TILTING at WOODPECKERS

The Night Before Solstice

2011-12-22T08:57:00.001-05:00

Twas the night before Solstice
When I and the cats
Had just settled down
For a long winter's nap

When out in the hallway
There arose such a clatter
Thunking and clunking
What on earth was the matter?

The cats were not with me
I found none in the house
Had they all scattered thither
In chase of a mouse?

I roared as I strode through
The doorways and halls
"What the hell are you doing?"
"What's going on?"

The last door I yanked open
Revealed a surprise
Leto the kitten
With huge frightened eyes

His head was wedged firmly
Inside a glass jar
I don't even know
How he'd made it that far

In this airless prison
His doom was foretold
I had to act swiftly
I had to be bold

Left hand on the kitten
Right hand on the jar
I grabbed his neck tightly
And twisted the jar

I pulled and I pulled
With all of my might
And I freed my small friend
From his terrible plight

I calmed him and soothed him
And called him by name
"Oh Leto! Poor Leto!"
"You're all right again!"

His purr increased swiftly
And I swear he made clear
"Blessed Solstice to all!"
"I'm so glad I'm still here!"

A Happy Ending for Tommy

2011-12-04T20:41:00.001-05:00

Tommy

Several weeks ago my shop neighbor came in to borrow one of my cat carriers so he could take the cat he had adopted nine months ago back to the SPCA and surrender him. Most of his family was going away for the winter and as his wife was very allergic to cats, he thought this was the only solution to his dilemma. He had already looked into boarding kennels but the cost would have been prohibitive, well over a thousand dollars. His financial situation was precarious and the cat problem was about to send him over the edge. He told me, “Mar, I feel like my head is going to explode.”

Luckily for the cat, named Tommy, the SPCA had a five-month waiting list for surrenders so they turned him away without even looking at him. The neighbor and I discussed the situation and decided that I would be able to keep Tommy in a crate in my shop for the duration if the crate and food and litter were provided. I even planned to let him roam freely in the shop if he and shop cat Mama Lucy were able to become friends.

Tommy arrived Monday evening, one very unhappy cat. He had embarrassed himself by soiling the carrier and when he burst out the open door, I could see that he was very overweight and he had a horrid thick mat in the middle of his back that he had been unable to groom. He hissed at Lucy and she yowled at him – so into the crate he went.

Tuesday morning I could see he was a very sad kitty. Lucy was upset also, giving me accusing looks all day. The one bright spot in the day came when my friend Richard stopped in for a visit and fell totally in love with Tommy. When I later mentioned this to the cat’s owner, he said, “Give the cat to Richard!”

We spent the next two days trying to figure out the details of the ownership transfer and find a vet or a groomer who could relieve poor Tommy of his painful mat. It was so tangled and matted - it looked like a hairy block of wood glued onto his too wide back! Possible solutions were discussed on Facebook. Tommy’s vet could not take him for another three weeks. They estimated the cost could go as high as $300, if he required blood work and anesthesia. I could not let this cat suffer for three more weeks. And I did not have $300!

I phoned my friend Chris from 10^th Chance Rescue and she was able to make an appointment for Friday morning with Kenmore Animal Hospital, a veterinary partner in the rescue group. We both agreed that this was a bonafide rescue since the original owner had tried to return the cat to the SPCA.

I spent a lot of time with Tommy, petting him and telling him of all the people who were working to try to help him out of his bad situation. He seemed friendly enough, but still sad to be in the crate with that awful mat pulling at his delicate skin. The rest of his coat was clean and well groomed – he did the best he could with the areas within his reach.

We did not know how Tommy would react to any procedure – shaving or whatever – would he have to be sedated? Tommy was less than thrilled about being stuffed into the hated carrier and the ride to the vet, but once there, he settled into the classic “meatloaf” posture, signifying his ease. I am positive he knew we were all trying to help him. Once inside the examining room, he became a little cross with Chris when she trimmed his claws, but he behaved fairly well for the vet especially after she gave him a stern lecture when he tried to bite her. He gave her an astonished look, jumped off the table and rubbed apologetically against her ankles.

They whisked him into the back for the “procedure” which took about five minutes and included expressing his anal glands, which were full to bursting from his weight problem. The mat came off with expertise and the correct implements and it turned out he did not even have to be shaved – he returned to us with hair intact!

Tommy was happy, not even meowing on the way back to the shop, and he looked comfortable when he went back into the crate for his breakfast. Richard came by soon after and I opened the crate door. Tommy walked right up to Richard for some petting. This made me very happy!

Richard lives only a block away so he made several trips with cat food, bowls, cat toys and such, then he returned for Tommy himself. Tommy did not want to go back into the carrier, but Richard told me, once he was released, he spent a lot of time roaming around his new home, finding the hidey holes, the soft places to sit, and stretching his legs. When Richard sat on the sofa, Tommy promptly jumped up onto his lap. I had given Richard a slicker brush to use on Tommy, and Tommy thoroughly enjoyed his first brushing session.

One of Richard’s neighbors, a woman who is known to possess special powers of intuition, came by for a visit and had a little “chat” with the cat. Tommy indicated to her that he had a very special message for me: “Thank you!”

So in the end - Tommy is happy in his new home, Richard is happy with his new friend, the former owner is happy to be relieved of the burdens of pet ownership, and even the SPCA is happy!!! Mama Lucy is once again happy to be the queen of her little realm, and me? I am ecstatic!

How to Train a Cat

2011-10-29T00:19:00.000-04:00

Many years ago, when dear little Malaika was a young cat, she developed a fascination for the collaged wooden door stop used on the bathroom door. Mind you, she never payed any attention to this during the daylight hours, but when we were trying to go to sleep at night an overpowering urge to play with this seemed to overcome her.

As we turned out the lights and settled in for the night, first came the small sounds of Malaika batting this way and that, trying to free it from under the door. The door stop scuffed back and forth, millimeter by millimeter, until it was free. Then, of course, the door would swing slowly shut.

Malaika clearly enjoyed this nightly ritual. We enjoyed it less, because if the scuffling noises did not keep us awake, the slamming door would awaken us.

One day I conceived of a brilliant plan to put a stop to these nighttime shenanigans once and for all. Very carefully, I balanced a metal measuring cup on the doorknob. With the door stop in place, the proximity to the wall kept the cup in place. We went to bed that night, chuckling softly, waiting for Malaika to begin her routine.

Bat, scuff, scrape; bat, scuff, scrape - then CLANG! The cup hit the floor, and the next sounds were Malaika doing one of those cartoon “Feet, don’t fail me now!” attempts to gain purchase on the slippery linoleum and get as far away as she could from that dreadful metal monster.

The poor dear was humiliated by our admittedly triumphant laughter and would you believe - she never touched that door stop again!

My, doesn't she look innocent?

I Remember, I Remember, the Wondrous Woodstock Fair

2011-10-29T00:08:00.001-04:00

Of course, they say if you remember it, you weren’t there - but let me assure you that I was in attendance in its entirety. I merely forgot to write a blog post about it on the 42nd anniversary in August. (Blame the kittens).

We had been regulars at the Newport Folk festival for several summers, and we had attended Mariposa in July of that year, so it seemed only natural to send away for tickets to this Woodstock festival when we saw the ad (probably in Rolling Stone). It sounded like an amazing event and the line-up was too good to be true. We had seen a number of the performers before, but all in one place over one weekend: Jefferson Airplane, The Who, the Grateful Dead, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Joe Cocker, Country Joe and the Fish, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ravi Shankar, and more!

Three of us went in our then-new Volkswagen Mini Bus (aka Marsha the Enormous Mother). There was my wasband Paul and this guy George from Montreal who we had met in a coffee house in Hamilton. George went by the nickname Windy. (Windy was later famous for gifting us with our notorious pet raccoon, Rocky.) We were all set for camping in the bus, with a mattress and a camp stove. We brought foodstuffs with us, like carrot sticks and Kraft dinners, bread, peanut butter and hot chocolate. We naturally assumed that we would just “go to the store” and buy other needed items such as milk and butter. Hah!

I don’t remember any of my wardrobe except water buffalo sandals. I imagine I was wearing bellbottoms and little tops or a bikini most of the time. (Ye gods, what a long time ago that was!) We were also equipped with army surplus ponchos and one metal canteen.

We arrived on Thursday evening and were fortunate enough, finally, to find a parking spot at a little tavern fairly close to the festival grounds. No campgrounds were to be found and no bathrooms, much to my dismay. The men had little problem with this but I remember being extremely relieved (!) when the tavern allowed us to use their facilities the next morning. Lines for both the mens room and the ladies room snaked out the door and into the parking lot. I will never forget the designations on the doors of these rest rooms: Pointers and Setters. I thought this was hilarious but the country cleverness seemed to baffle most of the city kids.

We packed up our back packs (Paul and I shared one small olive drab army surplus pack and Windy had a massive pack with God knows what in it) and headed over to the festival. Paul and I were old hands at standing in lines, being herded like cattle between chain link fences, handing in our tickets, finding a place to sit and watching the concerts. We were astonished to find no lines and trampled fences, no gate, no ticket takers! I distinctly remember feeling peeved that we had paid “all this money!” (I recall the tickets costing $15 each) for a weekend ticket and here there was no one to hand it to. We threw those tickets away (and now they are worth a fortune!).

They were still building the stage when we arrived on the festival grounds. This was more than a little dismaying, but we found a place to spread our blanket and plunked ourselves onto the ground. We were high on the hill, well above the stage which looked like it was miles away from our distant vantage point. It seemed to me that many hours passed before the concert struggled to a start. But the sun was shining, the crowd was peaceful, we did not care. We passed around our carrot sticks.

Two distinct memories - the crowd booing at an Army helicopter (flying in to help us) and the thrill of saying “that word” aloud for the first time in my life when Country Joe led the crowd in his legendary “Fish Cheer.”

Towards the end of the first day’s concert, Windy and I decided to return to the mini bus and Paul decided to stay and catch the next act. What we did not know is that both Windy and I had no idea where we were going and consequently headed off in the opposite direction from where the bus was parked. Plus I left my sandals in the pack so I was barefoot.

Windy and I walked and walked and walked some more - it was dark and I remember walking through a cow pasture, trying not to step into anything disgusting or on anyone sleeping there, we crossed a stream by walking over a slippery mossy dam, we walked and walked until we reached a road and then we walked some more. Because we were virtual strangers to each other, Windy and I were extraordinarily polite to one another (Paul and I would have been at each others throats, but Paul was possessed of a remarkable sense of direction so he would never have gotten lost in the first place). Windy and I were like Alphonse and Gaston, helping each other over and around obstacles in the darkness. “After you.” “No, after you!”

Once on the road it seems we walked for miles (me ouching along on the hard gravel on the shoulder), traffic was creeping by bumper to bumper. As the sun came up, a kind soul offered us his trunk to sit upon and another rider passed a bottle of wine over to Windy, who took a slug. We were just settling down, and really appreciating the sitting part, when I happened to glance to the left of the highway and there, oh blessed gods, was our little tavern and Marsha the Enormous Mother! I shudder to think where we would have ended up had I not turned my head in that direction.

Paul had just gotten up and was making some breakfast and casually inquired, “Hey, where have you guys been?”

We never saw the Hog Farm, the art exhibits, or any vendors (well, except one memorable one!). We catnapped at the bus and at the site, catching some acts and missing others completely. The changeovers between acts seemed to take forever (not like the stage crew at current festivals when they can go from a solo performer with one mic to a full-fledged rock band in about five minutes). Paul and I were really tired after staying at the concert all the second night and we left just as the sun was rising in glorious technicolor. I will never forget this moment as long as I live. Jefferson Airplane was onstage and Gracie’s voice was soaring into the air as we trudged out and lo and behold, there was an ice cream vendor with a little cart. For breakfast that day, I had the best Fudgsicle I have ever eaten.

I do not remember which day it was that we happened upon the infamous pond. It did not take us very long to decide to go skinny dipping because the pond was so churned up and muddy it seemed a shame to get our bathing suits dirty. That pond was memorable in more ways than one. ‘Nuff said.

From where we were sitting when The Who performed, Roger Daltry and his wonderful white fringe appeared to us to be about an inch high. Luckily, we got to see them perform Tommy at Kleinhans and had a much closer view a few months later. The following weekend we saw Ravi Shankar at Stratford and he was sneezing and apologized that he had caught a cold at Woodstock.

I don’t remember when the rains came - the Woodstock in my memory was mostly sunny. Maybe because I have been a “rain or shine” festival goer for so many years that the rainy part of Woodstock did not register. I cannot speak for Windy and the contents of his marvelous back pack, but Paul and I were completely “straight” at the festival. I remember seeing bottles of wine passed around and maybe a few joints, but these somehow seemed unnecessary, because we had the music and we had the atmosphere. Everyone was as just mellow as we were, sprawling in the sunshine or crouching in the rain.

Other than Wavy Gravy’s reports from the stage, we had no idea about the problems the festival had caused the Great State of New York. We had no mobile phones so we did not know our parents were beside themselves with worry. Many years later, when I mentioned to my former mother-in-law about how worried I had been when my parents’ plane was late coming back from Europe because of some political disturbances abroad, she laughed. I was about to be highly insulted by her laughter, but then she said, “Well, now you know how we felt when you were at Woodstock.”

First Orange

2011-08-15T00:04:00.004-04:00

Red has always been my absolute favorite color, and on down the line I like purples, blues, blue-greens. Yellow is OK, I suppose, but as far back as I can remember, orange has always been my least favorite color. Oddly enough though, starting a few weeks ago, orange began to insert itself into my life: quite subtly at first, and then with a decided force.

I began by photographing the few proud day lilies that the deer had not eaten. Then, I discovered a monarch butterfly inside my house, sitting boldly on the bathroom window. OK, methinks, maybe orange is not so bad a color after all.

Then, about a week ago, when I was thinking good thoughts about the color orange, the trap was sprung by the first orange kitten. Beautiful orange-on-orange marbled swirls all over his body and blue-within-blue sapphire eyes - what a cutie! I knew right away that I was the one who had been trapped. I also knew with his spice eyes that he would have to be a Dune cat so I named him eventually named Leto II, but until I was sure of the Dune name I called him First Orange.

"First Orange"

Two days later, no more felines had been captured (momcat and the rest of the litter had seemingly vanished), I returned to the old neighborhood and began nosing around. I was looking for the person or persons who had been feeding momcat. I found the tortie momcat lying most regally on Miss Lucy’s back porch, right next to a platter of catfood and a bowl of water. She blinked at me, meowed a few times, and then resumed her nap.

There was no sign of her kittens. I had neighbors looking hither and yon and not one kit was to be found. At the end of the day a neighbor helped to grab momcat and put her into a carrier to be reunited with her firstborn son. He was over-the-moon thrilled to see her and she just kinda rolled her eyes and said, “But you said my life would be different now….”

I returned to the neighborhood the following day and one by one, the remaining five kittens were plucked from their hiding places behind Miss Lucy’s garage and in the adjoining yards. Two orange ones, one dark tiger. Then a search of several hours before nabbing the two remaining jet-black darlings. They fought like little devils but we got ‘em!

So now it has been decided that momcat, named Lucy, is top be my new shopcat (my shop screams for a shopcat, doncha think?) and little Leto is going home with me along with coal-black Lola, the only girl in the litter. The rest will be on view at my shop and at various pet stores on Saturdays until they all find homes. They were born on July 2, so they are currently 6 weeks old.

The traps were borrowed from 10th Chance Animal Rescue so here’s a huge “THANK YOU!” to my old friend Chris Bogan for all of her time and sage advice and another huge “THANK YOU!” to Dr. Keisha Hawkins and Lacey at the Kenmore Animal Hospital for giving these critters such an outstanding experience on their first trip to the vet.

Leto II (Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purr)

The Space between Dhruga and Summer

2011-07-02T12:07:00.000-04:00

The Space Between Dhruga and Summer

Dhruga the Watch Cat has been waiting

With patience eternal

Her tail flicks lazily

Luminous eyes blink slowly and

She purrs at a remembered caress

Dhruga has been waiting

With patience eternal

Others wait with her

But Dhruga is the Watch Cat

She must alert the rest………

“John! Moonshine! Puck!

She’s coming back to us!

Here she comes! She’s here!

Pamela has come Home to us!”

There is a joyous reunion in Heaven

Laughter abounds, purring surrounds

Now Summer is the one who waits

In the window of his temporal home

Watching the familiar birds and squirrels

And waiting for his time of reunion

My Dad

2011-06-19T12:12:00.000-04:00

Elma, 1948

I was done up in this outfit to be the flower girl at my uncle's wedding. I was less than thrilled, pitched a royal fit, and the wedding photographer caught us just as dad was calming me down. I was always referred to as "Miss Thundercloud" by the family because of this behavior and this photograph, but it is also told that I fulfilled my duties as a flower girl quite flawlessly.

I miss my dad.

The Night of the Finkbobber

2011-05-11T20:32:00.000-04:00

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, actually, I have little recollection of what kind of a night it was outside. Summer or winter, warm or cold, moon or snow? It matters not.

Picture a large rambling old store on a historic suburban main street. One side of the store was stuffed to the rafters with paint, wallpaper, window treatments (although they were just called drapes and blinds back then) and a hilarious truncated fake bed that displayed matching bedspreads. On our side of the store were aisles and aisles of art supplies, shelves full of craft supplies (though this was the seventies, before the “craft craze” struck so we did not stock that much of an assortment), and a huge picture frame department with stacks of ready made frames, racks of matboard and rows of corner samples.

It was probably a Thursday or a Friday night; none of us wanted to work until 9:00 that night - but there we were, stuck all evening. The only good thing, as I now recall, was that the boss went home early, a rare and blessed occurrence.

There were at least three of us working that evening - one young man, D, in the paint and wallpaper department, and my “sweet cousin” J and I - maybe one other young girl or one of the saner older women, I do not really remember. The ebb and flow of customers in all areas of the store had dribbled to a halt and maybe our chores were done, or maybe not; but we were all completely bored so someone (probably my mischievous sweet cousin) got the brilliant idea to tour the craft section and see what we could find to amuse ourselves.

That is where we found the last remaining Finkbobber, sitting alone and unappreciated on the shelf. The Finkbobber was a sort of generic version of Mr. Potato Head, not a hot (potato) seller by any means. We did not think anyone would miss it.

Ears, nose, eyes, etc were inserted into the proper slots but we were wild and restless, we wanted to do more. We stabbed it with pens and pencils, stuck in staples, pins, tacks, and, finally, razor blades. Poor Finkbobber - he quickly became a lethal weapon, spiked with blades like some outlandish throwing star.

It was then that the menacing began - we chased each other though the store, side to side, through the storage rooms, down the stairs to the loading dock, threatening and gesturing with the bristling Finkbobber. By this time, we were all laughing so hard and gasping for breath it is a wonder none of us sliced (or soiled) ourselves.

Of course we had to destroy the remains of the Finkbobber before the boss could see it the next day. I imagine it got tossed into the incinerator. Unfortunately, we never took any pictures.

This must have been one of the least successful toys in toy history because I have searched and searched for a photo of a Finkbobber, and there is not even a mention of one on the entire worldwide Interweb. I guess if anyone else searches “Finkbobber” they will find this blog entry.

But the image is in my mind and I know at least J and I will never forget that crazy night. We can still laugh ourselves silly with the memory. Maybe I should hunt for D on Facebook to see if he still remembers The Night of the Finkbobber.

The Ones That Got Away

2011-04-03T12:52:00.000-04:00

Thrift shopping has been my passion since I was old enough to walk “downtown” by myself when we lived in Albion. (Downtown was about one block away from the parsonage.) On my route home from sixth grade I passed by what we used to call a “junk store” (which would now be called an “antique store”).

I loved this dimly lit, dusty (OK, filthy) over-crowded emporium. It was chock full of wonders. Walking through the aisles, I always had the impression that if I were to bump into the wrong thing I would be buried in an avalanche of junk. I spent many glorious hours poking around in there by myself, spending a nickel here and a dime there on little wonderful tchotchke (I never learned what my finds were called until decades later). One day it was like a dream come true when I peered through the grimy windows to see horse statues, large ones and small figurines, all over the entire store! I ran home, got some money from the sock half-full of coins that I kept in my bedroom, went back to the store and started buying up the horses. I bought ones for 10¢, I bought ones for 15¢, I bought ones for 25¢! I was in Horse Heaven!!!

