ALASKA DAY

In this morning’s The Writer’s Almanac I read that on this day in 1867, the U.S. took possession of Alaska – this is Alaska Day. The purchase from Russia certainly has paid off: in gold, in oil, in fish, in territory. It has also paid off in the form of “TV Alaska”.

It seems to be another gold mine. The National Geographic shows include Wild Alaska, Dr. Oakley-Yukon Vet, and the ever popular Alaska State Troopers. (Are you too a member of the Howie Peterson Fan Club?) The Smithsonian gets in on the act with various nature documentaries and one-offs like Aerial America: Alaska.

To name just a few of the shows on the Discovery Channels, there are Life Below Zero, Railroad Alaska, Flying Wild Alaska, Buying Alaska, Gold Rush, Bering Sea Gold, Alaska Marshals, Yukon Men, Alaska: The Last Frontier, and the one that probably started the rush to Alaska: Deadliest Catch. If you haven’t seen at least one of those crabby episodes you must be living under a rock. I wonder if the Discovery Channel has a permanent office up there in Alaska.

Alaska – are you sick of seeing that word?  Here’s the antidote:

LITTLE BLACK SAMBO

The Front Cover

Just a few days ago while I was rummaging through some old records I’d saved, I came upon the cover for a ‘40s recording. Ooooold! The brittle record is long since gone, dropped and smashed to pieces. I’d forgotten I even had this old cover. I remember it so well, the repetitive telling about the shoes with “crimson soles and crimson linings”, and the tigers going off bragging “Now I’m the grandest tiger in all the jungle.”  I even remember the very regal and pompous music that accompanied them as each tiger sauntered away. (Or am I remembering something from Peter and the Wolf? The mind is a strange thing!)

 

Inside Front Cover

Until recently I never knew that this book, Little Black Sambo, was controversial. The recorded version is the story in my head. I googled “crimson soles and crimson linings”, and it gave me the Project Gutenberg copy of a volume from 1906.  Well – I’d say that was controversial!  What was the illustrator thinking? At that time the story was written in 1899, by a British author about an Indian Boy, the story was fairly innocuous.  But by the time it hit America and was re-illustrated, especially in the 1906 version, they didn’t think much about who would be hurt by what.  I really didn’t look at the record cover when I was little, I just listened to a story about an Indian boy. Black, to me, was part of his name, not what he looked like.

 

Read the first line: "Once upon a time in far-off India"

The illustrations on the Gutenberg page are right out of the South of Joel Chandler Harris, but with a monkey or a macaw added in here or there. Ain't no monkeys here! It is no wonder the American versions cause so much controversy. The read-along story on the record jacket, which in few ways resembles the story I think I memorized while listening, says the boy lived “in far-off India”. That was always the place in my head: India. ‘India’ appears in the 1906 version only in parenthesis to expand on the melted butter “or “ghi” as it is called in India”. The illustrations on the record cover I scanned in for this essay hint of the 40’s in America – only the tiger is out of place. There's not a monkey or macaw to be seen.  I suppose that by the 40’s people realized that the original story was basically a good one for children, but that many people would be offended by it as it stood in the 1906 version. It seems to me that in neither that version nor the 40’s recording do the stories and illustrations complement each other.

 

"And Little Black Sambo was so hungry he ate one hundred and sixty-nine,"
(Preposterous!)

I do see that now there are more modern versions, especially with names changed to Indian sounding names like Babaji, and it's too bad that Helen Bannerman didn't use them in her original story, but even then there are critics of that one being partly “politically incorrect”. I suppose we can’t please all of the people all of the time, but I was pleased to come upon the record cover and recall the story I knew.

This was just a blog prompted by an old treasure. What will I find next?

     

OCTOBER

Well Holey Socks, I just discovered that last week's post didn't post. A Senior Moment perhaps?  One never knows.  Today's post is below this one. Sorry!

                 October
               In October I'll be host
               To witches, goblins and a ghost
               I'll serve them chicken soup on toast
               Whoopy once, whoopy twice
               Whoopy chicken soup with rice

Ah yes, it is finally October. The days are getting shorter and cooler. All I can say to that is "Whoopy!"  I don't know about serving chicken soup on toast - with toast, of course, but not on it.  Maybe in it. I love chicken soup, and I can whip up a great chicken noodle soup in no time at all. I once, in my childhood, I suppose, loved Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.  Not any more. I bought a can a while ago, just for nostalgia sake, and it now seems watered down and blah. Needs salt too.  I know they're de-salting a lot of prepared foods (while others seem loaded with salt. Typical.) De-salting for our health, over salting for flavor.

