tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-369558572024-03-13T04:13:34.316-07:00Guacamole GulchHelen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.comBlogger1463125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-78471806953921136322021-07-16T11:36:00.000-07:002021-07-16T11:36:45.271-07:00Lasagna in the Highest<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-881a9381-7fff-8fbe-85d2-3e30fd44c812" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lasagna in the Highest </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7/26/21</span></p><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of Seinfeld’s old bits was about being forced to go to the bank or to pick out wallpaper with his mother, his little body collapsing under the weight of boredom. “I couldn’t take childhood at a certain point,” Seinfeld jokes, in his special “Jerry Before Seinfeld.” “You get tired of it. I just couldn’t build one more balsa-wood glider.” The impetus is to grow up quickly, so that people will listen to you, at last, when you point out how ridiculous and unfair being a child is…</span></p><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I was twelve, I had a paper route that took me all over town and I was curious as Hell about who was going down there and about how you got up to heaven. When my Dad died four years before, Robinson the mortician helped me out with what we should put in his coffin. We decided on his compass from me and a photo of him with Emily when they were first married. Robinson befriended me; he and Sam, the bar owner, were my first adult male friends and now at forty, I still think of them almost every day </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Robinson didn’t show up often at social things in our town. Not that he was disliked; he was welcome in Whitefish, but like all morticians he bore a stigma detrimental to social life. People didn’t know how to act around him because he handled dead people. Was there a whiff of embalming fluid when he passed? If it wasn’t there, people imagined it. “I like the man,” I heard Mrs. Inch say at the pharmacy, “but I don’t want him passing the peas at our Sunday night dinner.” If you wanted to see Robinson you went to his office in a storefront on Main street. We talked once a month about the Lutherans and the Catholics when I collected the paper money. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Catholics in town hoped if someone died, it happened Thursday through Friday when Father Cassoti, our part-time priest was in town. They found it easier to deal with a priest for a ceremony than the mortician. Nothing personal—it was just the idea of a mortician. You could call Father, and he’d take care of everything. Most important for Catholics, he’d give the last rites and bend the rules if necessary, giving it to the non-practicing Catholics too. Even If he was called to a Protestant death, he’d offer them a blessing. When the strictest Catholics objected to Cassoti’s generosity, I heard he said,”I think the Good Lord would be happier to see compassion for the dying rather than a rule enforced.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our small Catholic population couldn’t support a church or parsonage. The Bishop, stretching his budget for money and men, assigned the young and energetic Cassoti, three small parishes and urged him to earn his own personal spending money. Mr. Kidd hired Father to work at his service station, Phil’s Service</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Thursday and Friday afternoons changing oil and doing brake adjustments. The Bishop approved.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Phil and Marilyn Kidd set up a system at the station where Father could change oil and hear confessions at the same time. The penitent sat on a stool beside the grease pit, confessed and received absolution. The Kidds painted the stool navy blue, “the color of hope,” explained Mrs. Kidd, and reserved it for confessions only. As a courtesy to all, she turned the radio volume up when someone confessed loud enough for those waiting for new tires in the front office to overhear. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mrs. Kidd seemed eager to convert the service station to a shrine and argued with Phil about rigging up the Stations of the Cross on the walls. He said it would be bad for business. “A little of that goes a long way,” he muttered while oiling wrenches. He’d hired Father out of charity to assist the parish but he also hoped to upgrade the Kidd’s image from grease monkeys to something better. Mrs. Kidd took herself into Edna’s beauty for an overhaul. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”Marilyn was in here all aflutter over having Father in the station. We did a bob cut and henna color on her and would you believe she had a manicure?” the beauty operator, Vina, told me. I didn’t stay in there long because the permanent wave stuff made me sneeze. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Besides, Emily warned me when I started the paper route about the things I’d hear at Edna’s and about keeping gossip to myself, so I never said anything about that to anyone. Or about how many times I heard the ladies in town call Father a dream boat. They’d tsk, tsk and say “...such a waste...” when he walked by. I asked Emily what they meant. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s a compliment, Chad,” she said with a smile. “They think he would have been a good husband and father.” The guys at the Two Dot called him Father Farley, after Farley Granger, with his dark curls and blue eyes. The Italian family that made him a big lunch every Sunday called him a “good eater”— the highest compliment one Italian in White Fish could pay to another. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mrs. Kidd acted as hostess of the grease-pit confessional. Phil told everyone she was a bureaucrat at heart. The penitents were lined up according to their time of arrival. Degree of sin and urgency played a part in how fast they’d be heard at her discretion. In an emergency, someone might have to skip to the front—for example—a person taking a first plane ride. Oh yes, people would remember the money part, to buy a flight insurance policy from Mr. Sibert, but it was always the last minute when they remembered to get their souls in order. “We’ve got to leave in an hour to get to Butte for the plane,” an anxious traveler might plead. Mrs. Kidd, sighing, would scoot them to </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">next</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mrs. Kidd let us all know in an uppity way that she’d gone to a marketing class at the State College in Butte where she learned people would rather experience a position in a line, than have a specific number. There was </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">next</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">next</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">next</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, second to </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">next</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—then the </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lasts</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> started. Third from </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">last</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, second from </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">last</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">last</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “Or dead </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">last</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” Mrs. Kidd chuckled. When I asked her questions about the class, she answered them and said, “Call me Marilyn, Chad. You don’t have to be so formal and you can ask me anything.