I was unfortunately not the only one buying these precious statues so some of them got away from me, but I bought as many as I could as swiftly as I could manage it.

Finally, one horse remained - it was the kind of bronze statue that one would see on a mantle, and it was the famous racehorse Man o’ War. It was magnificent. But, alas, it was far beyond my meager budget - it cost a whole $9.00. I tried in vain to convince my parents to front me a couple years’ allowance so I could buy this treasure but they flatly refused my impassioned pleas. “$9.00 for a horse statue! Not on your life, young lady!”

I do still own and cherish the rest of the horses I bought from that junk store, but if anyone in my lifetime ever invents a time machine, I plan on going back and buying Man o’ War.

Fast forward to the early eighties. One day my hubby and his best friend and I were messing around in and out of all of the great little shops that then occupied Allen Street. We went into a used clothing store and I immediately spied the most wondrous coat that I had ever seen in my life.

This coat was pale peach-colored iridescent leather. The style was a fingertip length artist smock, with a Peter Pan collar and huge patch pockets. This marvel, lined with bright red and white striped silk, looked like Doris Day could have worn it in one of those Rock Hudson comedies. It was simply amazing and as an added bonus, it not only felt like glove-leather, it fit me as if it had been tailor made. My two male companions proceeded to make fun of me for even thinking of such a garment (this was in the days of Rocky Horror at the Granada when black first started becoming the new black) and with great reluctance (on my part, at least) we exited the shop empty handed.

I phoned the shop as soon as I returned home, not twenty minutes later, to tell them to hold this prize for me. Alas, the proprietor informed me that as soon as we had left the store, an older couple from out of town had come in and bought MY COAT for their granddaughter. Oh! The agony!

Two tough lessons learned in an otherwise successful lifetime of thrift shopping. You can always rethrift an unwanted item, but far better to regret a purchase than regret losing the find of a lifetime. Buy now or forever hold your purse.

My Friend Hazel

2011-01-09T11:52:00.000-05:00

Hazel Pontius Collmer was the first “elder” in my life, other than my grandparents. I encountered her in the late 1970’s, when she was making the best of her twilight years at Beechwood Retirement Home, having out-lived two husbands. The driver who ran errands for the residents used to bring her paintings in for framing when I worked at a nearby frame shop. She included detailed notes on the type of framing she desired and we all adored her dreamy little watercolors.

One evening I had gone over to Beechwood to see my paternal grandmother, who lived in the wing with the dementia patients. Grandma was a lovable little dear but she really did not remember who I was and this made for unsettling and abbreviated visits, motivated more, I must admit, from familial obligation than anything else. I remembered that Mrs. Collmer lived there as well so one evening I decided to try and find her.

Thankfully this was in the days before all of the “privacy concerns” so I asked for and received her location. I knocked on her door and introduced myself as her framer. She chuckled and responded that she had always assumed her framer was a man but she looked me up and down and must have decided I was OK because she invited me into her small apartment. She was watching MacNeil/Lehrer (quite a refreshing change from the game shows blaring away in the rest of the building) and she shushed me until the segment she had been viewing was finished. It was a story about the first woman to be appointed the head of an Ivy League university.

Mrs. Collmer shut off the television, turned to me and asked, “Now, what would you have worn for an interview like that? How would you have done your hair?” She thought that the woman had not looked businesslike enough for such a distinguished position. Mrs. Collmer always dressed impeccably: she had a wardrobe of beautiful dresses, matching shoes and handbags, her hair was always perfectly coiffed; she always seemed to look like she was heading out the door to attend a concert at the philharmonic or perhaps conduct a board meeting.

By the time I met her, she was ninety-something and I was thirty-something and we soon became fast friends. I would go visit my grandmother for five or ten minutes and then spend several hours with this delightful woman who soon insisted that I call her Hazel. She had moved into the retirement community after the death of Mr. Collmer, her second husband who had been her first love. This was the best story!

When she was in high school she was friends with and eventually the beloved of Mr. Collmer, who was a year ahead of her. He went away to college after he graduated, and they corresponded regularly. He told her stories of his new roommate, a Mr. Pontius, and he told Hazel, “I am bringing him home with me for Thanksgiving, he is a grand fellow - you will just love him!”

Of course, much to Mr. Collmer’s dismay, Hazel did indeed fall in love with Mr. Pontius (and he fell in love with her). They were married for over fifty years until the his passing , whereupon Hazel serendipitously reconnected with Mr. Collmer whose wife of many years had also passed on. So the childhood sweethearts were reunited (in their seventies) and married for over a decade.

Hazel’s room was decorated with the best pieces from her art collection and her favorite furnishings. When she had moved into Beechwood in her eighties she knew she needed something other than her musical pastimes to keep her occupied, so she took some watercolor classes from James Kuo at Rosary Hill. Dr. Kuo was delighted with her bright spirit. A medical condition caused her hands to be quite shaky so he convinced her to paint clouds and skies and seascapes and foliage - not try to aim for straight lines - go with the flow, as it were. Soon I had framed so many of her paintings that I convinced her to have a one-woman show at the Rosa Coplon Home that lent its wallspace to local artists for month-long shows.

The residents and staff at Rosa Coplon could hardly believe that this artist was older than most of their residents! Hazel displayed her works there three years in a row and sold quite a number of pieces each time (I bought quite a few myself). At the last show she made a personal appearance at the opening, gave a brief talk, and ended up by demonstrating her daily exercise routine. My dad was holding a microphone for her and he really had to scramble to keep up with her contortions. Someone asked her how it felt to be so old. Hazel replied, “I will let you know when I feel old.”

Hazel had been born in 1888; she was one of the first generation of women to pursue education beyond high school. Mr. Pontius worked in the upper echelons of management in the WMCA and they traveled all over the world on for both business and pleasure. She played the violin and sang in choral groups. She was straight-backed and tall (she had much better posture than I did!), and she strode through her kingdom with a slender silver-headed cane (which I now have in my possession). Every night before she went to bed she walked down every hallway of her entire building complex and checked to make sure all of the exterior doors were locked and secure.

I remember she told me she was always so excited each time a new resident moved in to Beechwood. She lived with the everlasting hope that someday she would find a kindred spirit - someone who could discuss great books and music and world affairs, and someone who could hear well enough to carry on the conversation. Someone to talk to, a friend her age, a peer – that is what she sought and I do not think she ever found such a person. That may be why she and I became so close – she was desperate! She did give me the perceptive advice not to marry my second husband (which I of course ignored) and today when I look at a plastic grocery bag or a plastic container of any kind, I think of her comment almost thirty years ago that someday such items would be abandoned as being wasteful of the planet’s resources.

In 1985 she fell, broke her hip and her daughter hastily arranged transportation to Buffalo so she could make preparations to move her mother back with her to North Carolina to be close to the rest of her family. Humor usually pops up in the darkest of circumstances and I remember laughing that even though Hazel was suffering from the sudden alteration to her circumstances in addition to the discomfort from her shattered hip, she still managed to be fashion-conscious enough to chide her 75-year-old daughter for carrying a purse that did not match her shoes. Her daughter responded, “I am sorry, Mother, but I was in a hurry to get here to be with you!”

After she moved out of Beechwood, I saw her one last time. I drove down to Ashville with all of her possessions shoehorned into my rusty old van. Although I had a delightful stay with her daughter in an enchanting old farmstead in the middle of a wild and beautiful woodland, visiting my dear Hazel in the inhospitable hospital setting was just not the same as our vibrant get-togethers from days gone by; she was suddenly small, powerless and forlorn - such a pale imitation of her former effervescent self. It was a heartrending visit.

Hazel passed away in 1986 at the age of 98.

Seascape, Hazel Pontius Collmer

Kitchen Nightmares or Why I am not a Cook

2011-01-05T17:50:00.001-05:00

The Bishop’s Wife

My mother was never a good cook on her best days but when company came for a meal she pulled out all of the stops and tried her best to deliver edible hot food to the table in a timely fashion.

This was of course complicated by the fact that more often than not these company meals were served right after church on Sunday and folks expected to walk in the door of the parsonage and take a seat at the dining room table. Mom was expected to be present at the church service, of course, and yet there was this meal she was supposed to be preparing from scratch.

The meals were usually based around roast chicken or roast beef. Mom had those two down pretty good – she could throw in potatoes with the meat and over boil up some green beans or carrots pretty fast when she made the mad dash to arrive home before our guests. Her best dessert consisted of store-bought angel food cake, layered in chunks with great dollops of vanilla ice cream and blobs of chocolate syrup and then re-frozen in an angel food cake pan and served with Ready Whip. No baking, no cooking – only assembly required – mom loved recipes like this!

Methodists don’t have a lot in the way of a church hierarchy – the men my mom lived in fear of having to feed were the District Superintendent (DS) or horror of horrors, the Bishop. The DS was more of a regular fellow and had a closer relationship with the ministers – saw them more frequently, perhaps because he oversaw smaller territories than the Bishops.

One day the Bishop and his wife were scheduled to visit our church – the Bishop would preach the sermon that morning and then they would eat Sunday dinner with us, and they would be off to their next function.

Mom had foolishly decided to venture outside of her established repertoire of roast beef and roast chicken – she told dad to buy steak. Dad was not very pleased with the cut of the steak that was available but mom became determined to serve this. It was not a really expensive cut of meat and after her usual routine of a lengthy and low temperature cooking procedure, the steaks ended up very much akin to shoe-leather.

During the meal there was little conversation as everyone was occupied with the cutting and the attempts at chewing and then swallowing this very dry steak. My mother was mortified by all of this and tried gamely to move on to dessert by clearing away the dinner plates. The Bishop’s wife was still sawing away at her steak and my mom gently told her, “That’s OK, you don’t have to eat that.” The woman stubbornly hung onto her plate and said, “I’m going to finish this if it kills me.”

I remember that the Bishop and his wife beat a most hasty retreat right after dessert that day.

Breaking the Mold

My grandmother (mom’s mother) was a fabulous cook – her specialties were just about everything – roasts, pies, cakes, cookies, and casseroles. She had her written recipes but she was a “pinch of this” and a “dash of that” kind of cook – running on sheer instinct.

This instinct skipped my mom’s generation (as well as mine!). Mom suffered mightily for this imagined flaw in her character: after all, she was a Minister’s Wife and she felt she was expected to possess many talents to serve each parish as the preacher’s helpmeet. Other preachers had wives who played piano or organ, sang in or led choirs, taught Sunday School – but mom’s health and her shyness precluded any of these.

Mom struggled with cooking – she had the decorating and clothing aspects of entertaining down cold but the food part eluded her. Church food committees soon learned that it was best to just ask her for a nice Jello salad. Of course in her unceasing endeavor to make a good impression (for the sake of my father), she usually made the attempt to create a Jello mold.

Lime Jello, green grapes, banana slices, canned pineapple chunks – these were the main ingredients of the Jello mold. That part was doable. The tricky bit was the unmolding of the ring. Manys the time when mom resorted to slipping the pan into a sink full of warm water – to encourage the Jello ring to depart the mold. Of course the pan would sink into the sink and water would dissolve the Jello and green grapes and banana slices and the pineapple chunks would be found floating lazily in the sink full of green-tinged water. And mom would be found flung across her bed, weeping.

The Birthday Cake

Dad and I arrived back home in Albion very late one evening – we had been out visiting hospitalized church members all the way over in Rochester. It was Dad’s birthday, October 13, and we had been gone all day – we had pretty much forgotten about celebrating.

We entered through the back door into an almost completely dark house (most unusual since my mother usually kept every light on in the place when she was alone). Mom was nowhere to be found but there, in the corner of the kitchen, on top of the chest freezer and illuminated by one gooseneck desk lamp, was a cake.

This was not just any cake: this cake had a rusty orange zinnia with a broken stem drooping in the middle of it. A large white candle kind of angled out of the cake like a cannon. The white frosting was flecked with chocolate cake crumbs; the frosting was all over the cake plate. There were little birthday candles stuck here and there into the cake’s frosting and we also found several egg shells and a spoon wedged into this amazing creation. A few pieces of the cardboard cake mix box were also sticking out of the frosting.

Mom soon emerged from the darkened dining room and related the story of this cake. As usual, it was a layer cake that she had tried to bake. And as usual she had encountered problems removing the layers from the pans. When she had finally succeeded in prying the chunks of cake out of the pans, they really weren’t in “layers” anymore so she tried to “glue” everything back together with frosting. A few toothpicks inside to hold everything in place – voila!

Mom always had trouble with layer cakes because the layers never came out of the oven flat or even – they always dipped in one direction or the other – that is why she had to use toothpicks to hold the layers together. It was many, many years later that I discovered that ovens came with leveling feet – and that my poor mother’s years of problems over unlevel cake layers was not her fault but the fault of unleveled parsonage ovens!

But on this day in October this particular birthday cake was not cooperating with her and soon crumbs were in the frosting and frosting was everywhere. First she got mad - then she got creative. And because enough time had elapsed between when she made the cake and when dad and I came home, we all had a good laugh over the cake and cut it up and ate it. We just had to be really careful and watch out for those toothpicks!

The Best Christmas Ever

2010-12-24T16:37:00.003-05:00

1952 was the year I turned six. I could steal a line from Dickens and say it was the best of times and the worst of times. My mom and I were taking turns being sick; she with what I now believe to have been severe and frequent migraines and me with the usual array of childhood maladies such as chicken pox, mumps, measles, croup, etc. I remember one event which resulted in my dad carrying me across the park in front of our parsonage to the town doctor who painted my mouth with some ghastly purple stuff. I found out many years later this purple stuff was gentian violet used as a cure for thrush.

I also remember having to be dosed with a daily spoonful of cod liver oil because I “needed iron.” I could never figure out what the iron had to do with the medicine, but my mom and I arrived at an unusual ritual for my dosing: I used to crouch under the kitchen table for this hated spoonful and she would thrust the spoon under the table. I was very happy to be pronounced well enough to be rid of it - although I can still recall that hideous oily taste. *Shudder*

In spite of all of these ailments, my folks and I shared a wondrous life together. Dad was the quintessential poor country preacher (who one summer painted the parsonage to supplement his meager salary) and mom, in training to be agoraphobic in addition to her other illnesses, was very lucky that the church was right next door to the parsonage (she hated having to ride in the car, always got motion sickness). She occupied her time trying to decorate the old farmhouse/parsonage and sewed clothing and curtains when she could get out of bed. I guess we did not realize how awful our lives were so we simply enjoyed life and each other.

The school was just up the road and I could walk the half block or so and come home for lunch from kindergarten and then first grade. Part of our family lore, told to me many times, was that when I first started school I kept leaving and coming home because I wanted to “help my mommy” since she was so sick. My folks and the school officials had to convince me that it was OK for me to be gone a bit each day and that mom would be all right without my ministrations.

It was in this town also that my parents were forced to buy their first television, to keep me home at night. The neighbors two houses away used to invite me over after supper to watch Hopalong Cassidy and not unlike millions of other boomers, I was immediately sucked in to the Cowboy Way. The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and of course, all of these famous TV cowboys had famous TV cowboy horses: Topper, Silver, Trigger and Champion.

It was love at first sight! I wanted a six-gun, a cowboy hat, cowboy boots…and I wanted a horse!

Little by little I acquired the six-gun (but no holster, alas), and some sort of straw hat that masqueraded as a cowboy hat. But no horse seemed forthcoming. We could not afford a horse, of course, and my dad tried ever so gently to persuade me that the parsonage committee would not take to having to clean up after a real horse.

In the fall of 1952 I was suddenly banished from the basement. This did not bother me a great deal, as I recall, because it was one of those creaky old scary basements with the low-hanging furnace pipes and the finished part just kind of trailing off into dirt. The church basement was the same and I still have nightmares about it. I remember waking in the night hearing strange noises coming from the cellar but these also did not seem to bother me and any alarums of the night were forgotten in the light of day.

Well, as it turned out, my dad had decided to build me a rocking horse. He took pieces of wood from a sturdy old rocking chair and one of the men from the church cut out the head from a piece of plywood. My dad did all of the rest of the work himself, including the glossy black paint. My mother then made the thick black yarn mane and tail. Dad even managed to find some scraps of leather and rivet together a bridle.

My dad was not known for his skills with tools. Oh, he could handle a paintbrush alright, but he had never been one with any skill, knowledge or love of saws, planes, drills, screwdrivers, hammers and the like. (My grandfather had been the tool guy who worked on the railroad; I have his toolbox today, with his initials in Morse code painted on the outside.)

So the fact that dad was able to create such a magnificent rocking horse for me was all the more amazing. My Black Beauty was so well built and sturdy that even though I weigh many times more today than I did back then, he still holds my weight. I marvel at the skill that came so unexpectedly from my dad’s love for me and from his desire to make me happy that year at Christmas.

Sidi-Maree

2010-12-13T18:13:00.000-05:00

♥Sidi-Maree♥

July 17, 1994 - December 13, 2009

I was hoping to be able to have the strength to write a little today about my dear little Sidi and how much it meant to me to have had his glowing presence in my life. But every time I try to think of what to say about his life I find that words fail me. Imagine that.

Maybe next year.

Rest in Peace my dear little man, you are always in my Heart.

Spam and Pop Tarts

2010-11-11T18:59:00.003-05:00

A while back I described my anti-bucket list including two of the places anyone would be least likely to find me being any Disney park (apologies to my friend Chickie) or viewing the movie Titanic. Now the news has provided me with a new non-destination that absolutely completely tops my list: a cruise ship.

Imagine, if you will, cramming a small town of 5,000 strangers into a floating monstrosity and put it out on the cold deep ocean. Bad enough, right? But now take away their electricity so there is no light, no air conditioning, no hot water, no hot food. Free booze, though. Great for a bunch of drunks in the dark. Fun? Wow! The military has to send helicopters with emergency food (the delightful aforementioned Spam and Pop Tarts.) Egad. What could possibly be worse?

I am composing this entry in my mind as I drive home this evening, after hearing the news story on CBC radio. I arrive home to see a madly blinking light on my answering machine. Oh goodie! Messages.

Well, it turns out I have three detailed messages for a person named "Monica." Monica and her husband and child have been confirmed in their reservation on the ninth deck of a Holland America cruise ship. YIKES!

So I called the 800 number and left a message for this earnest employee, Lily, and told her my name was not Monica and that all afternoon she had just been leaving all of these messages on a wrong number.

I was polite and refrained from telling her that she could not put me on the ninth deck of a cruise ship if she offered to pay me. No matter how much Spam and Pop Tarts they were planning to serve.

Bon voyage, Monica!

Mighty Hunter, Leaf Bringer, Deer Scarer

2010-10-24T22:17:00.000-04:00

Siobhan, my six pound black and white cow cat is many things. She is the Mighty Hunter who brings me dead (and sometimes still alive) mice onto my bed in the morning. She also manages to lure birds in through the chicken wire and she has captured snakes and crickets and June bugs.

When there are no rodents to capture she makes as much of a fuss bringing in dead leaves and stalks of weeds. I call her the Leaf Bringer. Some days she brings in so many leaves I need a rake for my living room carpet.

This evening I glanced out my back door to see a doe and her two half grown twin fawns slowly working their way towards the cat enclosure. One fawn kept stamping her front hooves, alternating legs nervously. All three tails and all six ears were twitching with the tension. What was catching their attention? It was Siobhan, who was seated calmly in the enclosure.

Suddenly Siobhan leaped onto her platform and all three deer scattered into the forest like leaves in a whirlwind. So now my little girl has another name: Deer Scarer.

The Governor's Inn

2010-10-18T11:09:00.000-04:00

Beginning in January of 1970, although we were still folkie regulars at the Limelight Coffee House, we also patronized another little club which presented completely different but equally remarkable music. This was the Governor’s Inn, located on Sycamore Street on Buffalo’s East Side. The Governor’s Inn was a blues club and charming owner James Peterson was a jack-of-all-trades including used car salesman, blues musician, bartender, and part-time decorator - I will never forget when he redecorated and put glitter on the ceilings (at least in the ladies’ room!). James had connections to Willie Dixon and the Chicago blues scene which resulted in national acts coming to perform including legends like Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters. On one memorable evening Buddy Guy plugged in his guitar with a really long chord and made his way down off the stage, meandered through the crowd, out the front door and into the intersection, still playing!

