I loved the five and ten cent store.  I wasn’t given any treats there like the slice of bologna from the butcher or the cookie from the baker, but the treat was in all the different stuff to be seen there – everything from candy to cake pans, with great things in between.  Pinky balls, roller skates (and skate keys – I lost mine several times!), hankies, underwear, crepe paper, kitchen utensils, school supplies, or cosmetics – today we have specialty stores for most of this stuff, but then you could get it all at the five and ten – F.W. Woolworth’s to be sure. 

There was no one smell in the store – nothing like going into the bakery or drug store – but many smells: toiletries and soaps, rubber toys, pop corn, and the aromas wafting from the lunch counter.  We never had anything to eat at the lunch counter, though I wanted to.  I’d have liked to sit on one of those swivel stools and go round and round.  But in those times Mom was really watching the budget so we ate at home.

We moved a few times during my childhood, and I recall the ‘early’ five and tens, but the last was the most fun.  As with most stores of that day, the floor was wood.  It had buckled down one aisle, and it was fun to try to walk the whole way on the hump, or walk with one foot on each side of it – sort of like walking along a street with one foot on a curb and one in the gutter.

Many things we got at the five and ten are scarce today, and going to a dollar store (I call a lot of that stuff junk) or Walmart is just not the same. I will say that the closest match to the five and ten experience is going to the Vermont Country Store up in Weston, Vermont.  They bill themselves as being "purveyors of practical and hard-to-find products." They’ve got all sorts of things I haven’t seen in years: Glass Wax, Tangee lipstick (the first lipstick I was allowed to use), hair nets, Garibaldi biscuits, and lots of penny candy. They’ve even got the bumpy wood floors.

Today the Vermont Country Store
 stocks many of the same items that
were available at this Woolworth's

Before we moved to SCCL we lived only about an hour away from Weston, so a trip up there was one of our usual jaunts.  If you’re ever up that way you should make it a point to visit the Vermont Country Store and some of the other nice shops in the town.  And you can have a great lunch there too.  The Ortons, owners of the Vermont Country Store, have made the house next door into the Bryant House Restaurant.  Try the ham and cheddar melt or my favorite, the Monte Cristo, and an apricot sour.  The lunch counter at Woolworth’s was never like this – some things get better, I’m delighted to say.

A MATERIAL THING

National Sewing Month is September, but every month was sewing month at my house when I was growing up. My mother sewed for us and for the house, and her sewing machine was rarely idle.

 

From play clothes to wedding gowns, my mother could whip up something from the oddest things. My sister and I once had skirts made of kitchen curtain fabric. The flowered-border ones were all right, but my favorite was an all over chicken-wire print with hens and chicks running around the bottom. Many of our costumes came from whatever was at hand, but some of the most colorful ones were sewn from crepe paper. You don’t see too much of that these days. In my mind's eye I can see a big display of crepe paper at the 5 & 10 cent store. Ah, the 5 & 10's - remember those?



This picture from the net reminds me of
my Mom's machine.



I distinctly remember, although it must be over sixty years ago, when my mother disappeared into her bedroom each evening after supper. We didn’t know we were getting new Madam Alexander dolls for Christmas, and my mother was working on wardrobes for them. Most of the outfits were miniatures of what she had sewn for us, sewn from the leftover material. She made dresses and pajamas and plastic rain coats. She crocheted sweaters and hats and shoes. She swore she’d never tackle such a job again! 



This pix is from almost 50 years ago.  Alas, the
 train isn't spread out for you to see



I think her masterpiece was my sister’s wedding gown. At that time both my mother and sister were working at Columbia Ribbon & Carbon in Glen Cove, New York. One of the items they manufactured was typewriter ribbons. Ribbon silk came to the factory as 14 inch-wide fabric. It was inked and then slit into the correct size and wound on to the spools.  The creamy white silk was lovely, and my Mother was given enough to make both my sister’s gown and my maid-of-honor dress. Mom joined the panels with wide lace for my sister’s gown, gradually increasing the length of the back panels until they formed a small, graceful train. She joined the panels on my dress with narrow, pink-embroidered tape. I still have some of that tape, and I cherish it.



The Christening outfit I made in 1989



 

My mother taught me how to knit and my sister how to crochet. I don’t know why, but neither of us learned the other craft. My sister always crocheted ‘backwards’ because, as a leftie, she mirrored what my right-handed mother was doing. My sister and I continued on sewing in our mother’s tradition making everything from curtains to Halloween costumes.

My hands are quite stiff and arthritic these last few years, so I rarely sew any more. A bit of mending, or perhaps whipping up a new pillow cover or two, is about all I’ll do. My last big job was the drapes for our new house here at SCCL. They’re not as fancy as some I’ve made over the years, but I’m pleased with them. The most tedious thing I ever made was a pair of 18 foot-long drapes for my daughter-in-law’s two-story living room. Yards and yards of fabric and lining. I thought that job would never end, but the curtains and drapes for her new house were a labor of love. 

What I consider my own masterpiece, another labor of love, was the Christening outfit for my first grandchild. I was doing the embroidery on it even as she was being born over twenty years ago. There is a dress, a slip, a coat and a hat - and not an uncovered or raw seam in the whole set. After each child wore it I embroidered their name and birth date on the dress. Now the outfit has been worn by my first great-grandchild, and the tradition continues.