In these coming winter months I will enjoy my chicken soup in the form of Knorr or Maggi bouillon. A mug of hot bouillon on a cold afternoon is comfort at its quickest and finest.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AND WHAT PEOPLE THINK

There has been a lot written and televised lately about the three most famous Roosevelts. Tomorrow will mark the 130^th birthday of Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman who thought for herself and was in a position to use those thoughts effectively. You can read a short bio of her here at The Writer’s Almanac.

If there was ever anyone who could have worried about what people thought of her it was Mrs. Roosevelt, our longest serving First Lady. Evidently, she was quite comfortable with herself and her role in our nation’s history. There are many aphorisms attributed to her, but my favorite, one mentioned in that bio, is this: "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."  It has taken me years to realize the truth of that.

I forget where I read it, but recently I came on a quote to the effect that “what other people think of you is none of your business.” I’ve often worried about what folks thought of what I do or don’t do. I still do worry a bit about the appropriateness of what I wear where, and I’m sure it is a good thing, but for years it made me nervous and anxious. I wasn’t wearing a ball gown to a baseball game or a bathing suit to a funeral, but I just knew that everyone else had seen me and that I was found wanting. I now know that only the self-appointed critics would do such a thing, and what they thought wouldn’t have hurt me in the least, especially because I can’t read minds.

I’m pleased to have reached the age and stage where I am comfortable with myself. Taking the hint from Mrs. Roosevelt, I yam what I yam.

KEEPING IT ALL TOGETHER - STILL

Today marks our 40^th wedding anniversary.  We’ll be off again to the mountains of North Carolina for a brief celebratory trip. I wrote this blog two years ago, and it is still apropos. We’ve done well these last two years – smooth sailing and no major health issues in the twenty-eighth year of our retirement. I’d like to meet other couples who have been retired so long and are still talking to each other.

                                      - - - - - - - - - - - -

We’ve had folks comment on how well my husband and I get along. Naturally, above all, we love each other to pieces.  Though we can mildly aggravate each other at times, we enjoy each other’s company above any others.

We both enjoy planning ahead: for the next meal, the next shopping trip, the next car, the next house. This usually helps us with our P’s: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. We’re probably in our last house now, but we still enjoy the planning. One never knows, do one? We’re fortunate that we’re both inclined to be neat and organized – it precludes sniping at one another.  Above all, we are courteous to each other. Saying a ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ for little favors leads to greater appreciation of bigger ones.

Over the years we’ve developed little rituals that we enjoy: from being sure to put out the sweet gherkins for our tuna melts to selecting fresh flowers for the house. Our best, now ingrained ritual is to say “I Love You” or “Love You to Pieeeeeeeeeeces!” Waking up each morning, settling in to bed, and all times in between; coming and going – especially going or ending a phone call with each other or any of the family – the words are always there.

We’ve got a song-book of family sayings, many of which our children and grandchildren outgrew years ago. When Joe was Joey – a little kid, that is – if he’d had a bad day, struck out, guttered too many bowling balls, or maybe fallen off his bike, he’d say to his Dad “it’s a no day Dad.” “A no day Dad” is a phrase of the past for him, but it is a regular in the conversation between Frank and me.  Similarly, when our oldest grandchild was in day care, she came home disgusted one day because the resident baby ducks were gone.  When asked how they were that day she replied: “No ducks, es worms.”  This too is part of her past, our present. 

These are just family sayings and doings, nothing too catchy or memorable outside of the family, but they keep the memories alive and the love renewed.

You might like to read about Zen Hugs, another of our family favorites.

NATIONAL COFFEE DAY

I was searching Google Images for a picture for this post when it occurred to me
to take a picture of my own mug of coffee. By this time in my daily routine, the coffee
 level is way down in the mug - almost time for a second cup.

I read somewhere that the 29^th of September is National Coffee Day. It is also our son Richard’s birthday, but that’s relevant only because he is a master coffee lover. We all are in this family. I can do two cups, occasionally three, of regular in the morning and perhaps a cup – decaf now – in the evening after dinner. 