My then-husband Paul and I started going there originally with a couple of Canadian friends who attended Canisius College (a professor had first taken them to the place), and then later mostly by ourselves. We were drawn not only by the well-known acts but also by our favorite house group, The James Peterson Blues Band, which ultimately featured James’ five-year-old son Lucky on keyboards and guitar. Father and son were both dazzling. I recently discovered that little Lucky was playing Bill Doggett’s Hammond B3 organ, and a love for that unmistakable sound has been embedded in my brain ever since.

I don’t know how they managed to squeak past the liquor board with a kid running around in the bar but Lucky was in attendance most of the times we were there - he used to play with his toys behind the bar. I remember one night seeing his little head going down the length of the bar and I could not figure out how he was managing to walk so smoothly - turns out he was riding his tricycle! I also remember another evening when he rode up to our table on his trike and as I was talking to him he suddenly leaned over and sank his teeth into my arm - then he giggled madly and made his escape pedaling furiously. Good thing I was wearing a winter jacket and he still had his baby teeth!

In the same span of time that found Lucky riding around on his tricycle in the Buffalo night club, he was also releasing his first record album (produced by Dixon) and the accompanying splash of publicity resulted in appearances on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show and reviews in well known magazines.

Some evenings we brought friends with us, but Paul and I were usually the only people of pallor in that audience and it was upon the rarest of occasions that anyone would pay any attention to us whatsoever. Despite the racial tensions of the times I always got the impression that it was the love of the blues that united all souls in the audience. One gentleman (I won’t name him) seemed to take it upon himself to act as our “guardian” - every week he would seat himself at our table and just nonchalantly hang out with us. His companionship was enjoyable and I never really thought anything of this until one evening when a patron who was more than a little inebriated staggered up and loudly insisted on buying me a drink. Our protector said softly, “The lady does not want a drink,” and then he ever so casually readjusted his suit jacket to reveal the hand gun tucked into his belt. The unwanted drunk disappeared as swiftly as he had arrived.

Another character who livened up the place was Mingo. Mingo was a snake charmer, costumed as a sort of a low-rent genii who, in addition, pranced around performing various feats of fire- and glass-eating. His huge boa constrictor was usually draped around his neck and he kept other snakes in a big basket. How he loved to scare the ladies! He snatched empty glasses off of tables, taking big bites out of the rims and he also ate light bulbs. I never did find out if he actually worked for James or if he just showed up sporadically at the club to work for tips. Mingo was also memorable to me for the last time I saw him - he was lurching down the sidewalk in front of 644 William Street (where I worked back then). He looked to be under the influence of something and he presented an exceedingly raggedy figure in the unforgiving light of day. I later read in the paper that his boa constrictor had been lost inside the walls of his rooming house.

The last calendar notation I found of going to the Governor’s Inn was in August of 1972 - a lot of things were happening in my life in those days and I kind of lost track of how much longer the club even existed. But after all these years, Lucky Peterson, a child-star survivor, and James Peterson are still going strong as acclaimed bluesmen. Lucky lives in Texas, according to his Wikipedia page, and James is in Florida. I hear that every so often Lucky comes to Buffalo for a performance (although the last time went to see him was in 1980 when he was only 16 years old). But sometimes I just can’t help but wonder whatever happened to Mingo.

Lost in the Woods

2010-10-15T20:02:00.000-04:00

On Sunday October 10, 2010, aka 10/10/10, in order to mark this special day I decided to go for a ten minute walk in my unremarkable woods and take a couple of nature photographs. My land is flat; there are no murmuring brooks, no quiet ponds, no magnificent vistas - just trees and weeds and brush and brambles (consisting mainly of buck thorn with lethal 1”- 1½” spikes). The sun was shining and the bugs were gone for the season. It was a perfect day!

I wore a pair of shoes with sturdy soles, cotton socks with jeans tucked in, and I carried my camera, my monopod, and, having locked the house, my keys. A couple of Kleenex and a half a box of Sugar Babies completed my gear. My plan was to follow the new path back to the old oak trees, take some photos, follow the same path back out. I was pretty excited about this new trail as it had been recently created by my kind neighbor with his tractor’s bush hog.

I found the oaks and took a few photos, found a handful of pretty yellow and black feathers, took a few more photos here and there, and then I found myself to be completely lost. I could not relocate the trail at all; I started following deer trails, trying to remember where the sun had been in the sky when I entered the woods. I kept going in circles, working my way deeper and deeper into the old canopy forest. Every time I tried to leave I ended up caught in the high weeds (taller than me!) or snagged in the buck thorn. Several times the thorns held me so fiercely I feared I would never be free of them. (How do deer make it through these things with their pointy antlers?) (Deer are smart - they don’t go in the buck thorn, silly!)

This was not the first time I have been lost in the woods. When I was considerably younger I once had a similar scare down near Letchworth (I can blame a camera for leading me astray in that incident as well), and I have been lost in my own woods upon several occasions. Wait - is that banjo music I hear? EEK!

It frightens me being lost like this - and of course many wild thoughts go crashing and careening through my brain as I try to find my way back to my nice little house. Honest, I will never complain about the 85% humidity again - just let me find my house! I love my house!

What if I never find my way out - not a soul knows I went for a walk - my car is there, my house is locked, my computer is on - someone will think I have been kidnapped! They will find my bones in the spring (if ever!) and since I am carrying no ID - they will not even know it is me! I was literally and figuratively spiraling out of control. Breathing heavily - blood pressure rising.

H-E-L-P!!!

And, as a person who never goes anywhere without a bottle of water, I had no water with me - I was sweating and becoming dehydrated and boy oh boy was I thirsty! I got so mixed up I started following the sun (which should have behind me to make it back to the house).

What if I fall and break my leg/sprain my ankle? Then I will be totally beyond hope and help. What would I do? I have a lot of MacGyver in me but I did not have much to work with - keys, camera, monopod, Kleenex, Sugar Babies? Oh! The Sugar Babies - they have moisture content - they will give me energy - mmmmmmm. And thank the Powers that Be for the monopod - I was able to use that as a walking stick (since my real wooden heavy-duty walking stick was in my car!).

My cats! What will happen to my cats? My cats need to be fed! By the time anyone notices I am missing my cats will all be dead. I must find my way back to my house. My cats need me!

Thinking of my cats comforted me and I gathered my wits and calmed my breathing and composed a little prayer to the Guardians of the Woodlands - “Please give me a sign, please help me, this is a special day, all I need is a sign.”

It was not long after this plea that I looked upon the ground and found a glowing red maple leaf illuminated by the sun. I took a photo and proceeded in the direction it seemed to be pointing. Soon I found a beautiful barred turkey wing feather, picked it up, found another a few steps further - and by the time I picked up the last of eight magnificent feathers, I could see the clearing.

I entered the woods around 4pm. I am old, out of shape and carrying more than a few extra pounds and although it may not sound like a lot of time to anyone else, I had spent almost an hour with my thrashing and crashing and cursing and my walking and stumbling and tripping, when I finally came through to this blessed clearing, a very large overgrown field, it was close to 5:15. At the edge of the field, way off in the distance, I could see the backs of large buildings. This put me in high spirits because I was sure what I had found was the field behind the industrial buildings on my street (the properties adjacent to mine) and I headed in that direction. I knew where I was, my goal was in sight and I trudged towards it with a huge sense of relief.

So here I am walking, walking, walking through the weedy field trying not to trip over hidden hillocks and the building I am heading towards looms larger and larger until I discover much to my shock and dismay that it is the Toyota dealer on Highway 3 and I am about 90 degrees away from where I thought I was, not to mention I am almost two miles from home.

At least the last part of my journey was on pavement and although I must have looked like a lunatic hobbling down the street clutching my monopod and my turkey feathers, I was enormously pleased that I was not going to die in the woods and I was confident that I could make it home no matter how tired, thirsty or footsore.

I have sworn an oath to never venture into mine or any other woods without a compass and a bottle of water (and quite a list of other essentials!). I also thank the Guardians of the Woodlands for giving me a 10/10/10 that was truly memorable indeed.

Zoo Story

2010-10-07T19:34:00.001-04:00

When I worked at Bond’s back in the seventies, Cecelia Evans Taylor, aka “Peach,” was an enjoyable and fascinating customer. She bought her art supplies from our store and we also framed her many paintings. Most of these paintings were of animals: horses, giraffes, lions, elephants - so of course I adored her artwork.

I became more acquainted with Peach when she bought a Rapidograph pen. She was fond of drawing with this pen - the fine lines were quite suitable for her delicate style; but she was always mystified when it stopped working every couple of weeks. She would bring it back to the store where I would unclog it, clean it for her and refill it with ink.

Unlike the more country club attire worn by other ladies in her age group and social stratum, Peach dressed in blue jeans and chambray work shirts and she was frequently adorned with impressive Navajo silver and turquoise jewelry. I remember her red Mustang always seemed to be overflowing with big happy dogs, and I loved these and other unexpected facets of her persona. Seeing a lady her age (I was in my twenties and she was in her seventies) wearing blue jeans made me want to be just like her when I grew up - she was the perfect role model for me: creative and eccentric and a lover of animals.

One day she came into the store and showed me a letter she had just received, a lengthy missive in cramped handwriting on onionskin, folded into small rectangles and coming all the way from Africa! It was from her good friend author Joy Adamson - I remember being so impressed - this was the woman who had written “Born Free.”

In those days I used to spend almost every weekend exhibiting at various area art shows - I exhibited an array of miscellaneous artsy and craftsy creations - macramé jewelry, abstract knotted sculpture as well as little pen and ink drawings of flowers, mushrooms, lady bugs and, of course, all sorts of animals.

Peach was an enthusiastic supporter of the Buffalo Zoo (I believe she was on their board of directors) and giraffes were her passion - she created a bronze giraffe statue for their grounds, and I recall that at one point in time she even donated a real live giraffe! It came as no surprise when she undertook a mission as one of the organizers of an art show fund raiser called “The Zootique” to take place at the zoo and she talked me into participating.

The space allotted to me for my display was, alas, in a dank, dimly lit area deep in the bowels of one of the zoo buildings - I remember all of the artists’ set-ups were scattered willy-nilly throughout. The fund-raiser was scheduled for a late November weekend and it unfortunately proved to be a dismal affair: torrential rain and chilly temperatures for the entire event which resulted in hardly any visitors and even fewer sales. I felt badly for Peach because she had been so incredibly excited about the grand possibilities of this idea.

One memory from that show that I have always treasured, however, was when Peach ushered in a dapper but slightly frazzled looking older man to see my display. She was very animated in showing him all of my wares and she ended her spiel by enthusing, “Mar made all of this by herself!” The gentleman looked me straight in the eye and simply said, “Congratulations.” Then she hustled him away to see the next artist. It was only later that I discovered I had just met Seymour Knox II.

Now, every morning on the way to my shop I drive up Parkside past the Buffalo Zoo and the Cecelia Evans Taylor Giraffe House. When the weather is appropriate and the giraffes are outside enjoying the fresh air in their enclosures, I wave at them and I think of Peach.

Bobbin' Along

2010-09-26T22:12:00.001-04:00

My mom always had the radio on - listening in the forties to hit parade music and in the fifties to rock ‘n’ roll. I can remember her dancing in the kitchen to “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” But before rock ‘n’ roll came along, one of the very first song I can remember hearing when I was a toddler was “When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbin’ along.” Mom and I used to sing along with the radio whenever it came on. I remember having a great deal of fun with “Bob, bob, bob.”

Now all these years later it has occurred to me that I am still bobbin’ along.   When I was a teenager, the pop charts were flooded with “Bobbies” and I listened to of all of them. Bobby Rydell, Bobby Curtola, Bobby Darin, Bobby Vinton. They all flew out of my brain, however, when “The Bob” came along. Bob Dylan.

Dylan’s first self-titled album was released in March of 1962. I was a sophomore in high school, happily surrounded by a whole passel of friends, doing well academically, dating my first real boyfriend - my life was perfect and I was in love with the world. In June of that year my dad announced we were moving - (insert dramatic teenage pause) - and my life fell apart.

Sometime during that awful summer, I stumbled upon that first Bob Dylan album at a Sears Roebuck store in Buffalo. From the very first spin on the console record player in the living room, it captured my complete attention. This music was so very different from the pop pap served up on the radio in those days so as I started my junior year in that new high school that I detested even before I stepped foot in it, my loathing was fueled by the unconventional “voice” of Bob Dylan.   (I must admit at this point in my narrative that I mispronounced his name “Dye-lan” for a while until a hip friend from the beloved former high school clued me in to the correct pronunciation - thanks Susan!)

The song that I became most enamored with on that first album was “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” and I played it repeatedly at top volume until my mother finally flew into the living room yelling for me to turn it off. “Do you know what that song is about?” she screamed. (I had no idea what that song was about but it just sounded so dangerous I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by it.) Senior year, when the socialite kids in this school were planning the details of their prom (“Blue Velvet” - named after the Bobby Vinton song) (Ack!), I was memorizing the words to “With God on Our Side.” It has always made me wonder - had I not changed towns and schools at that time in my life, would I be the person I am today? Would I be a housewife? Somebody’s grandmother? (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) Would I be one of those people hanging on every episode of American Idol - a (shudder) pop music fan?

Dylan proved a prolific song writer and albums began flowing out of Columbia Records at a very swift pace and I acquired Freewheelin’ and The Times They Are a Changin’ and Another Side of Bob Dylan - all before I graduated from high school in 1964. Songs that have stood my test of time from these three albums are “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “With God on Our Side,” “ Boots of Spanish Leather” and “All I really Want to Do” (Even now, I still hope to someday own a pair of “Spanish boots of Spanish leather”).

I have always credited Bob Dylan (and the Beatles to a lesser extent) to forever changing my life.   His raw and powerful songs enabled me to survive those last two years of high school. In December of 1964, finally away from that awful town and safely ensconced at Buff State College, I attended my very first concert - seeing Bob Dylan and his special surprise guest Joan Baez, at Kleinhans Music Hall. In the impressively designed and acoustically perfect hall, the crowd of college students in blue-jeans was interspersed with the very baffled Kleinhans patrons in their usual pearls and furs. It was thrilling to see Dylan and Baez together on that stage and I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.

Of course in 1965 everything seemed to happen at once - Dylan released two seminal albums Bringing it all Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited (still his two best, in my humble opinion). These songs were embedded in my heart and brain and soul from the first second I heard them: “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Gates of Eden,” “Queen Jane Approximately,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and my all time favorite Dylan song, “She Belongs to Me.” Just think - it has been 45 years now that I have been searching for an “Egyptian ring that sparkles before she speaks.” And I have often imagined “She never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall,” as my perfect motto (for whenever I ever need a motto).

That same year I was in the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival when Dylan “went electric” (despite Pete Seeger and his frantic backstage efforts to try to pull the plug). Some of the folkies booed but most were eventually captivated by both sides of Dylan, acoustic and electric. In the fall of ’65 Dylan was back at Kleinhans again not too long after the Great Northeast Power Failure. He did the first half of the concert with simply his guitar and harmonica, and then for the second half, out came the electric guitars and amps. When he took to the stage for this electric set, some guy yelled out “Pray for another power failure!” and everyone laughed and the concert went on without a hitch.

Dylan was involved in a serious motorcycle accident in July of 1966 and did not tour again for eight years although he recorded albums with some regularity in that interval. Blonde on Blonde which contained “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35,” and “Just Like a Woman,” John Wesley Harding with “All Along the Watchtower,” and Nashville Skyline with “Girl From the North Country” and “Lay, Lady, Lay.” I missed buying Self Portrait and New Morning in sequence, but later became fond of “Quinn, the Eskimo” and “If Not for You.” I remember buying Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and loving the entire soundtrack especially “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

In the summer of 1972 a very interesting Dylan incident occurred which at the same time had both everything and nothing to do with him. I was attending the Mariposa Folk Festival on Toronto Island and that weekend a rumor began circulating throughout the crowd that various folk celebrities had been spotted in our midst: Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, and (Gasp!) Bob Dylan himself. We were hoping one or all of these luminaries would grace the main stage for a nighttime concert.

One bright afternoon I was sitting on my blanket not really paying any attention to an old timey folk duo on one of the workshop stages under the huge willows along the shining water’s edge. It was a tranquil workshop, the crowd couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred languid sun-worshipers, and I don’t think any of us were doing anything other than killing time until the next workshop. Suddenly a murmur swept through the crowd like a tsunami and we all seemed to be instantaneously aware that “Bob Dylan is here!”

As one, the crowd jumped to its feet, and began the first few steps of a crazed dash off into the direction (stage left) where Dylan was supposed to have been seen. And just as swiftly we all changed our minds and went back to our spaces and sat down. I cannot speak for anyone else present that afternoon, but in my Gemini mind the following dialogue took place: “Oh my God! Bob Dylan is here - we must run to him! But then what, what would we do? He would be very annoyed to be mobbed by hundreds of crazed folkies. In addition, we would be insulting these lovely traditional performers by abandoning them on this little stage, so we are being silly and let’s just sit back down.”

The event that I have labored to describe for the last three paragraphs took place in less than a minute from start to finish and it is one of the oddest occasions of mass hysteria (and mass sanity) I have ever encountered. Poor Bob never knew what he missed that afternoon.

In 1974 his career seemed to ramp up a lot and he released Planet Waves (containing “Forever Young”), and the live album with The Band, Before the Flood.   1975 brought Blood on the Tracks and my next batch of treasured favorites: “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Simple Twist of Fate” and “Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts.”

I was still bobbin’ along in late1975 when Dylan’s own version of the magical mystery tour, the incredible Rolling Thunder, came to town. I rank that event as one of my all time favorite top ten concerts. I have little recall of the concert in its entirety, just one amazing performance after another and when Joan Baez sang “Amazing Grace” it was so quiet in the Niagara Falls Convention Center you could literally have heard a pin drop.   Scarlet Rivera was particularly otherworldly playing her electric violin (considering when Dylan released “Desolation Row” back in 1965 we all assumed he was singing about an imaginary instrument).

Over the years, Dylan had an almost mystical ability to gather outstanding musicians to back his efforts - among my favorite sidemen were Bruce Langhorne, Al Cooper, Mike Bloomfield, and of course, The Band. The silvery soaring silkiness from these (and many other) incredible musicians provided an ideal juxtaposition for Dylan’s always unique vocalizations and his dancing tumbling lyrics.

In 1976, along with a live concert recording of The Rolling Thunder tour, Hard Rain, Dylan released Desire containing yet another of my absolute favorites, “Isis.” 1978 brought the release of Street Legal and although I loved the photograph on the cover and owned a huge poster of it, the songs therein rang no bells for me. Dylan also performed a number of solo concerts in the seventies - in 1978 I was fortunate enough to see him in Toronto, Buffalo and Rochester! Plus I was able to photograph him from my second row seat at the Aud in Buffalo - not the world’s best photos but they made me very happy for many years.

The last two albums I ever bought were Live at Budokan, which was nice but I rarely listened to it, and Slow Train Coming which I played only once. Those were in 1979, and by that time Talking Heads and The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Tim Curry and many other performers had entered the scene and then came the eighties and the Continental and local bands and musicians, all jostling for room in my life. Oddly enough, although I rarely approve of cover songs, Tim Curry recorded a breathy and riveting version of “Simple Twist of Fate” and I still enjoy it equally with the Dylan original.

So I guess 1979 was about when I stopped following his career. I have memorized almost every single word to every single song in Dylan’s first dozen or so albums, but, again, in my humble opinion, he suddenly “jumped the shark” and I stopped buying new albums. I saw him being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and (later learned) it was “Masters of War” which he had performed but as I was watching it I could not understand a single word he was singing and I couldn’t even figure out which song he was doing. Friends who are Dylan fans tell me his new stuff is great and I will take their word for it - I have no desire to immerse myself in any new Dylan songs. My Bob Dylan remains suspended in as if in amber between 1962 and 1978. Both of us are floating there - forever young.

In her 95th year now, my step mother enjoys watching and listening to the musical stylings of The Lawrence Welk Show. If I am blessed with such health and longevity, mayhap someday I will be the one in the rocking chair on the porch of an old folk’s home and I can only hope I will still be bobbin’ along, listening to Bringing it All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited.

"Bobby Dylan" by Mar 1965

"No wonder you never had any kids!"

2010-08-01T19:36:00.000-04:00

Part One – THE BLUE DRESS

My mother did not drive. Nor would she ride in a car during daylight hours so shopping was pretty much out of the question for her (with the notable exception of the Sears Roebuck Catalog, from which she regularly made sure my father remained forever buried under a small mountain of debt). Whenever any shopping expedition was required, especially in late summer when a new school wardrobe was needed, my mother made my father drive me to Batavia or sometimes even Buffalo to go to a big department store like Woolworth’s, Adam, Meldrum and Anderson’s or that brightly lit new upstart – K-Mart.

On one such foray, during the early sixties, we returned home from the K-Mart in Batavia with a light blue tailored linen dress with navy trim and buttons. It was an A-line dress – I loved this dress but when I modeled it for mom she acted both horrified and embarrassed. She was so flabbergasted dad and I had a really difficult time trying to get her to reveal why she was so flustered, but she finally blurted out what she thought must have happened: my poor addled father and I had wandered by mistake into the maternity section of the store. Gasp! Nothing we could say would dissuade her. Her mind was set - it was a maternity dress and if I wore it out in public - to church or to school, “People will think you’re pregnant!”

I tried to counter her argument by saying that all anyone would have to do is wait a few months and when no blessed event came forth then people would just have to stop thinking I was wearing maternity clothes. But no – there was no arguing with my mother. Even my dad knew it was a losing battle and retired to the solitude of his study to work on one of his sermons.

My mom then proceeded to spend the next several days remaking the dress – she ripped out the seams, she shaped it and reshaped it. She was never quite able to make it into one of her beloved shirtwaists, but she came as close as she could until she was finally satisfied that I would be OK to appear in public in this garment and not a soul would harbor the dreaded thought that I might be pregnant.

Part Two – RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

In 1965, when Paul and I announced that we were to be wed, my mother was overcome with joy –that is, until I informed her that I did not want any kind of engagement ring, only a simple gold band as a wedding ring. No diamonds for me, no siree! I thought they were ugly and stupid and I am sure Paul was greatly relieved at dodging this very expensive pre-nuptial bullet.

My mother, however, contributed to the occasion with a familiar yet unexpected refrain, “You can’t just get married, you have to become engaged, otherwise everyone will think you had to get married – people will think you are pregnant!”

Once again I retorted that if anyone at all were to be paying attention to this little event of ours, all they would have to do is keep an eye on me to see if any babies were forthcoming and if none showed up then they could rest assured no shotguns were involved in the proceedings and all was above board and on the up and up. And once again, in the eyes of the greater community, my virginity could be assumed to have been a proven fact and my mother could hold her head high in public.

My mother, again proving quite intractable, simply would not stop her argument until Paul and I went out one day, found a little junky antique store on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, and purchased a cheap old gold band set with three stones, a chipped opal in the center and two garnets, I believe, on either side of the opal. Paul tied this onto the pale blue neck-ribbon of a plush toy Siamese cat and gave it to me for Christmas that year and my mom was beyond delighted.

I discovered many years later, after my mom had died, that a ring of that type - set with a row of stones, is often called a Mother’s Ring – each stone represents the birthstone of a child. If my mom had known that she probably would have had kittens.

Part Three -THE WEDDING GOWN WAR

I have already described one of the skirmishes in the Wedding War – the battle of the engagement ring. My mother won that one.

Herein follows the tale of the Battle of the Wedding Gown. I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to decide the winner.

I am of the belief that my mother began planning the wedding the moment I told her I had met this nice guy named Paul. She went into overdrive when I declared our love, and she went into orbit when I announced the wedding.

I bought a bride’s magazine and found a pretty yet plain gown. My mother was crushed that I was not planning to have her sew my gown. She was, after all, a wonderful seamstress and I must admit she had probably been planning my gown since the day I was born. She had made most of my baby clothes and most of the clothing I wore until I managed to convince her that T shirts and dungarees were my preferred mode of dress and I was able to finally escape her frilly, girlie ideas of apparel.

I grudgingly agreed to let her do a gown for me, but then one day Paul and I were wandering down Elmwood again and I found a lovely white satin floor-length gown with multi-colored embroidered ribbons on the sleeves – this dress was from Mexico and I was ready to buy it on the spot but I decided to tell my mom about it first. She was crestfallen at the news and made my father drive her from Mayville to Buffalo so she could see this garment in person. This was the first time I remember her being in a store since I was a very little kid. She was appalled at the sloppy stitching and even more appalled at the colorful trim on the sleeves.

Obviously this could in no way be designated a wedding gown because of course if I were to wear any color other than a white as pure as the driven snow – it would be screaming out to any and all that I was pregnant (sound familiar?). My mother put her tiny foot down and that was that. The Mexican wedding dress was out.

My grandparents became involved in the Battle of the Wedding Dress. Grandma tried her best to be the peacemaker between mom and me, and Grandpa got “het-up” and one of his rants that I recall began, “Why don’t you just wear blue jeans and ride a horse down the aisle!?!” (Of course I thought that was a wonderful idea!)

Mom and I wrangled back and forth – would I buy a gown, would she make one. She sent away for patterns and yards of satin while I bought magazines. She convinced me that she could make a gown and we finally settled on the plainest empire waist A-Line gown, with elbow length bell-sleeves and a very simple unadorned neckline. And I began to campaign for embroidered ribbon trim on the sleeves. No, not in color, simply in metallic gold and white – different widths and designs of ribbons – row upon row.

We sent away for samples of trims and in the mean time I was busy convincing her that gold wasn’t really a color and no, people wouldn’t think I was pregnant.

Mom swung into action – sewing seams and ripping them out and doing fittings and re-sewing and re-ripping. But she was obviously having fun so how could I get angry with her? By the end of the whole ordeal, however, she had sneakily added a lace mantilla with gold edging and a huge gold-edged lace overskirt. Luckily she ran out of time before the wedding or I would have been clad in lace from head to toe.

So that is why I never had any children. I blame my mother. I also thank my friend Babe St. Joan for the title of this post. That is what she said to me when I told her these stories.

My Grandpa in 1910

2010-07-27T09:53:00.000-04:00

I come from a long line of weirdos.

Link Free Zone

2010-07-26T02:34:00.000-04:00

It just occurred to me that I have been publishing this blog for almost a year now and I have not posted one single link. Tell your friends - Tilting at Woodpeckers: the Link Free Zone! Uninterrupted reading for your edification and enjoyment. Something new for the Interwebs. :) (LOL)

The Sump Pump Chronicles (Part Two)

2010-07-26T02:20:00.001-04:00

After waiting several weeks for it to rain again so I could determine if the pump was working, I decided it wasn't and so I hauled it out, took it back to the local independent hardware store and had it replaced with a new one. That took about two minutes and the nice man even carried it out to the car for me (Valu Home Center, Nash Road, Wheatfield - yay!).

Reinstalled the pump. Replaced leaky flexible hose. Turned on the breaker. It worked! I have a few leaks to deal with, however - one at the other end of the flexible hose (hopefully taken care of now) and one where the semi-rigid pipe attaches to the sewer pipe over on the other side of the crawl space. *groan*

It rained the other day and I heard a strange sound - the pump had come on all by itself! YAY!

So all I have to do now is fix those leaks....

I'd better do it soon - I am losing interest in this project.

The Sump Pump Chronicles

2010-07-02T00:32:00.001-04:00

Day One, Monday:

Bought a new column sump pump at the local indy hardware store. It was on sale! Yay! Saved ten bucks! Yay!

1/3 horsepower, one year warranty, previous pump lasted 11 years.

My crawl space is has gravel on the floor, and of course the sump hole is as far away from the door as it can be. I have approximately 36" of clearance with pipes and stuff all over the place that will force one to duck even lower. I have covered part of the floor with 6 mil plastic.

Had not been under there for a couple of years.

Have to gird my loins and every other part of me - tall rubber boots over long socks with sweatpants tucked in. Shirt tucked into pants, long sleeved hoodie over that with hood tied on so no spiders will end up down the back of my neck.

Foam knee pads and rubber gloves complete my ensemble. I look so very fashionable. Oh! And sometimes I wear goggles, too. Couldn't keep the goggles on too long because they kept steaming up. It had to be over 80° in there - and the humidity was over 90%.

So I made a careful list of everything I needed so I would only have to make one trip in and out. Dragged all of my tools and such in a back pack and pushed the box (with the pump) ahead of me as I crawled in. Carried a rechargeable flashlight in case the power went out.

I thought of everything.

I thought of everything except for the stuff I forgot.

So I had to crawl back out and get a measuring tape, some duct tape, rope, bungee cords and a few other items. Made sure sump pump breaker was OFF up in the house.

Crawled back in.

Unplugged and removed old pump. Removed flexible hose.

Reattached flexible hose to new pump. Set up the float valve.

Inserted new pump into sump hole (which was full of water) and it tipped over immediately. Could not seem to get it to stay level. Tied it and bungeed it into position finally, replaced the cover, gathered all my tools, plugged it in, and crawled out.

Turned on the breaker.

Nothing happened.

It had tipped over. Found this out after I crawled back again (after turning off the breaker because it is so drenchingly wet under the house I am petrified of getting electrocuted and then who would feed my kitties?). I unplugged it.

Repositioned the beast, reset the ropes and cords, replugged it, crawled back out, staggered up the steps into the house, turned on the breaker, YAY!!! It was running!!!

YAY!!!!!

It shut off after 10 minutes and I could see from the doorway it had tilted again. No more crawling tonight.

Day Two, Tuesday:

Read and reread the little booklet that came with the pump. It suggested that if one were to experience a tilting problem with a flexible hose hookup, one might consider installing a sturdy PVC discharge pipe between the catch valve and the flexible pipe.

So I made a list of needed items and stopped at the local hardware on the way home from the shop.

Bought two rubber flexible couplers with stainless clamps, a five foot length of PVC and one male adapter because they thought I might need it. Had two hardware guys helping me with this purchase, and it took 20 minutes to come up with this solution.

After I got home, checked the breaker to make sure it was turned off, donned my "outfit" this time I decided to utilize my little red plastic sled to transfer all the goodies underneath to the work site. This also included a half a concrete block which was gonna be my new weight for the sump hole cover.

So I gathered everything including an extension cord and a clip on lamp (did I mention the rechargeable flashlight died halfway through Monday?) and duct tape to protect the plug. Put my cordless phone into a baggie and brought it with me in case I had a stroke or something.

So I crawled in, pushing the very heavy sled and playing out the extension cord for the clip on lamp.

Unplugged the pump. Unhooked the flexible hose. Measured the PVC. Cut it.

Too long! Was hitting a duct. So I cut it again. This time it fit nicely and I fastened it to the adapter and the check valve with the rubber connector. Inserted everything into the hole and the whole thing came loose. Did it again, only tighter. Came loose again.

Grrrr.....

Tried the other end, the end that attaches to the hose. Well, they sold me the wrong size flexible connector.

Grrrrr.......

Hooked the thing back up as the original pump had been connected, hose to check valve.

Plugged it back in, crawled back out, got a Charlie horse in my leg climbing through the doorway, managed to make it back into the house, turn on the breaker, it worked for 5 minutes then tipped over again.

I turned off the breaker and went to bed early.

Day Three, Wednesday:

Took the cut length of PVC and all of the connectors to the shop to play with. Re-cut both ends of the PVC and filed them smooth. Decided that the adapter end needed a build up of something sturdy to even out the gripping space, so I used two film canisters and a short length of blue plastic tubing and at least got the check valve end to fit really well.

Added a few more things to my list like old towels to soak up some of the water lying around on the plastic in the crawl space, and I stopped at the hardware store again on my way home from the shop to exchange the rubber connector to the correct size.

Got home, checked to make sure breaker was off, donned my now rather sweaty and disgusting outfit, gathered the new items for the sled and crawled in.

Unplugged and unhooked everything. Started rehooking up the PVC pipe, and that is when I realized that the new correct connector was still in my purse, upstairs in the house.

Crawled out, got the connector, crawled back in.

Hooked everything up perfectly.

Stabilized the whole get up, wired it into place, very happy.

But I left the sled under the house when I crawled out to turn on the breaker.

Pump worked for ten minutes, I sat in the doorway happily listening to it. Then it turned off and in the sudden stillness I could hear distinct leaking and dripping noises.

By the time I ran into the house, turned off the breaker, ran back out and crawled back under, the leaking had ceased but the rubber connector by the flexible hose, the motor of the pump, and the board covering the hole were all soaked.

So I wiped everything off, unplugged everything, crawled back out, turned off the breaker and went to bed.

I am thinking about just going back to the original set up, returning the two rather expensive flexible connectors, and using the pipe for something somewhere down the line.

*sigh*

Day Four, Thursday:

Checked breaker is off. Crawled under house to put up a clear plastic splash sheet to protect motor from moisture if I have not tightened the connectors tight enough.

Crawled back out - turned on the breaker. Nothing.

Worked out a plan to minimize the crawling.

Turned breaker off, unplugged trouble light extension in garage. Crawled back in, switched plugs - plugged light into sump outlet and plugged pump into extension.

Crawled back out - turned on breaker - light goes on!

Plugged in extension cord. Sump pump does not go on.

So.....

This tells me that the outlet is OK, the breaker is OK and the PUMP IS WONKY!!!!!

I am getting ready to haul it out now, repackage it and exchange it for a new one.

Grrrrrr.......

OK, so now that I think of it, when I turned it on last night the motor may have gotten a bit wet from the leaking whatever part.

It should be able to stand a little moisture, doncha think? It is a sump pump for crying out loud!!!

Just crawled back in for a looksee and discovered that the sump hole is nearly dry - it had at least 12 inches of water in it earlier - and the plastic splash sheet I taped up is also dry - so I guess I solved the leaking problem and while I was searching online sump pump troubleshooting guides, it must have turned itself on and pumped out all the water.

It is a lot quieter than my old one.

So I just have to keep an ear out for it now for the next couple of days - and the tools in the sled can stay under there for a while.

Turns out not all of the leaks were solved, another visit to the beast showed some drippy areas so I have tightened all of the clamps as tightly as I can tighten them.

I posted this photo online elsewhere and someone suggested I looked like the Sump Pump Grim Reaper and another person said I looked like the Statue of Liberty (tired, poor, weary) but I think I shall call it......"The Statue of Limitations."

Goin' on a Pump Crawl with the Statue of Limitations.

My Anti-Bucket List (Plus My Bonus Bucket List)

2010-06-26T02:05:00.003-04:00

I saw this idea somewhere on the Internets and although these “meme” kinds of things usually fall into my “meh” category – I thought this one was pretty cool. It is my baker’s dozen list of things I have absolutely no interest in ever attending, watching, reading, listening to or doing (in no particular order of dislike).

1.    Going to any theme park, Disney in particular. I will watch the old Disney flicks from my childhood and cry at those scenes in Lady and the Tramp and Bambi, but that is about as Disney as I get. No t-shirts with Mickey or Pluto or Goofy, no mouse ears – I will, however, continue to make my own small worlds. Speaking of theme parks, I have no desire to ride on a rollercoaster or any amusement park ride scarier than a carrousel. (I love carrousels. Pretty horses!) I could also add Las Vegas here – it is kind of like a theme park, right? Not for me!
2.    Watching movies like Titanic, the Star Wars prequels (Jar-Jar Binks? I rest my case.). Not finding myself drawn to Avatar (to quote Paula Poundstone, “Wide nose bridges exhaust me.”) I would rather rewatch the movies I know I like. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Last Picture Show, Emmett Otter’s Jugband Christmas, The Black Stallion. Speaking of Titanic, I hope I can make it through the rest of my life without ever again having to hear Celine Dion sing. Or see her on television. Or look at a picture of her.
3.    I have no desire to climb aboard an airplane and fly anywhere. I don’t even want to have to go inside an airport – I’ll just drop you off, OK? Back in the sixties I rode in several flying machines, including commercial jets, a bush plane and a helicopter. That’s enough for me – yeah, they all look like ants, don’t they?    Oooh, pretty clouds. Yup. If I want to approximate that aerial feeling let me re-read Richard Bach’s Stranger to the Ground. That will get me close enough to flying and it is a whole lot quieter!
4.    Never had a manicure or a pedicure – never will. Zero interest in this.
5.    I have lost the desire to attend any more mega-concerts. Yes, I know, back in my "yute" I was at the real Woodstock, but the idea of massive crowds freaks me out now. Last huge concert I attended was Bowie at the Niagara Falls Convention Center (in the eighties?) and I walked out during his first song. I couldn’t breathe.
6.    Anything involving being on or in water. Going on a cruise has never ever appealed to me, I have never learned to swim and probably never will, even hot tubs give me the willies. Germs! Yuck. Bathing suits! Double yuck. Water over my head. HELP!!!
7.    I have to admit I will probably never finish slogging my way through John Galt’s fifty four page speech in Atlas Shrugged. I have no desire to read Ulysses or anything by Sylvia Plath, Dostoevsky or Hemingway. I will keep re-reading Thurber’s The Night the Bed Fell and all of the poems by ee cummings and my favorite science fiction.
8.    You will never find me at a tanning parlor.
9.    I think it is a pretty safe bet that I can make it through my entire life without ever drinking a cup of coffee, developing an appreciation for the taste of alcohol, or eating another hot dog. Starbucks? What’s that?
10.    I can also very safely say that I will never get another tattoo. I can enjoy someone’s beautiful ink job but one is enough for me - the pain! The pain!
11.    You won’t find me attending any future sporting events. I went to an Army/Navy game once (beautiful mules), saw The French Connection at the Aud, went to a motocross (LOUD!), saw my dad’s curling team (gosh it was cold in that arena!) and went to a few wrestling events to see Ric Flair and Rowdy Roddy Piper - that’s enough sporting events for this lifetime.
12.    Karaoke? Good lord NO!
13.    I cannot recall ever dining alone at a restaurant of any type. I have ordered take-out and picked it up, and taken advantage of the occasional drive-through, but I have never actually stayed to eat when I am by myself (Roy Roger's at the rest stops on the New York State Thruway don't count).

My Bonus Bucket List

I suppose for every anti-bucket list one should have a bucket list. On and off through the years I have kept a short list of things I would like to try or learn or try to learn in this lifetime. Juggling and dancing used to be on this list. They both got crossed off (untried) many years ago! I used to want to go to Lilydale – I am no longer interested in that – it sounds too commercial these days, sort of like a psychic galleria.

Exploring the pyramids (Egyptian or Mayan), experiencing the solstice at Stonehenge or seeing Chichen Itza shining in the jungle dawn, floating weightlessness in near earth orbit, summiting Everest, rafting down the Colorado – I’ll have to save these adventures for a future lifetime. Mayhap next time I will dive the Great Barrier Reef (if the coral still exists), catch a wave at Waikiki (if the ocean is not filled with tar balls and plastic detritus), photograph translucent icebergs in the Arctic (if the ice still exists), perhaps find a nice crystal cave for a little spelunking (no, not really – it will take more than my allotted number of lifetimes to embrace spelunking).

My bucket list is quite modest these days. Mostly things I have been meaning to do for quite some time now. I can only come up with ten items.

1. Spend a couple of days at the Corning Glass Museum. I have been threatening to do that since the sixties.

2. Tour the Darwin Martin House. It is within walking distance from my shop, for cryin’ out loud!

3. Talk a stroll out along the breakwall on a nice sunny day when there is not a lot of wind. I drive by it every day and it has always intrigued me (except for the fear that maybe I might accidentally fall in the water and drown).

4. Walk over the Peace Bridge. I once walked over the Rainbow Bridge (which makes me sound like a deceased cat or dog, doesn’t it?) – and it was a truly wondrous experience at the Falls.

5. Go to Niagara Falls at least twice a year, once in Summer when there are tourists and once in Winter when there are no tourists.

6. Learn to do tai chi and then actually do it regularly. Afterwards enjoy a nice cuppa chai tea. (Seems like they should go together, tai chi and chai tea.)