I’m back to drinking my coffee without sugar. I’d had it that way for my first coffee-drinking years because that’s the way my mother drank it – I never thought of sugar. But back in the early 60’s when we were converting the bank’s checking accounts to computer, I had many late-night sessions trying to get it all to prove.  At that time there wasn’t a fast food restaurant on every corner – LOL, not even a handy bar on every corner in that neighborhood – so I started to add sugar to my coffee for a little bit of extra energy value. I kept up using sugar until just about this time last year. For some reason I grew to dislike the sugared coffee and just stopped using it. I am really loving my coffee again.

Scandinavia leads the world in per capita coffee consumption, Norway being fourth down on the list after Finland, Sweden and Denmark. (The Norwegians have always believed in moderation.)  So where did I have the worst cup of coffee I ever tasted? Of course, Norway.  I suppose the Norwegian rail system, the NSB, is known for its excellent service, but not for its cuisine, shall we say.  And I also suppose that in that early hour of the morning, heading on the train from Kristiansand to Stavanger, it was easier for them just to use the leftovers from the night before. I’ve had awful coffee – that stuff at the bank that had sat there on the hot plate for hours is a prime example – but before this it all was passable, drinkable.  This Norwegian stuff really tasted like paint thinner, like panther pee - though really, I can only imagine those flavors. Whew! Very worthy of entry into the Coffee Hall of Shame. I must say that we did have some great coffee in Norway, but they are hardly remembered in light of that railroad swill.

The best cup of coffee I ever had? Right here in the U.S.A.: Vermont, to be specific, at the original King Arthur Flour shop in Norwich. Frank and I went up there on a regular basis to stock up with their flour, the best, and other cooking and baking ingredients. On this particular trip there was new coffee to go with our traditional purchase of a baked goodie. It was the late 90’s, and the first time we’d ever seen or heard of the Keurig coffee pods. We picked the Green Mountain Coffee Vermont Country Blend – after all, we were in Vermont. Not knowing how good it might be, we selected the smallest serving – wrong! It turned out to be the best coffee we’d had to that date. We should have gone for the biggest size. Vermont Country Blend is still Frank’s favorite.

When the Keurig machines became available for home use we got right on the band wagon.  Sure the pods are expensive, now around 60¢ a pop, but they’re better than anything from Starbucks. (I have to wonder at the folks who line up at Starbucks each morning and fork over a lot of cash for their daily fix. An investment in a Keurig and the many varieties of pods and many available dairy coffee flavorings would save them wads of money – not to mention time spent on those lines.) I’ve sort of justified the cost in my mind because we are getting a fresh cup of coffee every time, and because we don’t leave any coffee sitting, undrunk and burning, on a hot plate. And at times, with great double coupons and coincidental sales, I’ve gotten the price well below 30¢. And now the super market chains are getting in on the act with their own house blends – pretty good ones in fact.

So, all this looks like a testimonial for Keurig – it was unsolicited, to be sure. We dread the times when our machines have broken down – and this has happened. I’ve got a pound of coffee stashed in the freezer and our old coffee maker is up in the pantry, just in case, but I’ve not had to resort to the old way of brewing. The big box stores are open every day and we’ve been able to replace the machine toot sweet, but I’m still really leery of being without my coffee.  

And do you want to know my favorite flavor of ice cream?  Coffee, of course!

BREAKFAST

Scrounging around for some quick blog posts for September, I looked at my old list of Commemorative Months. Where half of these commemorations come from I couldn’t begin to guess.  Topping the alphabetical list of commemorations are “All American Breakfast Month” and “better Breakfast Month” The former, I would guess, was started by the breakfast cereal industry, and the latter by the health nuts.

Breakfast at our house is according to a usually etched-in-stone menu:

Monday – cereal and banana (Minions welcome!)

Tuesday – oatmeal with prunes or raisins

Wednesday – an egg, usually soft boiled but often scrambled, and toast

Thursday – cereal and banana again (I hope the Minions stick around!)

Friday – that oatmeal again

Saturday – sweet indulgence: Waffles, pancakes or French toast

Sunday – “Heart Attack on a Plate” – two eggs, bacon, home fries, English

          Muffins or toast, and whatever else is not nailed down

All this served with coffee, and orange juice and vitamin pills – of course!

I must tell you that this menu was not devised by me. No, my husband is the perpetrator. Rarely, and usually only if we’re traveling, does he deviate from this norm. Me? I deviate. That oatmeal got stale years ago, so it's toast for me. On cereal days I’ve now come to have just the banana. (Did I tell you I love Minions?)  Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays I go with the flow – but I make only a single portion of those home fries. As I’ve gotten older they’ve become too much for me at one sitting, and sometimes they give me the “burpies and chirpies”. 