7. Learn to play the ukulele. After having abandoned clarinet, piano, guitar, banjo, dulcimer and doumbek, surely I could learn to play the uke?

8. Take the train across Canada (while it still exists) (the train, that it – I am sure Canada will exist for a very long time).

9. Learn to do what I want to do in Photoshop without swearing at it so much.

10. I have given up on ever “finishing” my house, or taming my yard but someday I would hope to be able to declare that I am organized. If only for a brief interval – ahhhh that would be nice! This way, if I end up with a tombstone, they can carve on it, “Once, she was organized.”

Hair today.....

2010-06-10T22:28:00.000-04:00

Purple, red and blue on silver. My dear mom is probably spinning!

Hair Trigger

2010-05-31T23:20:00.000-04:00

This is a poem that my mother wrote sometime in the late fifties or early sixties.

“My Hair”

I oil it, boil it –

Cream it, steam it,

Dye it, tie it -

Stroke it, poke it –

Brush it, crush it,

Tint it, glint it –

Curl it, hurl it,

Wash it, squash it -

Style it, file it.

And how does it look

When I finally stop?

That’s it, you’re right –

Like the end of a mop!

My mother’s hair was the abiding bane of her existence, and when I was a child my mother’s obsession with my hair became the bane of my existence.   As is typical of most women down through the centuries, those born with curly hair harbor a burning desire for straight hair, and those born with straight hair would do almost anything for curly hair. This has always completely baffled me.

My dad had beautiful thick black curly hair when mom met him and she loved his hair. He spent his whole life trying to comb the curl out of his hair and had more or less succeeded by the time he died at the age of 85. Mom’s hair was completely straight and so she always coveted curly hair. She tried every product she could get her hands on to give herself those elusive curls. She described the color of her hair as “mousy brown,” and in later years, she dyed it to cover the gray and chose the color “ash blond,” which sounded really exotic but was in reality very close to mousy brown.

Naturally since mom had struggled with her own hair for so many years, she wanted my curved hair to be curly and so I was sent to a succession of beauty parlors (run by church ladies on their closed-in porches or in their finished basements). I always trotted in with a picture of some model from the Sears catalog or a photo from a magazine of the latest teen idol and the hairdresser always did the same thing – a pixie cut with really short bangs (the name Mamie Eisenhower still makes me wince). Then there were the dreaded permanents – stinky and awful! I loathed beauty parlors.

When Toni Home Permanents were invented my mom was their ideal target market. She loved home permanents – and I can still remember the feel of that cold lotion on my scalp (dripping down the back of my neck) and the awful stench. The little papers and the curlers, the stench! The pulling, the yanking, the stench! Part of the instructions with these home perms included leaving the ghastly stuff on for a period of time, preferably under a hair dryer – but we did not have a hair dryer so we knelt on the floor in the kitchen and (God’s truth!) stuck our heads into the heated oven.

Before Christmas one year when I was about nine or ten, dad teased mom and me ceaselessly about how he was giving us a present that we two could share. This had us completely baffled – because of course I was a kid who liked horses and, well, mom wasn’t. We tried to pry this secret out of dad for weeks – he was as silent as the Sphinx (eyes twinkling merrily).

Come Christmas morning – at long last our mysterious present was ready to be opened. Mom and I tore into the wrappings of this medium sized box and found - a hair dryer!!! It was one of the early versions made for home use – it was pink plastic, and it had a long pink hose connected to an elastic edged pink plastic cap. Mom and I were in seventh heaven – and the oven returned to its original function for the drying out and burning of foodstuffs.

In between the home permanents we went through a succession a bobby pins and clips and hair pins, metal hair curlers, plastic rollers, hair nets, even little red rubber things called “Spoolies.”   Pin curls and gloppy green sticky styling gel and trying to breathe in the middle of a cloud of foul smelling hair spray! Simply writing about these things makes my scalp hurt! I can still remember the feeling of trying to sleep with those lumpy awful instruments of torture on my head – trying desperately to find a comfortable spot on my pillow.

When I was in junior high school one of my classmates, Rosalie, had a mom who was a hairdresser. Rosalie was not in my crowd, but my mother decided that I should make an appointment for a haircut and a permanent just to grease the social wheels. Rosalie was thrilled and the appointment was set. I dragged in my usual photo of the casual slightly wavy pixie cut, and told Rosalie’s mom that I did not want my hair to end up being “too curly.”

Rosalie’s mom set to work. Rosalie hovered around, and even her dad made an excited appearance to bring me some special chocolate bars (Heath bars which I did like not back then and have never liked since) – the whole family was so very pleased to meet dear Rosalie’s new friend.

When Rosalie’s mom was done cutting and clipping and snipping and winding and perming and neutralizing and rinsing and drying and combing and fussing and spraying, she gave me my eyeglasses. I looked at myself in the mirror in complete dismay as I beheld the tightest set of curls I had ever seen! I was worse than a poodle! Shirley Temple!   Harpo Marx! It was all I could do to pay and choke out my thanks – I bolted out of that little shop of horrors and wailed all the way home. I was having a complete meltdown by the time I stormed into the parsonage and encountered my mother, who was, of course, eagerly awaiting my return.

Even mom had to admit that my hair was too curly. She calmed me down and said she would see what she could do with it. She dug out her cheap dull hair scissors and her even cheaper (and duller) pair of thinning scissors and set to work, muttering and swearing under her breath. She yanked and she cut and she pulled and she thinned. I sat on a kitchen chair as she hacked away at those tight curls for well over an hour –the dull scissors caused her to end up with huge blisters on her fingers by the time she was satisfied with her handiwork and ushered me into the bathroom to peer at my new hairstyle.

I have to admit for probably the only time in her life my mom had pulled off a styling miracle.   The new version of the “do” was short, casual, amazingly even all the way around and only slightly curly. My tears dried and I was able to hold my head high in school the next day – that is ,until Rosalie saw me.   “My God!” she exclaimed, “What happened to your hair?!” I stuttered and stammered and tried to blame it on my mother (my recall of this part seems to be blessedly dim) but I do remember that Rosalie never spoke to me again.

Actually, my mom was allowed one more very different kind of hair miracle in her lifetime. After years of dying her hair that mousy brown (I mean ash blond) she went several weeks past the time for a root touch-up and discovered that in her late forties, her hair had turned a lovely silver gray. So she let the dye grow out and for the last years of her all too brief life, she had spectacularly beautiful silver hair. This also afforded her the excuse to buy an entirely new wardrobe in blues and grays, instead of her usual pinks and browns. She was ecstatic!

In the time since leaving my parents’ home I have grown my hair down past my waist, chopped all but my bangs off to 1/4", dyed my hair jet black as well as varying shades of purple – but most of all I have ignored my hair.   I have been in the thrall of trendy boutique style salons and I consider myself fortunate to have escaped from the crimping irons and Aqua Net of the eighties.

At the recommendation of a framing customer I tried out a new salon a few years back. At this salon I was ushered into their hushed sanctuary and given a 5 page form to fill out about my hair routine, products and preferences. I could not believe this questionnaire! I wash my hair (lather, rinse, repeat) with whatever is on sale at the drugstore and then use some conditioner. Then I try to remember to brush it before I leave the house. That is my hair routine. It was obvious that the time had come to grow my hair out yet again. (I guess that is really my hair routine: grow my hair until it is so long it is a literal pain in the neck and then have it chopped off, donate resulting pony tails to Locks of Love, and then start all over again!)

But now, lo these many years after her death, I find myself wondering every so often – what would my mom have thought of me with purple hair?   I am sure that mom would be really pleased that I have come full circle and found a “proper church lady” to do my hair and I like to think that she would at least be happy that I am paying some attention to my “crowning glory."

Cringe-worthy bangs, 1949

Camp Wesleyan for Girls

2010-05-30T22:42:00.002-04:00

One of the most traumatic experiences of my young life was the week in July of 1960 when my parents sent me to Camp Wesleyan. I had just turned 14, I had never spent any time away from my family, and by the time it was finished I swore I would never attend camp again. Camp Wesleyan for Girls was run by the middle-aged wives of ministers, elderly missionaries and one particularly memorable overzealous wanna-be drill sergeant in Bermuda shorts.

My dad drove away in his old Chevy, leaving me adrift in front of the massive and crumbling Epworth Inn at Silver Lake, New York. It was there that the first horror story embedded itself into my brain. A group of us newcomers were standing around with our hard shelled suitcases and matching make-up cases, trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing. A baby bird fell out of its nest in one of the ancient oaks and landed at our feet on the gravel . Some girls were squealing and some of us were working on a plan to rescue this pathetic little creature when an older camper appeared and with the stacked heel of her cowboy boot swiftly smashed the unfortunate bird into the ground .

This is how we met “Tiger,” a girl whose apparel made my usual tomboy outfit look positively frilly. Tiger was wearing skinny dungarees, a Western shirt with pearl snaps, a black cowboy hat and cowboy boots. She looked and acted like a boy (except we knew she was a girl because this was a camp for girls only). Had the baby bird incident never happened I surely would have worshiped her (from afar) all week. Tiger was best buddies with the entire staff and we newcomers were in awe of her and also scared to death of her – mostly however I think we all simply hated her out of pure instinct, for her aura of coolness and her seemingly casual cruelty.

Another incident I remember from that first hour involved a really shy girl whose parents had given her two cases of Hershey bars to hand out to her “new friends” at camp. Campers swarmed her like a Biblical plague of locusts, the candy bars were devoured, and even at our young age (14 was a lot younger in 1960 than it is today!) we all unconsciously dismissed her as needy and pathetic. I still think of her every so often and wonder how she managed to survive in the big mean world.

The camp stretched on into endless hours and days of unaccustomed dormitory living, communal bathrooms, being forced to go to bed too early, the wanna-be sergeant in Bermudas who used her bugle to wake us up at the crack of dawn, awful food, tedious and uninspired Bible classes – all supposedly aimed at turning us into missionaries – no thanks! We new campers were terrified of the uppity clique of older girls who flaunted their familiarity with the camp routine. Once in a while we were allowed to go down to the lake to swim or sunbathe – but there were no crafts, no music, no fun – it was like five horrible days of church with really bad meals and prison guards.

Before supper on the last evening, a grim-faced staff member came to the front of the dining room and informed us that there had been a terrible accident and their darling little Tiger had drowned. We were shocked at this information – our young brains barely comprehending the dreadful news – someone we had all hated and now she was dead! It was simply too awful for words.

We were informed that later in the evening there would be a memorial service in the dining room for the dear departed. (Why not the chapel? This was, after all, a church camp! We were too stunned to think to ask questions.) The lights had been dimmed when we arrived, a few candles were burning, and over on a low riser a shape(which we assumed to represent the deceased) was lying draped with a white sheet. Soft music was playing and we were all completely cowed.

The staff began a solemn service – which swiftly turned from flowery King James phraseology into complex doggerel and ended with a rousing chorus of “Hold that Tiger” whereupon the deceased threw off the sheet, sat bolt upright (cowboy hat and boots and all) and jumped to her feet and proceeded to stomp around in the midst of our astonishment. The staff members were holding their sides and howling with glee.

I did not think this stunt was very funny back then and fifty years later I still think it was a rotten trick because it was such an utterly frivolous departure from the humorless tone of the overly staid camp. Probably scarred our little Hershey bar camper for life – but, then again, who knows, maybe she grew up to became a missionary!

It is only now as I write this that I stop to wonder about Tiger’s life – I suspect she was able to conquer any and all people and obstacles in her path. Although I doubt if she ever became involved in wild bird rehabilitation.

2010-04-28T03:23:00.000-04:00

Rest in Peace, Sundance

My Mother, My Father and the Cat

2010-04-24T02:26:00.000-04:00

The cat’s name was Cherry and she was a little brown and black tiger with a white muzzle, paws and belly. I was around twelve years old when Dad and I brought her home from one of our forays into the countryside – we had stopped at an orchard to buy a few cherries and the farmer had quite cleverly placed a box of adorable kittens on display as well. I wheedled and pleaded and with the inclusion of much flattery I was finally able to convince “the best dad in the world” that we surely needed a cat and so “Cherry” came home with us.

Mom was not thrilled with this development and she immediately pronounced that Cherry must sleep in the basement so she “wouldn’t get into anything.” That first night, after we had all fallen asleep, a tremendously eerie screeching was heard wafting up the basement stairs and echoing through the furnace pipes. Dad rushed downstairs to find that the kitten had climbed up onto the wall around the old cistern and then fallen in. Luckily there was only an inch of water in the cistern and it was filled mainly with old junk. Dad found a long board and angled it down into the space and the kitten scrambled her way to safety. From that moment on, Cherry worshipped my father - he was her God.

Mom eventually relented and allowed Cherry up into the house to sleep. Mom and the cat achieved a tacit understanding early on in their relationship – mom was the boss of the household and that was that. No arguments allowed. Cherry liked to sleep in the space between the curving pedestal legs of the dining room table. Of course she left fur on the rug in those spots so mom trained her to sleep on flattened paper bags. I never even once saw that cat try to leap up onto a piece of furniture or a counter. I guess she knew what my mother’s response would have been and was a wise cat to avoid such repercussions.

This particular parsonage was a huge drafty old building – there were 7 bedrooms, 2 ½ bathrooms, a modern kitchen with turquoise and peach metal cabinets, a dining room and two, not one, two living rooms. Mom declared that the living rooms were off limits to the cat – she could wander anywhere else in the house, upstairs or down but not one paw was allowed in either of the living rooms.

Cherry made a great display of obeying this rule – if a toy she was batting around happened to skid across the threshold she would wait, looking pitiful, until one of us noticed her plight and retrieved the toy for her.

The only time Cherry disobeyed this edict was upon the arrival of the ladies for one of the church circle meetings. Mom was always in high dudgeon for these events, polishing her tea set, proffering her best china and trying to create appropriately dainty little snacks. The cat took full advantage of mom’s emotional state. With her tail high in the air, and a smug cat look on her face, she would stroll into the forbidden living room, making the rounds, greeting and rubbing against each guest. Of course the church ladies would all exclaim what a lovely cat she was and mom, although fuming under the surface, could do nothing except shoot the cat dirty looks when she hoped no one was watching.

In due time mom decided that Cherry could have the full run of the house. And run she did! Out through the dining room, past the living rooms, a sharp left through the front hall, up the staircase, across the upstairs front hallway, past my dad’s study, through the guest room, down the middle of my bedroom, down the back hall and then she flew down the steep and narrow back stairs, launching herself into my parents’ bedroom from the fifth step – which caused her to land on the flimsy little throw rug at the bottom of the stairs and slide on her magic carpet into the dining room, whereupon her trip would end with a thunk as she slid into the bottom of the china cabinet. She loved this wild ride of hers and did it over and over again.

Cherry worshipped my dad. She followed him everywhere she could manage. Since our parsonage was situated right next to the church, she snuck into the church on more than one occasion. She discovered that she could slip into the sanctuary when the custodian was not looking and the take a nice nap on the newly re-upholstered red velvet altar chairs. Dad was not thrilled with having to go near much less sit on red velvet altar chairs - and red velvet altar chairs with cat hairs thrilled him even less. The cat was soon banished from the church, especially on Sundays. We always felt that she retaliated by catching a brace of mice and laying them out for us on the sidewalk between the church and the parsonage, so we had to walk around them or step over them on the way back home. Mom was less than ecstatic at that display of Cherry’s hunting prowess.

The funeral home was located on the other side of the parsonage. There was a hedge between our property and theirs, and then their broad expanse of perfectly manicured lawn. Dad was always running late so to save time he would duck through the hedge and trot across the lawn when he was called upon to perform a funeral service. Cherry took to following him, tail in the air, across that wide green lawn and many was the time that dad discovered his little furry shadow only at the very door of the funeral home.

He would then try to pick up the cat with the tips of his fingers and with his elbows locked in front of him, carry her back to the house (she would be squirming and twisting to escape his grip), all the time hoping to suffer the least amount of cat hairs on his best black funeral suit.

Dad professed to be a cat hater but we all (mom, Cherry and I) knew he was a big softie at heart. Dad would occasionally come home with raw liver as a treat for the cat (I was an adult before I realized that people actually ate liver and that it wasn’t just something the butcher was throwing away!). Cherry used to go absolutely bananas over this liver, she nearly choked trying to purr and chew and swallow at the same time.

Another treat for the cat was warm milk with maybe a little egg beaten into it if he thought she was feeling “poorly.” The best treats of all were the little sugar coated raisins from his Raisin Bran cereal. He used to complain mightily that “the darn cat was always begging at the breakfast table.” I tried to point out that she wasn’t born with the knowledge of little sugar-coated raisins in Raisin Bran and “someone” must have illuminated her about their existence – else how could she have known what to beg for at the breakfast table?

Cherry and I made quite a splash around town - she had a little red leather harness and I walked her on a leash. The photographer in the studio downtown saw us one day and offered to take her portrait. He gave me a few wallet size copies but kept a framed hand colored 8x10 in his window for a long time. I sure wish I had that original hand colored photograph - my folks tried to buy it years later but it was unfortunately long gone.

Bless you little cat - I still love you and your pretty smile!

Laugh Drops

2010-03-26T20:40:00.000-04:00

Last Friday evening I was thrilled to be in attendance at UB’s Slee Hall for a concert featuring my nephew Matt’s internationally known and critically acclaimed percussion ensemble, Talujon. Talujon is a “five man quartet” with more drums and percussion instruments than a music store. Marimbas, kettle drums, chimes, bongos, cymbals, drum kits, kalimbas, gongs - you name it – the stage was overflowing.

As one might expect of a percussion concert, most of their performance was loud. But this is a classical music hall so certain rules apply, spelled out in the program booklet – no noise allowed during the performance. No cell phones, no talking, no humming, no coughing, no unwrapping of candies or cough drops!

When Matt made his Lincoln Center debut a number of years ago, my sister in law, who had gathered the clan for the occasion, drummed (so to speak) into our heads that any audience noise whatsoever would have us ejected from the premises, causing a disgrace to the entire family and a blot on Matt’s permanent record. I coughed once or twice the night before this concert and in less than five minutes she had presented me with a steaming mug of honey and lemon tea.

One piece that Talujon performed was one of those very avant garde over-the-top far-out modern pieces which consisted primarily of unorthodox materials being coaxed into even less orthodox sounds. Two performers were at opposite sides of the stage and two others were on the right and left aisles of the audience. We were “surrounded.” The lads were equipped with spruce branches, wine glasses, water, trash cans, cap pistols and many other toys. Until the cap gun part, most of the piece was excruciatingly subtle and terribly hard to hear. Probably due to their collective unease, the audience became noisier than the performers at several points.

It was during this piece that I realized one of the audience members seated behind me was either trying to suppress a cough – or a laugh. The sounds he was making (and I could tell it was a man making this noise) were little whimpers and sharp outbursts and intakes of breath, repressed snorts and somehow desperate-sounding shaking noises. I thought at first that I could fish in my purse and pass back a forbidden wrapped cough drop, but thanks to my days as a preacher’s kid trying not to laugh in church, I quickly realized it was laughter he was trying to stifle, and, as far as I know, there are no such things as laugh drops.

I caught a quick glimpse of this poor man after the piece had ended and as his wife was handing him a tissue to wipe his eyes. His face was crimson and he was still trying to catch his breath. I believe it was the spruce branches that had gotten him started and the cap guns that had finished him off.

So the Talujon concert was a night to remember in many more ways than one and I sincerely hope that no one ever invents anything like laugh drops.

The Return of Blessed Lumber

2010-03-04T21:12:00.001-05:00

As I was puttering around this afternoon in the alley behind my shop, I found a frozen T-shirt knotted up on the ground underneath my clothesline. I can never bear to see something go to waste so I rescued the shirt, thinking if nothing else it would make a great cleaning cloth for glass.

The shirt was frozen solid but an interesting multi-colored repetitive pattern was visible – some sort of a crest with four skulls in the middle, a crown on the top, crossed swords, rampant lions – the usual fare for a crest. Around the outside of the top of the crest are the words “Loyalty, Virtue, Nobility” – then the words “and from such” and on the bottom of each crest what I thought were the words “Blessed Lumber Returns.” The shirt was frozen but as it thawed more of the pattern was revealed.