 

BANANA!

Over the years, Frank’s doctors have been amazed that he sticks to his regimen. They want to know if it’s boring. Boring? To him, boring is the same thing day in and day out – like a friend of ours who has a cup of yoghurt and a piece of toast each morning. That’s boring.

So, commemoratively speaking, a week of breakfasts at our house pays homage both to the “All American Breakfast” and the “Better Breakfast”. None of it could hurt, right? Of course right!

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER AT 200

I was reminded that today, September 14, 2014, is the 200^th anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore, and the writing by Francis Scott Key of what has become our national anthem: The Star Spangled Banner. In light of that, I decided to rerun an essay I wrote in 2012. Our national anthem has become a pet topic for me. The song is rousing, yet for many hard to sing. Once man did get it right, and I wrote about that too.  I do wish that ‘the powers that be’ at any event where it is sung would encourage everyone to sing it. We need everyone’s participation these days.  

The Star Spangled Banner was made our national anthem just over eighty years ago in March 1931.  1931 was the year the Empire State Building was completed and the year my husband was born.  Two out of three of those have weathered well – one, the anthem, has not. 

I’ve always found it hard to sing.  It starts out in a fairly comfortable range, but then “the rockets’ red glare” takes the range sky high. Years ago everyone sang it at the start of sporting events. Today some rock group or rap singer or some sponsor’s wife does the rendition. Many flub the lines. The younger generation’s singers just have to jazz it up and add notes that were never in the score. The singing wives, who really are fine in the church choir, should never be encouraged to get up and sing alone. This is our national anthem, for pity’s sake, let’s not abuse it.

A notoriously bad version - Oh, yeah!

Hard to sing or not, it would be less painful to the ears if everyone sang as they once did. Just think of the money NASCAR or other sports organizers could save if they’d just have everyone sing it in one rousing chorus – flags waving, jets roaring by overhead.  Sounds good to me.  But then I realize that having all these stars around entices fans to get to the track or to watch the race on TV.  With a sigh I say “Oh well, the almighty dollar wins again.”

Whenever the subject comes up it’s for sure folks will agree that our anthem is hard to sing, and most will suggest we’d be better off with a rousing rendition of Irving Berlin’s God Bless America.  Don’t hold your breath kiddies!  Though it has become popular to play it at many sporting events, especially in the National Hockey League, (after all, there is no law that says a national anthem has to be played) the politically correct in this country wouldn’t have an anthem that contained the word “God”.* I don’t know how these same folks handle their greenbacks though, what with “In God We Trust” on all our currency.  Perhaps they rely totally on electronic banking.

This Land is Your Land, Woody Guthrie’s great song, might come under consideration, especially if we stuck to just the first two verses. “This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Island” – it covers the whole nation.  But in the original version, after the first few verses it begins to sound like the protest song it is. Guthrie wrote it in 1940 as a rebuttal to Berlin’s God Bless America, which he thought unrealistic.  God Bless America does get my vote though. Anthem lyrics aren’t necessarily realistic, but they should be patriotic, extolling us as we can be our very ‘finest hour’.  Realistic lyrics would have to be changed on a regular basis according to the state of the union, and would read like the front page of a major national newspaper.

There’s a lot to be said for America the Beautiful – but God is in the lyrics there too, wouldn’tcha know.  And it’s a song that’s usually played slowly and with a bit more, shall we say, reverence than our current anthem, making it a poor choice at sporting event s.  Yes, “God” is in the lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner: “and this be our motto: ‘In God is our Trust.’”  Rarely do we sing on down to that fourth stanza to note it. At the time our anthem was chosen the movement toward political correctness was not even on the horizon. I wish Congress had stuck with Hail, Columbia. Maybe they can bring that one back.

You can go on line and come up with many differing opinions on the current song and its suggested replacements – I just thought I’d add my own thoughts to the mix.

*They’re after the Pledge of Allegiance too. Read this recent article from the UPI.

I YAM WHAT I YAM - STILL

I first used this essay back in 2011, and in light of the things I’ve been posting lately I thought I’d run it by you again.

As Popeye said – “I yam what I yam,” and I’ve tried to live by that since the time years ago I cut out and saved an article from Real Simple magazine, and I can’t find the date on it, about Finnish women who, on the whole, rarely if ever agonize over their body image.  They are what they are. The article, by now Associate Professor of Writing at the New School, Elizabeth Kendall, was titled The Naked Truth.