“Blessed Lumber Returns” – I thought I had found some rare T-shirt from an odd cult of lumberjacks or possibly woodworkers – virtuous, loyal and noble beings all – hearts like lions, ready with shiny crowns and slashing swords to leap into action at any Highland Games’ caber toss or into the sawdust labyrinth of the local woodworking warehouse. Perhaps these guys stripped down to their tool belts and conducted drum circles in the deep woods.

I pictured this group, maybe like the members of the Possum Lodge, with sacred incantations to invoke the return of lumber. Why they would be doing this instead of planting more trees was beyond me – but a picturesque idea nonetheless. Perhaps they also gather to sing the famous “Lumberjack Song.” (“I’m a lumberjack, and I’m OK. I sleep all night and I work all day.”)

As the shirt slowly thaws, finally one more letter of the motto has been revealed, partially obstructed by one of the many swords – this letter is an “s.” So it is supposed to read “Blessed Slumber Returns.” By which, I guess they mean if one conducts oneself in a loyal, noble and virtuous manner, one is gifted with a good night’s sleep.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am going to sleep like a log tonight.

The Woods Are Full of 'Em

2010-03-03T19:35:00.000-05:00

This morning I awoke from a dream with a recurring theme – space invaders. No, not invaders from space, but invaders of my space – my Fortress of Solitude, my forest hermitage.

My house is situated in the middle of over 30 acres of young woodland. There are a couple of ancient oaks back there – but several generations ago my property was farmland so the woods today are mostly second growth. As unspectacular as they are, however, I am enrolled in a managed forest plan and I have vowed to protect them from development for as long as I live or perhaps even beyond. With a Voldemart only a half mile away, I like to think of my little acreage as surviving like Central Park – a bit of untamed green as a refuge for the few remaining wild things, in the midst of the rampant consumerism.

So the worst nightmares I ever experience anymore are concerned with my woods. I have dreamt that I awake to giant yellow bulldozers crashing through my trees, leaving a trail of broken branches and raw earth. I have dreamt of dozens of cars parked up and down my narrow driveway with people picnicking in my backyard. I have dreamt of row upon row of little houses made of ticky-tacky, each complete with swingsets and screaming rugrats.

I have dreamt that there is a jogging path just visible on the North side of the house, about 5 feet into the woods (which are about 20 feet away from the house). I have dreamt of camp meetings taking place on my land, with strangers sitting on my tiny porch and some of them even trying with studied determination to open my door and gain access to my house – like creatures from the Dawn of the Dead movie. These folks set up huge tents full of folding chairs and I fully expect to see a fiery old itinerant preacher out there.

The dream this morning was the worst so far. I glanced out the bathroom window and to my astonishment there was a strip mall, just visible through the trees. I looked out again and some of the trees had vanished and the mall was closer. I saw asphalt and parked cars. The next time I looked all of the trees had gone and there was only a paved driveway between my house and the mall. Just before I awoke, my last horrified peek confirmed that even the paving had disappeared and now abutted to my house were a real estate broker and the whole rest of the strip mall, stretching off into the distance, all the way to Voldemart.

Maybe it would help if I put up curtains?

The Olympics

2010-02-28T19:52:00.001-05:00

As usual, I started out being an Olympics curmudgeon. The torch passed within blocks of my house and I did not deign to go see it. Silly me.

Now, after being glued to the NBC coverage (all I can pull in with my antenna) for the last 2 weeks, after even watching a hockey game this afternoon (and those of you who know me know how improbable this is!) - now I am filled with sadness that the whole marvelous spectacle is about to end. *sigh*

I will miss being able to see these crazy and wonderful kids - talk about reality TV - this is reality TV! I find the skiing/target shooting event to be silly, the cross country racing to be painful to watch, but I loved the snowboarders (were those real blue jeans or what?) and the ice dancers and the figure skaters - and who can ever forget Joannie Rochette? I loved Virtue and Moir as well - what a program they skated!

And I even got to see a bit of the curling - such an interesting sport! I would watch that again - it is graceful and slow - but I like it! Who knows, maybe I will even watch a hockey game again some day.

After tonight, I will turn my antenna back towards CBC and NBC will just fade away.

Bye bye, Olympics - I am gonna miss you!

Above the Falls and Below the Falls

2010-02-15T22:50:00.002-05:00

Crazy relatives - everyone's got 'em!

Grandpa "Herbie" and Grandma Flossie, along with Aunt Olive and Uncle Charlie - 1934.

The Parsonage

2010-02-15T22:17:00.002-05:00

I have been working on a series of stories about my life as a Preacher's Kid - way back at the dawn of the Age of the Baby Boomer. Here are three tales about the houses that our churches so generously allowed us to occupy.

The Kitchen Window

In every church community where we lived the Parsonage Committee was a group of parishioner volunteers who saw to it that the parsonage was repaired and decorated for each pastor and family. Plumbing, heating, painting, and roof repair – the Parsonage Committee either did this work themselves or allotted funding for professional help. Or not. I remember when the attic of the Pavilion parsonage was invaded with bees and my dad ended up on a long wobbly ladder trying to get rid of them. And I have a photograph of dad on that same ladder, painting the Pavilion parsonage!

When my parents moved into the parsonage at Pavilion, my mother began her decorating routine as usual. This was in 1950 – the parsonage was probably over a hundred years old even then. The kitchen had only a hand pump at the sink when we arrived but after my mother’s continued consternation this old dinosaur was soon upgraded to a set of real faucets (and hot water!).

The one feature of the kitchen that even the best parsonage committee could not repair was the lack of a window over the sink. The plumbing was on an inside wall – the kitchen window was off to the left but just not the same to mom. So she figured out an ingenious fix to this imagined flaw: she made dad buy a set of Venetian blinds and some shelf brackets and a board. She hung up the blinds over the new shelf, sewed a set of curtains and - voila! A houseplant was even installed on this new “window sill.” It sure looked like a window – just enough to ease her worried soul when she was standing at the sink washing dishes.

Members of the Parsonage Committee were flummoxed at first by the arrival of this anomaly and more than one could be seen pulling up the blinds to find a blank wall underneath. Mom was inordinately pleased with herself over this trick.

The Big Surprise

An incident connected with the Parsonage Committee in Attica sent my mother nearly around the bend, but as the Minister’s Wife she knew discretion was the better part of valor and when she was called upon, she gave a performance worthy of an Academy Award.

We had gone to the lake for our usual week of summer vacation at the cottage and when we walked into the parsonage we were nearly blinded by a newly redecorated downstairs: living room, dining room and foyer. Some walls were covered in patterned wallpaper and on the other walls really wide stripes. The color scheme of this delight was deep maroon, white and silver. The pattern consisted of enormous white flowers. The stripes even marched up the stairs to the second floor. Mom almost keeled over on the spot but when the Parsonage Committee burst in upon us to see how we liked our “Big Surprise” mom had regained her composure and somehow managed to convince the committee of her absolute delight.

In retrospect, we were quite lucky at this relatively low-key decorating approach. In later years my dad and step-mom lived in one parsonage (in a town which shall remain nameless) (OK – it was Honeoye Falls!) where the kitchen looked like it had been done by the set decorators on Laugh-In. Hot pink, neon orange and enormous butterflies: “Sock it to me!”

Polka Dots

In addition to my “suite” of two rooms upstairs in the old barn of a parsonage in Albion, down the hall was my very own bathroom (or half-bath as they are called nowadays). I was thrilled with this little room and set about decorating it. The plumbing fixtures were old – even the toilet seat was very beat up looking with scuffs and dings and missing paint. It would never have occurred to anyone in those days to try to find a store and buy a new toilet seat – this one was perfectly serviceable – just ugly!

So I decided to decorate the toilet seat. I got out my pearlized pale blue nail polish and painted polka dots over the scuffs and dings. Mom thought I was very clever and Dad rolled his eyes and after we all got a kick out of making something old new again, we pretty much forgot all about it. Until a member of the Parsonage Committee happened to be visiting one day and beheld this wonder for the first time.

Word spread like wildfire and I never lived that down. When I returned for the church’s anniversary celebration over 30 years later– several long-time parishioners came up to me and mentioned the polka dotted toilet seat.

The Sun Also Rises?

2010-02-07T02:39:00.001-05:00

I am assuming this is still the case, otherwise it would be dark all the time and there would not be beautiful sunsets for me to photograph, but I must admit I haven’t seen a sunrise since I stopped frequenting the Continental back in the late eighties or so.

My maternal grandparents were both early birds – Grandpa worked at the “Bank with the Gold Dome” in downtown Buffalo and commuted by bus from Elma so he arose before the birds to make it to work on time. Grandma loved to paint quick studies of the sunrise over her beloved garden from the cozy vantage point of the bathroom window on the second floor of their house on Bowen Road. To live this lifestyle they naturally had to be in bed by nine or so.

My parents, on the other hand, were night owls – well, at least my mother was a night owl. As a preacher’s wife she was obliged to attend church every Sunday, but that was the only day of the week she arose much before noon. She hated daylight so much she would have made a perfect vampire. Nighttime brought out the best in her – with every light blazing in our usually massive parsonages, she would sew, dust, read, dust some more, do laundry, and dust again. I often wonder what our electric bills must have been like back then.

My dad was on call around the clock so he slept when he could – catnaps during the day on the couch in the living room, a quick snooze at his desk in his study, catching a few z’s while he waited in the car when he was chauffeuring me someplace – but he was always there to make the valiant attempt every school morning to pry me out of bed. I do not know how he managed this because I was the kid who stayed up reading with my flashlight under the covers until all hours of the night; or I whiled away the night time hours listening to those far off stations on my brick sized turquoise colored transistor radio. Cousin Brucie on WABC, Dick Biondi on WLS, Dick Summer and Irving the Second (aka Superplant) on WBZ - rock ‘n’ roll and silliness!

Every school morning dad would call me from their room, “Time to get up.” I would mumble, “I am up,” and of course, fall back asleep. This was repeated several times, until my human snooze alarm appeared in my doorway and made sure I stumbled into the bathroom. He was always nice enough to turn on the wall heater so the bathroom was toasty but as soon as he went back to bed I would curl up on the bathmat and go back to sleep. This resulted in a series of knocks at the door. “Are you awake?” “Yes.” “What are you doing in there?” “I am brushing my teeth.” “I don’t hear any brushing.”

I do not know how he managed this but I made it to school nearly every day (unless I decided to skip gym class and then I became quite talented at feigning illness).

When it came to my abbreviated college career, my nightmares were the morning classes – I rarely made it to any of them. I failed Psychology 101 when it was an 8 o’clock class – passed it easily the next semester when it was in the blessed afternoon.

Having to work for a living also behooved me to abide by the timetables of others. I do not even remember what time I had to show up for work in those dreadful days – I guess I have pushed that horror from my mind.

The best part of having my own business is the ability to set my own hours. I open the shop at 11am from Tuesday through Friday and 1pm on Saturday. This allows me to sleep in to at least 9:30 on weekdays, 11:30 on Saturdays. I think about those poor folks who have to get up at or before the crack of dawn – and it makes my stomach clench – I am simply no good at anything until the sun is high in the sky. I cannot think or create or even eat in the morning.

Thus I find myself to be the perfect combination of my mother and my father. I catnap when I can and I stay up as late as I can – writing, reading, and listening to the radio. Sometimes my cats give up on me and go to bed before I do – and they are nocturnal souls!

So perhaps this explains why you receive an email from me that I sent out at 3am or a Facebook post at 4am. I get enough sleep, do not worry – I just sleep different hours than most of you.

And if you phone me at 8am, don’t ask, “Did I wake you?” because you did.

The Gratitude Project

2010-01-17T16:56:00.001-05:00

"Gratitude Project (Join me! For the next 30 days, I am posting 3 things for which I am grateful, no matter how seemingly small or silly)."

This began as one of those Facebook status things - my friend Val invited others to join her for 30 days - I chose to participate in my framer’s forum (“the G”), and I have edited my posts a tad because they tended to get longer and longer as the days themselves began lengthening.

So here is my first entry, begun on December 10, 2009 -

Day 1:
1. Grateful to the G for allowing me to reach out from my hermitage to other like-minded souls.
2. Grateful to my step-family members for being so nice and so normal.
3. Grateful for my cats for keeping me warm at night and sane at all times.
Day 2:
1. Sunshine on clean new-fallen snow.
2. Blue skies after several gray days.
3. Naps - I love naps!
Day 3:
1. I am grateful to my friends on the G and on FB who have helped me throughout this awful day.
2. I am grateful for my wise veterinarian who knew enough to send Sidi home with me for the weekend instead of sending him to be alone and unloved under the harsh lights at the emergency clinic.
3. I am grateful to the 15 plus years that Sidi has been my companion and I am grateful for every extra minute we can share.
(Boy I sure know how to pick a time to start a gratitude project, don't I?)
Day 4
1. I am grateful for the balm of sleep.
2. I am grateful for my friends.
3. I am grateful that the red tailed hawk that I saw soloing yesterday is today flying over my trees with a mate.
Day 5
1. I am grateful to my wonderful friends from the G for "holding my hand" over the last 3 days....
2. I am grateful for three hungry kitties stamping around the house and demanding my attention (and their breakfast).
3. I am grateful for my blessed ability to sleep when I need to.
Day 6
1. I am grateful that my nice neighbor in the building put up a sign for my door when I knew I would be unable to leave Sidi's side on Saturday. I sent a PM to each of the two neighboring businesses thru FB and said, "whichever one of you sees this first please stick a sign on my door" and the recording studio guy did just that!
2. I am VERY grateful that we framers are helping our dear Á in her time of need. That makes me VERY happy!
3. Found a small bottle of eggnog grocery store tonight. Would not drink it every day of the year but once or twice a year it is positively YUMMY.
Day 7
1. I am grateful for the gift of music in this world - it is a balm for the soul.
2. I am grateful for even the small amount of work I have to do for the shop this year - it keeps my mind from casting off.
3. I am grateful for the jokes in the annual joke contest - keep 'em coming folks!
Day 8:
1. I am grateful to have met my friend's mom this evening and her mom thinks I am an inspiration. How cool is that?
2. I am grateful to have gotten the idea to surprise my step mom in her church this Sunday by not just giving the BOOK of my dad's sermons to the church library but to make the presentation a part of the service! Plotted with the pastor today. Tee hee.
3. I am grateful that I ran into Eric from the Delaware Camera who sent Magilla to me and thanked him for introducing me to such an amazing soul. And we lamented Magilla's passing and further spread the legend of the Great Lakes Surfers.
Day 9:
1. I am grateful to have a non leaking roof.
2. I am grateful to have heat and power.
3. I am grateful to have hot and cold running water.
Day 10:
1. I am grateful to have seen one of the amazing artworks done by Á.
2. I am grateful to have a great shoe repair guy - yay Jimmie!
3. I am grateful to have found a nice little black leather purse at Amvets for only $3.95.
Day 11:
1. I am grateful to have pulled off that great surprise for my step mom yesterday.
2. I am grateful that the Solstice is finally here so the daylight will begin to start lengthening.
3. I am grateful to have a last-minute order for some Christmas framing from my terrific local supplier (even though I left all of the paperwork at the shop and have to go to Buffalo on my day off to place the danged order!).
Day 12:
1. I am grateful the fact that I managed to get that last order in on time yesterday even though as it turns out the paperwork had been at home all along - I was pleased that I managed to re-create the order perfectly and did not miss one item!
2. I am grateful that one of my newer customers is now my friend on FB which will make it easier for him to tell his friends about my shop!
3. I am grateful that I have a huge collection of 2 liter pop bottles, old milk jugs and 5 gallon paint pails to stock up on water so the danged town can PLEASE turn off my water so my leaky line does not waste any more before I find someone to dig the thing up and repair it.
Day 13:
1. I am grateful that yesterday I had two customers leave nice jobs for next year.
2. I am grateful that I have a garage that never gets below freezing to put my little car into when it is 20 degrees like today.
3. I am grateful that I am pretty dang good at being a "water miser" and will continue some of these techniques even after the leak is fixed and the water is back on.
Day 14:
1. I am grateful that the backhoe guy has dug up my waterline and found the break right away (huge rock shifted on top of the line, ground heaved and rock split line).
(9:30 - GOT WATER!!!!) (YIPPEE!!)
2. I am grateful that the backhoe guy, since he is right here, is going to smooth out the biggest pothole in my driveway (worsened by the leak no doubt). (He even brought a bucket full of gravel!) (Yay!)
3. I am grateful that after doing the Christmas boojie tomorrow I have at least 2 days off in a row to sleep in!
Day 15:
1. I am grateful that the backhoe guy only cost $525 - I was afraid it was gonna be twice that!
2. I am grateful that there was a new customer with after-Christmas work awaiting me when I got to the shop yesterday. Yay!
3. I am grateful for the great night's sleep I had last night - conked out at 8pm!
Day 16:
1. I am grateful for those nice Johnny Depp pictures I find on the Gratitude Project thread - how delightfully appropriate!!!
2. I am grateful that I had a wonderful Christmas day with my step mom yesterday - great food which neither of us had to prepare and no dishes to wash! Plus lots of chocolate!
3. I am grateful that all three handlers of the visiting service dogs came for a Christmas wag-fest and I got to meet first Sandy the yellow lab with Christmas jingle bells around her collar and on sort of elastic garters above her elbows; then Lucy, another yellow lab who waited patiently with a dog treat on her paw until given the go ahead to snarf it up; and lastly the famous Wally, a jet black golden doodle who just looks like a big Muppet and who charms everyone in sight - my step mom had taken more pictures of him than any of her human family!
Day 17:
1. I am grateful to have taken so many hundreds of pictures of Sidi. Blessed digital cameras!
2. I am grateful that my friends can cook and give me leftovers so I can eat something other than veggie burgers every once in a while.
3. This is silly but I am grateful for Vin Diesel movies - I really like him - he is the big bad guy with the heart of gold and a great grin. Watched a really awful SF movie (“Pitch Black”) last night - silly but he was the bad-guy turned hero.
Day 18:
1. I am grateful to be in a nice warm house with my car tucked into the garage to thaw out while a Lake Effect snowstorm is dying down outside leaving over a half a foot of heavy snow.
2. I am grateful to have squirreled away an "emergency" supply of Milky Way Dark bars and Promax Double Fudge Brownie energy bars.
3. I am grateful that, if need be, I am within walking distance of the big cheap supermarket and I have a gift card from my oldest BFF.
Day 19:
1. I am grateful for that much-needed 12 hours of sleep!
2. I am grateful that both my driveway got plowed and also the sidewalk in front of my shop!
3. I am grateful for NPR and PBS and CBC.
Day 20:
1. I am grateful that I found my little spiral notebook which contained all of my lists! It was lost for a month and I was lost when it was lost! I was listless!
2. I am grateful that my mailman told me my headlights were on yesterday morning - he has been on a different schedule for the last six months and my mail is already delivered when I arrive at the shop but yesterday I got there five minutes before he did and he saved me from a dead battery!
3. I am grateful that 2009 is almost finished with - it has been an awful year on so many levels but I hold great hope for the bright promise of a fresh year - welcome 2010!
Day 21:
1. I am grateful for the fact that 2009 is HISTORY! Although a few wonderful things happened (like the trials, tribulations and eventual triumph of the Sermon Book, meeting Magilla and learning how to write Á’s name properly!) - the year pretty much sucked big time.
2. I am grateful for the customer who came in to pick up her next installment of frames and paid me the balance.
3. I am grateful that most people thought I was closed this week so I got a LOT of fussy little messy time-consuming projects done, including nailing a wicked-awesome dry brush technique for a refinishing job on a frame from the fifties!
Day 22:
1. I am grateful for my friends. And the fact that other people spring for long-distance phone calls (I am too cheap for such frivolity) - had a long chat with a dear friend in Florida and a long chat with Sidi's First Mother Marcia (he was born in her bedroom in the 150 year old farmhouse in Ithaca NY).
2. I am grateful that I remember to clean out my cupboards and fridge once in a while - talk about science projects! Found an opened box of what were too-mushy lady finger cookies (used to love them until I discovered the trans fat content!) that had turned to clumpy brown powder. And a nearby ant trap had mysteriously filled up with the same brown powder. Ugh.
3. I am grateful that one by one, a little at a time, my remaining kitties are regaining their autonomy - they seem to be looking over their collective little furry shoulders less and less in fear of Boss Sidi's return.
Day 23:
1. I am grateful that within the next few months, some of the weight of worry will be lifted off of Á’s shoulders.
2. I am grateful that my dad fell in love with a wonderful woman after my mom died and that I have a lovely step family. If not for them I would have never met Sidi! Plus they give good presents - kitty treats for the catkins and money and chocolate for me! Yay!
3. I am grateful to arrive home safe and sound this evening since it was slippery and snowy and I had to drive on the interstate. Huge sigh of relief!
Day 24:
1. I am grateful for the delicious chocolate bestowed upon me in vast quantities this holiday.
2. I am grateful that I found another old friend on FB - probably haven't seen him in 30 years and now he has a son who looks just like he did way back when! Stirring up a lot of old memories of good times and much silliness.
3. I am grateful that I did not have to travel at all today - just northeast of me (where I was yesterday) they got over a foot of snow! I got home just in time. Fat fluffy flakes are pretty but they add up fast!
Day 25:
1. I am grateful that my driveway fairy got me all plowed out this morning.
2. I am grateful that when I was forced into Canadian Tire to buy a few necessities of life I had a GIFT CARD to use and now I have 3 or 4 years worth of garbage bags, 3 lovely spongey scrubbies, -35C washer fluid, a brand new roll of Duct Tape and a jug of CLR for septic systems and I still have money left on the card! Yay! Happy Christmas to me!
3. I am grateful for the Benjamin Moore paint store which had one last 8 oz. jar of the best metallic gold latex paint in the world! Whew!
Day 26:
1. I am grateful for the aroma of old hide glue and shellac that instantly transported me back 40 years to the upstairs workshop (644 William Street) of Kramer the Framer. Where my uncle Bob used to restore oil paintings and Bruno (his real name!) used to leaf and finish lengths of mouldings.....
2. I am grateful for the cool old retired decorator guy who came in the shop today trying to sell me 4 vintage watercolors of koi who ended up picking out frames and at least getting an estimate from me. I must be on some “cool old guy” radar.
3. I am grateful that I finally found where I stashed Sidi's whisker that fell out at the vet's office after he had his stroke - I was disconsolate that I has lost it and now it is found! (And I know it is the correct whisker because I apparently taped it into his notebook and then forgot that I had done that!).
Day 27:
1. I am grateful that I took advantage of the opportunity many years ago to attend one of Vivian Kistler’s seminars. Gonna miss that lady for sure! Rest in peace, Vivian.
2. I am grateful that new business is coming in the door - but why does everything have to be so danged HUGE?
3. I am grateful for the two lovely ripe bananas brought to me by a friend today. Not too green, not too brown. Just perfectly delicious.
Day 28:
1. I am grateful that those two 40x60 frames are out of my shop finally - now I can make some room for the next oversize job!
2. I am grateful for my garage despite the fact that the second lock will now only open from the inside so I have to go in the back door and troop all through the house with wet boots to open the thing from the inside and bring the car inside so she can keep warm.
3..I am grateful for my crock-pot - it makes the cooking of the cat's grain (Bulgur Wheat or Polenta) ever so much easier! Even though I have not quite got the hang of cooking the Polenta - LOL!
Day 29:
1. I am grateful that I have such fun refinishing frames - I was jumping around and hooting today - WOOT! I love being able to match colors! Damn I'm good!
2. I am grateful for my weekly Friday night nap when I get home from work and after supper. Zzzzzz.
3. I am grateful that at least if the temperature has not been above freezing for a week or more at least the snow is light and fluffy and easy to clear from the front of the shop. If the sun would peek through for a bit things would be very photogenic.
Day 30:
1. I am grateful for finally finishing the eagle mirror today in time for dealer to load it with the best of his wares for the upcoming Cathedral Antique Show in Atlanta. (Wish I had charged him a bit more but what the heck....)
2. I am grateful that by shutting down and restarting my computer just now I was able to stave off an "attack of the tabs" where everything went crazy and even the System Restore would not work. Whew.
3. I am grateful (heck, beyond grateful!) to hear a faint positive note in dear Á's "voice" again. Whew!

*****

I am really glad that I participated in this Gratitude Project. I found it a fascinating exercise all around - although some days it proved quite difficult to find anything for which I was grateful.

I would, however, be afraid to do it again - two days after I posted gratitude towards my cats, Sidi had a stroke and died the next day. The day after I posted gratitude for hot and cold running water - the water line busted. I posted gratitude towards the annual joke contest and the next day there was a “dust-up” and the thread was locked down. I guess there will always be things that make you go “Hmmm….”

The Hell Frame

2010-01-14T20:14:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time there was a massive, hand-carved mirror frame. The overall shape is an upside down guitar body with huge leaves, big blossoms, bulging buds and assorted flourishes. Perhaps it had been a beauty in the newness of its youth, but it was middle-aged now and hideous. The once glorious gold leaf had been covered with ugly gold spray paint. Some of this finish was peeling off in sheets – some of it was stuck fast.

This frame was brought to me by a decorator so I could “tone” it to match her client’s newly redecorated living room. Upon close examination I said I could do no more until the surface was smoother and stabilized. I did not want to charge for a paint job that would fall off in the van on the way to the installation.

So I dug out my sand paper, nail files, tungsten-carbide sanding sticks, and wire brushes and I started in on the thing. A fair amount of the old finish (first layer of plaster, gold leaf, second layer of plaster, gold spray paint) came off easily. And the rest did not. Ugly ridges resulted and no amount of sanding helped. I dragged the thing into the back alley, draped it with wet towels, and found that moisture helped make the scraping easier but not by that much and it required a lot of backing and forthing (in at night, out in the morning, etc.) with this heavy monstrosity of a frame.

So I made a trip to the hardware store and bought a couple of new wire brushes for my drill. I dug out my Dremel tool, and the array of cylindrical grinding and sanding implements. I donned goggles and a respirator. The goggles steamed up. I could not see a thing. I removed the goggles. My glasses steamed up – I still could not see a thing. I abandoned the respirator and went with a face mask – and then I abandoned the face mask. Then I abandoned the power tools. They were useless and way too messy (dust everywhere!) – and by this date the time had come and gone to work outdoors. Too darned cold!

I unearthed my sets of clay and plaster tools, files, rasps and many kinds of scrapers - from sharp pieces of glass to a batch of razor blades and mat cutter blades. I tried my large variety of both full size and hobby size chisels. I added dental tools and nutpicks to my arsenal. I scraped as much as I could in any given day until my fingers were cramped into claws.

Somewhere along the line I managed to break the mirror. Like I need seven years of bad luck! I called the mirror guy and he came and picked up the plywood backing board to use as a template and we carefully marked which side was the shiny side because the frame was far from symmetrical.

I continued scraping away at the unrelenting finish until I finally came to my senses, stamped my little feet and demanded that the thing be taken away to a real furniture stripper to be professionally dipped and stripped. This was eventually accomplished with a helpful go-between who had a vehicle large enough to transport what I had by then begun calling the Hell Frame.

The frame returned with most of the finish removed and mostly bare wood showing. I went back to my array of tools and began picking off what the dipping had been unable to remove. In some areas the bare wood needed filling and at this juncture my hapless neighbor dropped in for a visit and I inadvertently Tom Sawyered him into the project. He is an auto body expert and he went back to his place and returned with some professional grade fiberglass filler, some spatulas and the best sandpaper I have ever used. The filler worked well but as it was very messy and sticky I eventually went back to my tried and true epoxy putty to fill gaps, gouges and scrapes. So after a couple of weeks more, the Hell Frame was ready to paint.

I remembered a marvelous brand of metallic latex paint that I had found for another project at Benjamin Moore in Fort Erie. I felt my luck had begun to turn as I was able to buy the very last jar of gold in stock! Yippee! I prepped the frame and painted the rabbet and the interior of all of the cut-outs in the design with black gesso. I decided to christen a brand-new really good paint brush for the gold paint.

After a bit more epoxy, a bit of sanding and smoothing and a second coat of gold, I was feeling rather mellow towards the Hell Frame. I mixed up the toning color, burnt sienna and burnt umber artist acrylic (adding water to arrive at a nice creamy consistency). I used brushes, sea sponges and gauze to achieve the desired results. Then I used a stiffer sea sponge to apply the gold over the highlights and even out the finish. This turned out very well and I was ever so pleased with myself. Damn I’m good!

I maneuvered the frame into position for the installation of the new mirror. I said a brief but heartfelt prayer to the Framing Gods that the mirror would fit. My prayer went unanswered as I discovered that the mirror was too tall for the frame by between an eight and a quarter of an inch.

So I carefully removed the mirror back into safe storage and began widening the rabbet to fit. Of course by this time all of my big chisels were back home but I simply could not wait another day to finish this job so I set to this task (which involved drilling holes, cutting with a utility knife, smoothing with a rasp, using the Dremel – the usual array of desperate measures), and after a half dozen attempts (Backing and forthing with the mirror – does it fit? – No! – Slice, slice, fit? No – Cut, cut, - now does it fit? Arrrggghhh!). Two hours later I finally managed to fit the mirror into the frame.

That is when I discovered that, ONE: the rabbet varied in its depth by as much as an eighth of an inch, and TWO: the mirror was a bit on the shy side at the “waist” of the frame. The rabbet was also a bit on the uneven side so I dared not shoot framer’s points to secure the mirror (Come to think of it, which is how I broke the first mirror!) – I had to use upside down offset fasteners and the very hard wood kept killing my rechargeable drill when I installed the Robertson screws. I kept charging it and recharging it. Then the drill slipped and drilled a small hole in my left index finger (OUCH!) – applied a bandage and carried on until the drill quit again. And of course I did not have my regular Robertson screwdriver with me – that was at home.

So I uninstalled the mirror again (again) and painted the edges with black gesso to kill the reflections. I then mounted felt pads along the outer back edge of the mirror to act as cushions so the plywood backer would fit more snugly. I went home to retrieve my Robertson screwdriver and charge my drill. Got a great night’s sleep and returned to the shop this morning to finish the Hell Frame.

And now, at long last, the job is finished. I think it looks great. I am pleased with the end result – it is once again beautiful and stable and reinforced and should last well into its dotage.

Of course workers in third world countries make more than I will on that beast but at least I can view the ordeal as a learning experience. I learned two valuable lessons: ONE - I will never EVER strip any frame or piece of furniture again in my life. I will gladly and brilliantly (she adds modestly) refinish anything you bring me – as long as you bring it to me stripped down to bare wood. Thank you. TWO - I also swear I will use my good brushes from now on. What am I saving them for anyway? There will always be uses for the ratty ones – but I swear that when I need a good brush I will use a good brush.

Thus endeth the saga of Mar’s trials with and eventual triumph over the Hell Frame.

Mar's Famous Mouse Story

2010-01-10T00:33:00.001-05:00

In a letter dated January 2, 1990, I wrote the following story to Bill Richardson when he was the “poet laureate” of the Vicki Gabereau show on CBC radio. People were urged to send in stories from their lives and Bill would write a narrative doggerel poem to commemorate the event. As I wrote my story, it was Bill's voice reading it that I could hear in my mind, and when it was subsequently broadcast (Bill reading the story and Vicki's reactions) along with Bill’s poem, much mayhem and merriment ensued. This was my 15 minutes of fame. Bill told me later that folks asked him about this story for months.

*****

Two years ago, I built a large chicken-wire covered enclosure for my previously “indoor-outdoor” cats. This structure is for the cats’ security, keeping them away from the big, bad highway, nasty raccoons, neighborhood dogs and other hazards. Cat doors and ramps allow them around-the-clock access to this safe and airy haven. An unexpected side benefit is that my house is no longer festooned with dead or merely captured creatures (we’re talking mice, moles, frogs, snakes, birds, etc.). In one year alone I managed to rescue one groggy frog, two baby snakes and one bright-eyed desperate oriole (which I found wedged between my mattress and my bedroom wall – but that is another story!). Unfortunately, not all of these pre-enclosure stories have happy endings.

Three years ago I bought just the best pair of black high-top sneakers. You know, the kind I wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing in the fifties because they were guy’s shoes? Anyhow, I wore them in the summer and fall, and when winter came they were reluctantly retired to the closet floor to await spring. At long last the snow melted, the slush receded, and, well, I didn’t think it was that wet out, so, yahoo! On with the high-tops!

After four months of wearing heavy clunky snow boots, these sneakers felt like wings. I danced through my day. By the time I got home, OK, let’s face it, my sneakers were soaked, my socks were dripping, my feet were wrinkled. Not quite sneaker weather yet. So I hung everything to dry over a register: socks, sneakers, and my Dr. Scholl’s leather and foam arch supports (the only reason I can wear the darn sneakers, which are so cool looking and have no arch support whatsoever!).

Several days passed. I wanted to make sure everything was thoroughly dry. In a burst of efficiency, I decided to ascertain that there were no twigs or stones or anything in the sneakers before I reinserted the arch supports. I cleaned a little lint out of the first sneaker, picked a thread out of the foam on the first arch support, and voila! Like new! I glanced at the interior of the remaining sneaker and thought the insides had begun to unravel. Then I noticed a dark stain on the foam pad of the second arch support. I looked into the sneaker again, and no, it was not unraveling, what I found was a mouse. A dead mouse. A flat dead mouse.

To anticipate your next question, no, I have no idea how long I walked on that poor thing, but it sure was flat and also very stiff, and I sincerely hope it had already expired when my feline friend placed it (or lost it) under the arch support. I expect the culprit was Baby Doe, a kitten-faced mighty hunter, who since the advent of the cat enclosure has been reduced to capturing June bugs, crickets and (ugh) earth worms.

*****

This story is over 20 years old now and Baby Doe is of course long gone from this earth. A new mighty hunter, Siobhan (Shivvie) has taken her place. Shivvie is the “mouse whisperer” - patiently luring rodents and even birds in through the chicken wire and thence to their doom. I no longer take chances with shoe storage – none are stored anywhere near the floor!

The Lake Blessing (Part 2)

2010-01-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

November 27, 2009

A waxing moon, on Friday November 17, 2009. Fridays symbolize friendship, harmony, nature, pleasures, strangers and waters. Sunset at Waverly Beach by the Old Dance Hall at Erie Beach. The beach glass, some labeled with Magilla's name, returned to the waters of Lake Erie, small waves rolling in at my feet. Blessed Be.

Scentimental Journey

2010-01-01T13:49:00.000-05:00

A long time ago I read an article that tried to explain why it is so difficult for us to describe scents. Turns out that the part of the brain containing our descriptive powers is about as far as it can be from the olfactory recording department. On the other hand, as the article went on to say, the part of the brain that is closest to the olfactory recording department is the area where long- term memories are stored.

This explains why scent may act as a sort of time machine - simply smelling a long-forgotten scent can instantly take a person tumbling back down through the corridors of time.

When I was a little kid my parents were the proverbial poor church mice, but my mom had developed a passion for Evening in Paris cologne. This elegant fragrance was far too rich for her purse, but since she loved it so much, my dad made sure there was a brand new bottle every year, wrapped and waiting for her under the Christmas tree. I do not remember this personally but the story was oft recounted of the occasion when I was three years old and I grabbed her precious bottle of cologne and dumped it into my sandbox because “I wanted it to smell nice like my mommy.”

I have a small cobalt glass vial of her Evening in Paris cologne, with the faded silver label and the tattered blue tassel on the cap, and I open it every couple of years – just to be able to smell my mommy.

My dad smelled like Old Spice after shave – if I am in a crowd and catch a mote of Old Spice and I am instantly flooded with memories of him – his twinkling eyes and his loving warmth and his gentle kindness.

The scent of chocolate chips takes me two places: my grandma’s pantry where she tried desperately to maintain a supply of chocolate chips for her baking needs (chocolate chip cookies for me!) and where I constantly snuck in to steal them one by one out of the bag until it was nearly empty.

Grandma solved this problem by resorting to Baker’s Chocolate. I ate a chunk of that which stopped me in my thieving tracks once and for all. How could something smell so wonderful and taste so awful?

The second place chocolate chips take me is my friend Keithy’s grandmother’s place. We were best friends when I was five and he was four and she lived on the second floor of his house. She was a seamstress who did alterations so her place was crowded with garments hanging everywhere. On her coffee table she kept an open bowl of chocolate chips for us kids. Her place smelled like damp wool, starch, scorch and dark chocolate. Smelling any of those things takes me right back up those stairs again.

Chanel’s Russia Leather reminds me of my best friend Patricia back at Buff State in 1965. She wore this cologne and since it was so different than the Evening in Paris worn by my mother and the lowbrow Lily of the Valley scent that I had worn in high school – I was immediately captivated by Chanel’s exotic scent! It was very expensive but as a reward for good grades and making it through the removal of two wisdom teeth, my dad took me to the perfume counter at Hengerer’s and bought me a bottle of Russia Leather cologne. I still have that bottle as well as the teensiest bottle of Russia Leather perfume that I purchased years later – I open them once in a great while and I am back in Cassity Hall again!

Patchouli was the ubiquitous scent of the late sixties but it reminds me of two dear friends: Gordon, who accidentally spilled a bottle in his closet and carried that scent for who knows how long; and Kim, who applied it every day on purpose. Kim has been gone for almost four years now and I can still bring back a deluge of memories by opening the coffee can which holds a collection of bits and pieces of her old jewelry she gathered and brought to the shop to reuse for crafting.

One other odd scent takes me back to my childhood and the house on Bowen Road in Elma where my grandparents lived. The house was ringed with Grandma’s crowded gardens and huge ferns and bushes and trees and only a little bit of grass for Grandpa to mow. The back yard was so filled with garden there was barely a space to set out a chair or to hang laundry.

There was a dark area on the North side of the house, however, where no matter how hard they tried, there was always a patch of mud in the middle of the path through the ferns and the lily of the valleys. Some times of the year this rich slippery black mud had a mossy tinge to it and although I have never been able to come up with an adequate description of this earthy aroma, once in a while I will step into a patch of mud around my own house and I am instantly transported to that long-vanished pathway in Elma.

The nose knows.

He's Baaack! (Part 2)

2009-12-06T16:54:00.000-05:00

Just finished covering up the last of this week's woodpecker holes. I decided to count how many pieces of aluminum and cat food lids I have stapled onto my house in the last 4 years - the count is close to 500!!! And each piece of metal is covering at least one hole if not more.

Despite the fact that my woodpecker is now working side by side with his lovely wife to destroy my shingles, I do believe the strips of garbage bags, holographic ribbons and rotting windsocks are beginning to have an effect of actually keeping them away. Plus the house looks so gay festooned with these streamers! Like it is decorated for some weird holiday dreamed up by Tim Burton or Gahan Wilson.

Just Some Manger Looking for a Joseph

2009-12-05T01:15:00.000-05:00

For the last couple of years I have been setting up and taking down the Christmas decorations at my step mom’s place (first at the house she shared for many years with my dad and for the last two Christmases at her much smaller assisted living apartment).

The decorations have gotten pared down quite a bit over these years - from a 3 foot fake tree and decorations all over the house to no room for a tree at all. But there are still little dabs of Christmas: Santas and sleds, angels and snowmen and figurines and wall-hangings here and there that spell out “NOEL.” And of course I still set up the Nativity Scene in a prominent location.

The stable itself is made of crumbling printed cardboard and it dates back to my childhood. The Baby Jesus in his manger of straw, one resting camel and one standing donkey, all made of solid plaster, also date back to the fifties. There are three Wise Men, 3 shepherds, and five bug-eyed sheep carved from olive wood and brought back from the Holy Land by some earnest pilgrim. The wooden figurines are on a slightly smaller scale than the plaster ones (I position them in the shadows, no one notices.).

Somewhere along the line we lost our matching Mary and Joseph. Since my years in charge I have alternated between using a creepy looking shepherd lad and an old Confucius-looking guy (with Dan Blocker’s “Hoss” ten gallon cowboy hat at his knees), made from hollow rubber, to fill in for Joseph, but these are not really Josephs at all. The young one looks like he could be a serial killer and the old one is probably supposed to be one of the Three Kings. The Bonanza hat remains a mystery.