Truth be told, not many of us are happy with our naked bodies.  Oh, I’d like to be many, many pounds lighter, but my body likes the “set point” I’ve been at for over a quarter of a century.  Diets and I don’t get along too well. 

So I dress as neatly and fashionably and comfortably as possible, and let it go at that. My sister and I were always great fans of “gut hiders”, those blouses and other tops that deemphasized our more-than-bountiful embonpoint. Loose is lovely, comfortable is lovely.

I yam what I yam, and, being diplomatic about it, I do suppose that most other women of a certain age feel the same way.  But ladies, I do wish more of you well-endowed gals would give a bit more thought to how you dress.  Don’t agonize over the body you have and how to change it. By this time, like me, you’ve got to live with it. Worry more about other things such as dressing that body presentably.

First of all, if the clothes go around you that does not mean they fit. Spandex is, as they say, a privilege. Wearing any tight, knitted garments is for the very young and the very slim. You don’t want folks saying “Looks like she’s been melted and poured into it,” now do you?

   O.k., that top is a size 16 and you’re a 14, but it’s a tank top and your upper arms are way past flabby. Why would ya?  And just because something jazzy comes in a size you wear doesn’t mean you have to buy it.

I love to see a well-turned-out woman of any age or size. I must admit though, I do love to sightsee in places like Walmart. Talk about “why would ya?” You know the ones I mean. Some of those folks are a definite hoot. Nudge, nudge, wink wink. That one over there!  You know the ones I mean.

(Well, maybe my halo is on too tight.)

RESERVE THE DATE

This morning I was assembling my blog for this coming Sunday, September 14^th, the anniversary of the writing of the poem that became The Star Spangled Banner. In searching for the word ‘anthem’ in my blog history, I came upon my writing about the British national anthem and the note about this date next year.

Yes, reserve this date for next year, September 11, 2015.  That will be the day, at 63 years, 217 days, that Queen Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning monarch in the history of England. I am rooting for her to stay healthy and make it to the party.     

ANGELS WITH HASSELBLADS

Do you see that? How cool!  Who took the picture – a passing angel with a Hasselblad?  Noooo! Go to Astronomy Picture of the Day – APOD – and read all about it. All this endeavor goes on quietly above us and we rarely thing of what these people are doing. Yes, I know they probably rarely think of what we’re doing down here, but they are the few and we are so many.  Speaking of the many, I read on the Beeb that we earthlings are thinking very seriously about cleaning up a lot of the debris floating around up there.

 Heavens – we’re such litter bugs.

SEPTEMBER

September

In September, for a while

I will ride a crocodile

Down the chicken soup-y Nile

Paddle once, paddle twice

Paddle chicken soup with rice

One September afternoon years ago marked the family's introduction to Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup With Rice. Granddaughter Mollie came home from her first day at school reciting this verse. She was hilarious! She put in every word, every nuance of body language her little frame could muster up. She was especially funny when she went "down the chicken-soupy Nile", waving her arms to her sides like a seasoned Egyptian dancer. She paddled like crazy  - not just 'once', not just 'twice' - while stressing the words "CHICK-en SOUP with RICE". 

Seeing as how Mollie is now twenty-three and a mother herself, this is a cherished family memory.

THOSE ANNOYING TV ADS

On today’s The Writer’s Almanac, I read that this is the anniversary of the first paid radio commercial in 1922. Ah, so that’s where it all began! Herbert Hoover thought it shouldn’t be allowed.   

I had to have a small laugh because I know how my husband absolutely hates the commercials, feels there are more and more of them every day, and believes it’s all a conspiracy. It drives him crazy when he switches channels when a commercial pops up during, say, a motor race, only to find that the other channel he was watching, flipping back and forth, is also running a commercial. We don't, as we once did with broadcast, get these programs for free. It annoys him that he has to endure the ads even while paying a hefty monthly fee.
 

It does seem to me that many channels proliferate just for the income of it, not for the service.  I remember in years past hearing the annual broadcast channels announce the renewal of their licenses.  Part of their license to broadcast was their service to the community. Anyone who disagreed with the license renewal could complain to the FCC. Not anymore! Cable channels, like many under the Discovery banner, consist of repeats, repeats, repeats, strung together with a boatload of commercials. Many old shows are pulled apart and reassembled a bit differently and touted as being new. Even the staid BBC fills its daily schedule with reruns of the ever angry Gordon Ramsey, Top Gear, and Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is now over 20 years old. It costs little to repeat some of these productions ad nauseam, and the income from the commercials must be quite handsome.

Such is the way of the word these days.  If it were just me here, I’d be happy to stick to the PBS channels, making my annual contributions in lieu of all those ads. 

GAMACHE

Today is August 26, 2014. Today is the day!

Yesterday I got the shipping notice from Amazon, and today is the day I’ll get my copy of the latest Louise Penny novel The Long Way Home. I’ve been following the story of Armand Gamache, now retired Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, ever since my 

dear Canadian friend introduced me to the series.

If you are a Penny fan, a Gamache fan, you know why I’m so delighted.

                          

Amazon had this on the book’s page:  "As with all the author’s other titles, Penny wraps her mystery around the history and personality of the people involved. By this point in the series, each inhabitant of Three Pines is a distinct individual, and the humor that lights the dark places of the investigation is firmly rooted in their long friendships, or, in some cases, frenemyships. The heartbreaking conclusion will leave series readers blinking back tears." —Library Journal

I’m not too sure I’m happy about a “heartbreaking conclusion” – today I can imagine many scenarios, by tomorrow I will know for sure.

I’ll be listening for the telltale sound of the mail truck.

COUSIN MARGARET

Today’s BBC New Headlines reminded me that this is the 75^th Anniversary year for The Wizard of Oz.  How many times have you seen that movie? How many times have I, for that matter? Too many to count, especially since they trot it out almost every year at Christmas time.

And every time I see it I am again fascinated by the Wicked Witch of the West – Margaret Hamilton. I look at her and look at her and wonder if there is any family resemblance.  Miss Hamilton, you see, was my first cousin twice removed. She and my father’s mother were both Hamilton girls, and I am told that they resembled each other when they were young. I favor my father, who favored his mother a bit.  But no, I don’t see the resemblance. Too bad – I’d love to be green!

I think I will enroll Cousin Margaret into my Curmudgeon Hall of Fame.  

She was a bit testy, wasn’t she?

THE NAME GAME

Today every Tom, Dick and Harry has a last name, but that wasn’t always so.  I doubt that our ancestors were named Fred and Barney, but until they started to sort themselves out and create a hierarchy, I’d surmise that everyone needed only one name.  For millennia, rural people were so far out of town that they knew everyone in the area.  It was when they congregated in cities that they had to tack identifiers on to their simple names.

Once folks realized there were others around with their name they began to tack on the name of town they were from.  Thus we have George Washington, whose forebears were from Washington in England, or James Galway, from Ireland. In English we don’t use the ‘from’, but among others, the German Von, the French or Spanish De, or the Italian Da, mean ‘from’. Think of Von Richtofen or DaVinci. 

Meanwhile, back at home, the population was growing.  Tom wasn’t the only Tom in town, so in many places he became Tom Johnson, the son of John.  In Arab countries a son was ibn-, in Hebrew he was ben-, they’re almost the same. In Gaelic, Mac or Mc means son, and O’ means grandson. Could a Scots-Irish lad be O’MacDonald?  In the Scandinavian countries a son was -son sometimes -sen. Erik the Red was Erik Thorvaldsson. A daughter was -dóttir or -datter. This is still used in Iceland, where Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was the world’s first democratically elected female head of state.

In other instances, instead of being a son of someone, folks added their profession to their given name. They became Tom Baker, Margaret Thatcher, Maurice Chevalier, or Robert Allen Zimmermann. One ‘n’ or two, a zimmermann is a carpenter, but we know this one as a singer: Bob Dylan. They might have had a characteristic that distinguished them: if they were redheads they might be Russo in Italy or Rousseau in France. If they lived by a lake or pond they became Veronica Lake or James Pond. If their father worked for a bishop, abbot, or priest, or if their father was one, they might use that as their surname.  Is that how that comic became Joey Bishop?  Nah, his last name was Gottlieb, which is German for God’s love, and that might have begun as a nick name.  

In 1979, the United Nations adopted a measure that states, among other things, that there should be equal rights in the transmission of family names. Parents can decide to give their children either the name of the father or mother, or a hyphenation of both – although no more than two names can be hyphenated. I wonder what happens when a Smith-Wong marries a Patel-Jones. Though in one form and one place or another this has been going on for a long time, many couples are now deciding on the wife keeping her own name and their children having a combined surname.  When James Pope marries Anne Sicola, their children’s surname will be Pope-Sicola.