The Mary in the scene was at least the same scale as the faux Josephs, but she was hollow plastic and had her hands folded across her breast in such a fashion as to make her look more worried than delighted by the radiance of the Babe in the Manger. I repainted her cloak a couple of years ago but she still had that terrible body language and her face also bothers me – she looks too old and jowly - so this year I went hunting at one of my favorite thrift shops and found a lovely new Mary (“Made in Italy” on the base) that probably dates from the sixties. This much younger Mary is graced with a tender pose and a beautifully-painted smile. She is the same scale as the plaster figures – so in other words, Mary no longer looks alike a Little Person who has given birth to a gigantic baby.

Last year I stored the cardboard stable and all of the contents in my garage and due to high levels of humidity everything mildewed except the plaster. I carefully cleaned, repaired, restored, and reinforced the cardboard, scrubbed the mold off of the carved figures, treated everything with anti-mildew spray, let them dry in the sun and then coated them with varnish.

So now I am on the lookout for a suitable Joseph to keep my new Mary from having to remain a single mother – I have banished both of the rubber figures – I figure for now no man is better than a hollow one (Anyways they are both too short for the new Mary!).

If anyone has a Joseph to spare I would gladly give him an audition (but I guess that is not the correct word since I do not expect him to have any kind of a voice). The new Mary is almost 4” tall in a kneeling position. Joseph is usually depicted kneeling as well, so he would have to be slightly over 4” tall (because men are supposed to be taller than women).

(I also have to apologize for this post - once the title popped into my head I simply could not resist!)

The Lake Blessing

2009-11-11T23:30:00.000-05:00

Beach glass has always fascinated me – my grandma and I used to collect it when I was little – Grimsby Beach, Lowbanks, wherever we could find it. I still have a precious few bits of this glass as well as pretty stones and bits of shells that she and I gathered on our trips to the shoreline.

Grandma couldn’t swim, and my Mom wouldn’t go near the water, so despite my Grandfather’s occasional dips and my Dad’s love of swimming, I never learned to swim. My fascination with the lakes came from the treasures on the shoreline. I still remember battling with my poor dear Grandma over which one of us had first seen the tiny perfect bonsai-shaped piece of driftwood (and I am ashamed to admit that I won the battle!).

For over 40 years I have lived a half mile from the lake and other than crossing over the river each day, I have been quite lax in giving the waters my due attention. It seems, however, that the lake has been trying to gain my attention of late – first by sending an awe-inspiring man named Magilla into my shop with the many dramatic photos of his global community of friends - the agile and graceful surfers of the Great Lakes. Magilla clearly loved the waters of the Great Lakes and spoke glowingly of his life as both a surfer and a photographer. He also told me that he was dying of a terrible rare form of cancer and did not have much longer to walk the earth.

Then last week the lake nudged me for a second time when old friends presented me with a shoe box full of beach glass. They said they had been picking up pieces for me for years in their travels around the Great Lakes.

What a treasure trove! I have been playing with and sorting these wondrous pieces for days now. The cache has been sorted into three piles – the first pile of course contains my favorites which I will greedily keep forever (and I must admit I continue adding to this pile every day). The second pile holds the beach glass that I am sharing with others - artists, friends, and customers. One man (in his mid-forties) was so amazed by it – he had never even heard of beach glass!

The third pile contains about three dozen pieces which I am entering into my newly devised “Beach Glass Catch and Release” program. These pieces are still too clear, too sharp on the edges - they need the action of the water and the stones to grind them down a bit more, soften the colors, round out the shapes.

I plan to find the perfect location of rock and wave, create a suitable ceremony, and re-gift the lake this small bit of treasure-that-will-be. Perhaps by next Spring or Summer, Mother Nature will have finished her portion of the artistry and another Grandma or artist child will find them and be thrilled all over again.

This re-gifting ceremony will be dedicated to the memory of Magilla, the Great Lakes surfer, photographer and philosopher who left this world on November 10, 2009.

He's Baaaaack!

2009-11-02T01:29:00.000-05:00

In the last couple of days I have made the discovery that my little feathered nemesis, the SOB (son of a bird) woodpecker has been back and very busy drilling yet more holes into my house. I fill them in with fiberglass insulation, cover them up with can lids and he drills more.

I have tried to reason with him, pointing out the 32 acres of woods and trees which surround my house, filled with many dead and decaying trees - perfect homes for many tasty insects and many snug housing possibilities for himself and his kin. He simply twirls his way up a nearby branch, giving me that smug look and I know the minute I leave my house he will be back at his appointed task.

I received a letter from my insurance company last week - my house insurance evaluation and thus my premium has doubled. They added a paragraph at the end of the cover letter that there was a possibility that my house may be "overinsured." Wait until I show them the hundreds of little round holes that my little SOB has drilled into my siding. Overinsured - ya think?

The Gift from the Maple

2009-10-19T19:50:00.000-04:00

Several years ago we had a perfect summer with ideal weather for maple trees. As the days became shorter the back alley behind my shop filled with the most astonishing array of huge and colorful maple leaves: red with yellow, yellow with green, green with red and yellow! These leaves blew into my alley from a tree which I assume is located several backyards away. I scooped up as many of these treasures as I could find, sorted through them to pick the most perfect, sprayed them with varnish (to bring out the colors) and then scanned them and made copies of various leaf arrangements.

I was new to the world of computers back then and I never saved the scans – all I have are prints on plain paper. But I figured next fall I would do the same thing – this time saving the scans! However the next year was a rainy, soggy one and to my great disappointment, the maple leaves all had big black spots on them apparently due to the excess levels of moisture.

And so it went for a number of years – I kept searching for some of those splendid maple leaves and every year all I found were the ugly black spots. Each autumn had been a letdown - until this year.

One morning last week as I was putting out my sidewalk sign, there it was – the gift from the maple – one tiny perfect maple leaf: only an inch across but with reds and yellows and greens!

I searched the alley and found a few regular size maple leaves with vibrant colors and one massive leaf still bright green, washed the dirt off of them, made a quick arrangement and took some photographs of them.

Whether this is the year I have been waiting for or not it doesn’t really matter. For that one tiny perfect maple leaf is the reward I have been seeking from a tree I have never even seen.

Thank you, maple tree – I have framed your tiny perfect gift in a tiny perfect frame. (Well, I'm a framer - what else am I going to do?)

Fleeting Glimpses (#3)

2009-10-19T19:29:00.001-04:00

Nash Road, North Tonawanda/Wheatfield

Remembering the Limelight

2009-10-19T19:15:00.001-04:00

Since my last tale was about the Continental, I thought I would describe my very first forays into the world of live music in Buffalo – the Limelight coffee house – located only a few blocks from the Continental but worlds away in both time and just about every other criterion one could imagine.

The autumn of 1964 found me in my first semester at Buff State (I might mention that it was frowned upon in those days to call the school “Buff State.”). I was 18 years old, very young and naïve (compared to girls that age nowadays). One evening, a group of us girls from the Cassity Hall decided to go to the Limelight, that “beatnik coffeehouse” over on Edward Street. We were very excited with the adventure of it all – “going out – to a coffeehouse – in the big city” (we were all small town and country gals).

We called an extra large VanDyke taxi that would fit the seven of us and all piled in for the short ride from Elmwood Avenue over to Edward Street. When the taxi pulled up in front of the Limelight we peered into the dimly lit establishment – it looked so dark in there – we could see a person with a guitar on the tiny stage, and people seated at small tables - pretty scary for our first time out!

The taxi driver sensed our fear and hesitation and gallantly offered to escort us in the door, or at least wait for us for a few minutes to make sure we were OK. His obvious concern only served to escalate our fears and we chickened out and had him drive us back to campus.

Later on, accompanied by a proper date, I did brave the environs of the Limelight and found it to be a wonderful place indeed – real folksingers on stage and hot chocolate with real whipped cream! Yum! I spent hours dreamily listening to the buttery voice of Jerry Raven.

In communicating with old friends who shared the Limelight experience, I asked each of them, “What were your favorite songs that Jerry used to sing?” No two people have mentioned the same song! We each had our own list: mine included “Spanish is Loving Tongue,” “Hava Nagila,” and Tom Lehrer’s “Pollution.”

Jerry was the perfect host for the Limelight –he booked a great variety of both local and regional acts into his warm, intimate little club, he played guitar (de rigueur for guys back then!), and he was a walking encyclopedia of music from the Child ballads to English Music Hall silliness and of course the creations of contemporary singer-songwriters. He had a wicked sense of humor – and all the girls were mesmerized by his twinkling eyes and dark curly hair - and – oh! That voice!

One of the Limelight’s most memorable solo performers was Terry Knight, from Flint, Michigan, who later went on to some fame with his group Terry Knight and the Pack which later morphed into Grand Funk Railroad. Terry was our own version of Mick Jagger, complete with a mod wardrobe and a Prince Valiant haircut, and he sang soulful and brooding ballads such as his signature cover of “I, Who Have Nothing.”

The group I loved the best, however, was a local band called QSL (Steve Wagner and Larry Bradley) who eventually ended up recording a brief (but in my humble opinion perfect) concert at my house in the early seventies. These guys were multi-talented, clever and zany and always fun to listen to or just be around.

Jerry Raven, nevertheless, remains perched at the top of my Limelight list and I am so very pleased to hear that he has finally been inducted, in 2009, into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame. It’s about time - congratulations Jerry!

Original chair from the Limelight

Tearing Down the Continental

2009-09-25T00:09:00.001-04:00

Oddly enough, John Hartford’s song “They’re Gonna Tear Down the Grand Old Oprey” is going through my head right now because I just found out that Buffalo’s punk landmark, the Continental, is being torn down. The Ryman Auditorium was saved. The Continental has been doomed to its fate for several years.

I began going to the Continental in early 1982. My new best friend Kim dragged me there – a group called 1.4.5 was playing that night and after somehow ending up in a closet for a brief smooch with one of the band members (Ducky), I became totally hooked on going there – 2, 3, even 4 nights per week.

As more of a teetotaler than a drinker, I began bringing my camera and I spent all of my money on film and processing and fell into documenting several of the bands that caught my fancy – how I wish I had thought to take more photos of the patrons, the staff and of course, my friends. I believe I have a photo of Frank and one of Bear, but I do not have a single photo of Bud Burke! I have hundreds of photos of the Fems and not one of the Goos!

Even though I was in my thirties when I started going there, I think of the Continental as my second high school – only this time I got to hang out with the cool kids. Many graduated with flying colors from their years at the Continental School of Rock, many flunked out with equally flying colors, and way too many souls were lost along the wayside.

Most of the best friends I have today can be traced back to the Continental. This goes for real life friends and Facebook friends. The Continental was a marvelous motley mosaic of freaks and geeks, gays and straights, punks and poseurs, young and old. What tied us all together was the music – live bands: local, national and international playing on the scummy little stage – and the throbbing dance music playing upstairs on the mirrored dance floor. And of course the never-ending parade of fashion and hair and makeup and jewelry.

“Hey, did you know that guy who used to go to the Continental? You know who I’m talkin’ about – the guy in the black leather jacket…” “Yeah, I knew him.”

For those of us without cable TV, we got to see music videos on the big screen. I still hunt these down on YouTube and think of the Continental. “Smack Jack,” “Heroes,” “Mexican Radio,” “Safety Dance.” Talking Heads, Psychedelic Furs, Devo, Ramones, Shakin’ Stevens.

The music was so deafening that the building shook, the stench of the place was indescribable and unforgettable – the floor was sticky, the rest rooms were disgusting. I once bought slide bolts and installed them in the ladies room stall doors and Bud was so astonished and pleased he presented me with a bottle of Champagne. These door locks lasted about a week.

The Continental rocked along for years after I stopped going there for anything but the Fems’ Christmas show. To me it was just not the same old place anymore after the stage got moved into the back and the patio was mostly closed and of course the people were all strangers to me and everyone was so young or maybe I just got old.

I dunno, but the Continental will always be in my heart and for that I thank Kim for dragging me there, and Mark Freeland and his multitude of talented friends for the music and Bud Burke for bringing the whole thing together for as long as he did.

“Everyone is trying
To get to the bar
The name of the bar
The bar is called Heaven
The band in Heaven
They play my favorite song
Play it once again
Play it all night long”
(David Byrne & Jerry Harrison)

Fleeting Glimpses (#2)

2009-09-20T16:42:00.002-04:00

This was photographed on an entrance ramp to the QEW in Fort Erie - for months there have been a pair of black shoes along the curb, looked to be in new-ish condition. Then suddenly one disappeared and now that remaining one has a fetching and no doubt reflective yellow stripe running perfectly down its middle.

Chinese Junk

2009-09-14T00:10:00.001-04:00

When I was a little kid one of those things that would set my mind to wandering was the phrase "Chinese junk." This described a marvelously different kind of little boat which could be found alongside the teeming rivers, harbors and shorelines in China. There were people who lived on these junks and they sold merchandise and fish and vegetables and these little boats had those rakish kind of what I like to think of as "Owl and the Pussycat" sails. Colorful, unique, tiny, safe and found on the pages of the National Geographic.

Along came the seventies and eighties and the definition of Chinese junk came to mean heroin. Flooding this country and the world with this terribly addicting and deadly drug.

Now, it is several decades later. Chinese junk has once again changed its definition and once again Chinese junk is deluging North America but this time instead of heroin the term denotes merely junk. Dollar store junk. Walmart junk. Plastic picture frames. Cheap blue jeans. Toys with lead-based paint. Carcinogens in the candies. Deadly dog food. The cheap crap we are all so eager to buy because it is so cheap and we use it once and it breaks and we throw it out. Chinese junk.

I liked the boats better.

The Power of Cat Hair

2009-09-07T17:46:00.001-04:00

As I have been spending this Labor Day laboring with the task of washing all of my cat bedding I find it simply amazing the way cat hair insinuates itself into all kinds of fabric - plush, fleece, wool - whatever! I know that a tornado can throw a broom-straw into a tree, but by what magic is is that a fine tiny soft cat hair twists its way into cloth? And how can those same fine tiny soft cat hairs be so very difficult to remove?

Here's another feline observation - cats are known for their cleanliness, right? So how is it that a cat with glowing white fur ends up dirtying bedding so heavily that the rinse water runs brown? And my cats are not outdoor cats - they have an enclosure where they tread only upon concrete and gravel and carpet - no dirt, no soil, no earth.

The cat door itself gets itself so laden with schmutz that I have to wash it every month or the clear flap becomes opaque.

So here is my idea - forget carbon fiber and nano technology - we can build a space elevator to the stars if we can simply learn to harness the power of cat hair. And if we go a bit further and send a passel of cats into space the dirt that they carry in their magical mystical fur can eco-form a barren planet for human (and feline, of course) habitation.

I'll bet dogs could help with this project as well and just as I would not want to go to any Heaven that did not contain cats and dogs, neither would I wish to travel to another world without their hairy companionship.

Shut Up Precious!

2009-09-07T15:19:00.002-04:00

We have a small back alley behind the shop with a broken stockade fence between our alley and the next back yard. There is a dog in that yard and her name is "Shut Up Precious!" as far as I can tell because she barks at everything that moves - sometimes she barks at me when I am inside the shop and I make a noise in the back room.

She sticks her head through the break in the fence and just stares and stares at me - and she is a dog with no short-term memory at all. I can bring one bag of garbage out to the totes and she goes nuts and I say hello to her and go back inside for more stuff to bring out and when I hit the alley she goes nuts all over again.

Her mommy told me that Shut Up Precious! couldn't even remember the neighbor on the other side who used to give her treats every day. She runs up the back steps and tries to see me over the fence but most of the time she just tries to get her head through the break.

I told Shut Up Precious! that I was taking her picture so I could make her famous on the Interweb but I doubt very much if she will remember our conversation.

Shopping Locally and Loving It!

2009-09-06T13:10:00.001-04:00

Last week I came to the conclusion that I really really needed a new drafting stool if I was going to be spending even more time banging on the keyboard what with the blog and Facebook, etc. I needed something comfortable. I love the idea of my 100 year-old wooden drafting stool but, Lordy! The seat on it was so hard and it seemed that I spent all of my time trying to find/adjust/replace/reposition cushions on the thing.

So I went Googling for a New Drafting Stool - found thousands of websites with hundreds of stools - padded seats, casters, arms, no arms - adjustable everythings. Decided I wanted a simple black stool with a padded seat. Wasn't sure about needing casters.....

Found a whole whack of stools at many websites all offering FREE SHIPPING! Prices were in the neighborhood of $119.99 and UP to almost $1000. Well, OK, but I would really like to shop locally and I would really like to actually sit in the chair before I bought it.

So I browsed through the big office supply places and wouldn't you know, none of them actually had any drafting stools in stock - all were special order items. So, dinosaur that I am, I let my fingers do the walking through the 5 pound Yellow Pages and I found Sutherland's Office Supply on Elm Street.

Phoned them and spoke with Scott who told me he had one black drafting stool left from a special purchase lot and that he had recently lowered the price to $89.00!

I drove there the very next morning (easy to get to, BTW) and when I walked in the door the first thing I spied was a magnificent black and white tuxedo cat curled up on top of a copier. Well I knew I was in the right place! The cat, Figaro, was very pleased to have a new fan and paraded around for me.

The end of the story is this - I also bought a used task chair for my office at the shop (although no one would ever be able to tell that it is used!) and together they cost less than the online drafting stool I had originally desired.

I am also really happy that I did not pay extra for casters because with my slippery painted wooden floor I would have had to tie the stool to the bench. I had to go to Drew's yesterday to find some nice rubber feet to keep the stool from walking away. Did you know that the opposite of "Glider" is "Gripper?"

Yeah! Shopping locally!!!

On the Subject of Blog Comments

2009-09-06T12:50:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed that I have turned off the "Comment" feature for this blog. I do not follow that many other blogs but I have noticed lately that a lot of them have done this as well.

My theory is that if you want to make a comment about something I have written there are ways for a person to contact me. No one else cares what you think. Really! That is what Facebook is for: "Attagirl!" and "Me too!" and "You are an idjit!"

Wearing Fur Pajamas (1)

2009-09-02T00:34:00.001-04:00

I photographed this guy thru the window one morning - he was on his way into the woods to rub the velvet off of his antlers. Taken through a filthy window, a dirty screen and an old piece of plastic - didn't turn out too bad, eh? There is a whole herd of deer wandering around in my woods.

When Compliments Go Wrong

2009-09-01T00:00:00.002-04:00

Before I got my hair cut this summer, I had my hair tied back into a pony tail one afternoon and I was waiting on a long-time customer - we were looking at various combinations of mats and frames. The usual frame shop stuff.

All of a sudden he blurted out, "Oh my God what happened to your hair?!? Did you get it cut?"

I had to give him a little lesson on how that is not the way to ask a lady if she has had a new haircut.

The Woodpecker

2009-08-30T21:41:00.005-04:00

I could have nailed a cover over this hole - done an Edgar Allen Poe number on his little feathery butt - but no - I annoyed him enough trying to take this photo that he flew away and then I nailed up the can lids!!!

Welcome to my Blog

2009-08-30T16:05:00.004-04:00

I have been threatening to start a blog for many months now and now the elements have finally fallen into place so here it is! I will probably be tweaking it for a while before I settle down, so don't be alarmed if the look changes from time to time.

The title of the blog, and the photo in the header, reference that dear little bird lovingly referred to as "my woodpecker." This creature has drilled the cedar shingles on my house full of holes for three winters in a row now - and with the chill in the air I am expecting his return any day now. I am not really sure if he is a "him," of course - it just seems like he is a "he." I would also like to point out at this juncture that I live in a big woods full of many dead trees.

Why this little ###### has decided to ruin my real estate is beyond me. I must have some lousy bird Karma left over from a previous life (not to mention that my kitties, in their chicken-wire enclosure no less - with a polycarbonate roof - manage to capture, kill, eat and regurgitate the occasional bird) - here is a sample photo of what my siding looks like with can lids nailed and old CDs slid over the woodpecker holes. The second photo shows the scene on my closet shelf with the huge pile of (thankfully) dry dirt, twigs and leaves (found at the beginning of the October Surprise Storm).

Fleeting Glimpses (#1)

2009-08-30T15:28:00.002-04:00

One lighthouse, three horses, one pig and the Liberty Bell.