So, surnames came from relationships, towns, locations, occupations, even nicknames. There are many whose origins remain a mystery. It’s said that the name Ryan can’t be traced, but that’s the luck o’ the Irish for you. Surname is from the Old French ‘sur’, meaning ‘super’ or ‘on’ or ‘on top of,’ and ‘nom’, meaning name. We’ve just skimmed the surface of surnames.  Names from our western European heritage, once so prevalent in the States, have been joined by a United Nations of names, and their origins are interesting and very intriguing.

This post is from May 2011. I was thinking about it again because I was marveling at the mixture of names and heritages for my three youngest granddaughters.  Their last name is Scottish, but decorating their family tree they will also find the flags of Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, and Poland.(With the Stars and Stripes on the top of the tree.) I think this mix of backgrounds is wonderful – I hope that they’ll appreciate it and want to learn more about it as they get older.

AUGUST

August

In August it will be so hot
I will become a cooking pot
Cooking soup of course-why not?
Cooking once, cooking twice
Cooking chicken soup with rice

Maurice Sendak

August – ah, just one more month of hot weather – I hope! The humidity has

 been unusually high here this year. I usually take a walk each morning 

before the sun rises and it gets a wee bit too hot for me, but not lately. 

I open up that front door and it feels like I’m heading into a sauna. 

Wham!

Then I nicely close the door and say “Not today Geraldine”, Geraldine being one of my mother’s flippant nicknames for me when she was about to say “No”.

To ‘celebrate’ the first of August, I believe I will make chicken soup tonight.

No rice – we like fine noodles. (Sorry Mr. Sendak!) By this time of year we’ve gone through the stockpile of frozen soups, so it’s time to start stockpiling again. I can’t think of a better way to start.

While searching Google's picture files for August, I came upon this
interesting photo. I wonder where this was taken.
Did she dive from that bamboo pole?
Splash!

I'd love to do that - but then I get a 'visual' of my fat-old-lady self,
and I have myself a good laugh.
Maybe in my next life - hmmmm?

BE CALM AND CARRY ON

Don't you just hate those stickers on fruit?  Grrrr!

It seems like most of the bloggers I follow, the ones who posted almost daily, are gradually posting fewer and fewer blogs - or they're stringing together a few photos and calling that a post. I too find myself bogged down with a dearth of blog inspiration, and quite busy with inspiration to do things elsewhere. Several years ago I started out like Gang Busters - with two or three posts a week. I've done over 350 posts. but I'm slowing down to maybe one a week. As far as the blog seems to be going, my get-up-and-go got up and went.

I will post from time to time - I've got several date-related posts ready for the future - but for now I will be on a hit or miss schedule. Meanwhile I wish all of you a lovely summer - be calm and carry on!

FRUIT CRUMBLE - FOR TWO

It’s summer and lots of great fruits are in season. A few weeks ago I couldn’t pass up the price of $1.99 for a pint of beautiful blueberries, so I devised this recipe for a tasty dessert. I use a packet of True Lemon to cut down on the liquid. Makes four servings – two today, two tomorrow (perhaps for breakfast?) and all delicious.

Filling

1 pint of berries, or about 2 cups of cut fruit.

3 Tbsp. sugar

1 Tbsp. cornstarch, depending on how juicy the fruit may be

1 packet True Lemon

Pinch of nutmeg

Pinch of cinnamon

Pinch of salt 

Topping

½ cup of flour

¼ cup of brown sugar

½ tsp. cinnamon

Pinch of salt

4 Tbsp. (1/2 stick) butter

Grease or spray four 1 cup soufflé dishes (or a 3 cup baking dish) – preheat the oven (better yet, in the summer, a toaster oven) to 375°.

Rinse, de-stem, and otherwise prepare the fruit you’ve selected.  Mix the other ingredients and toss them with the fruit. Divide the mixture into the four soufflé dishes.

In a separate bowl, using two knives or a pastry blender, blend the butter into the mixed dry topping ingredients until the pieces resemble small peas and will clump together when compressed.  Crumble the topping on to the four dishes of fruit.

Bake for 30-35 minutes. I think berries will take about 30 minutes, and harder fruits like peaches and apples will take a bit longer.  Couldn't hurt to put a bit of cream, even whipped cream, or some ice cream on top.  Cream is the word.