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Always enthusiastic, Marilyn greeted everyone with a big smile and information about their place in line. The green colors on her Hawaiian shirts matched the neon ring around the Sinclair gas clock on the wall. She was the only woman I knew who wore dungarees every day. And saddle shoes. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hi Frank.” she’d say. “You’re in luck. You’ll be fourth from last and third from next.” People would smile back at her, take a seat and look at the old Life magazine with Gina Lollobrigida on the cover or thumb through the selection of car tire catalogs, waiting to advance to </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">next</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Catholics in town adapted well to the grease-pit confessions. Everyone agreed the Kidd’s set-up was better than the dark wooden booths in the big Missoula church. Like upright coffins, those Missoula confessionals brought on claustrophobia attacks. The kneelers were warm and tiny—far too small for White Fish sinners. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It gets hotter in there than a whorehouse on nickel night,” said Sam, owner of the Two Dot and a regular confessor. “How can you concentrate when you keep slipping off the kneeler?” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Young Catholics in town, who only knew the grease-pit way, were disappointed when they left town and went to regular church confession. Without the smell of gas and oil, they claimed, they couldn't get in the mood.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I delivered the paper one day and watched Marilyn finish typing out her invoices on the Smith Corona. I liked watching her fingers fluttering over the keys and the sound of typing—clickety, clackety, clack, ziiip, zing! We hardly noticed when the bell on the wall dinged and Jerry Perkins, the short-haul truck driver, rolled into the station. At the bell, Jimmy the gas jockey, put on his </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration: line-through; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cunt</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration: line-through; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cap</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, er life-boat hat, went outside and turned on the Texaco pump. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Emily had a fit that year when I mentioned the cunt caps Jimmy wore. “What did you say Chad??” she said. When I repeated myself she sat me down and explained what c-u-n-t meant. I knew the word was dirty, but I thought it was okay to say it about a hat.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“If it’s okay to say tit when you’re talking about a titmouse or cock when you’re talking about a ball-cock valve, why not cunt cap?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Stop that Chad,” she interrupted as I continued my list of examples—“titwillow, cockamamie…”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Don’t say it again. DO NOT.” Emily said, pulling at her hair and hissing at me. I’d probably asked too many questions, again.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I got the message, as far as out-loud speaking went, but inside my own mind I still thought of the hat as a cunt cap. I had a good start on my For-Men-Only vocabulary from the Two Dot bar and I was all ears at Phil’s. Later in life, I realized the station was still more like a fraternity house than the shrine Marilyn was hoping for. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Do you think Father can squeeze me in now?” Jerry asked. He was combining a gas-up and a confession. Marilyn removed her horned-rim glasses, gave them a wipe, put them back on and checked the time.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yup,Jerry—you can just make it. Go on in.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He took a last long drag off his Lucky Strike and tossed the butt out the door. Shoulders slumped, he shuffled off to the blue stool and took a seat. I dropped the paper on the counter and headed to the bathroom. As I walked behind Father’s bay I could hear Jerry’s hoarse voice.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Bless me Father for I have sinned,” he croaked. I peered through the door and saw Jerry leaning forward on the blue stool, hands clasped. He coughed something up into his hankie—a bubbling rumble of junk that must have come from deep in his lungs. With Jerry’s bulk on the stool, it looked like furniture from a doll’s house.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yeah, go ahead. I can hear you,” said Father from under a Pontiac coupe. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Well...since my confession last week, there's the regular sins–commandments three, four and ten.” He shifted on the blue stool and asked, ”You know it’s me, right Father? Jerry out here? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Father heaved a loud sigh. Everybody knew it was difficult for him to keep his parishioners anonymous during the grease-pit confessions, but Jerry didn’t even try. I wondered if he wanted credit for his sins! The idea made me laugh, but only an inside chortle, so they wouldn’t know I was listening. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I learned later, after Jerry died in the crash, that Father set up a code with him because he confessed so often. There was an understanding between the two that Jerry was remorseful and despite the rote laundry list of his sins he would work on his spiritual health between confessions. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I took a load of sweet potatoes over to Big Sky on Monday and stayed at the Kosy Inn Motel, the one off Hwy 54? said Jerry. “The one you stay at when you go to Butte? Anyway, darn it, I found my way over to Irene at the HofIR.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Again?” asked Father. “What do you mean ‘you found your way.’ You’ve been there dozens of times, Jerry.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yeah, Father. Souls willing, spirits AWOL. Are you sure it’s still adultery when you pay?” asked Jerry. “Irene and I are just pals when you get down to it. She’s a buddy to all of us truckers, Father. She has a good heart.” He stretched his arms out in front, cracked his knuckles and looked toward the door where I stood. I held my breath. </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Getting caught eavesdropping on a confession must be a sin,</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I thought. </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe the worst of all? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Just because Irene has a heart, that doesn’t change your sin. And yes, I’m sure it’s still adultery,” said Father. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jerry was silent for a minute. Then he said, “Irene says,‘Hi’ by the way.” I couldn’t believe what I heard! </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Irene sending a message to Father? </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The pneumatic screw gun went off in the next bay, just as Father replied. I never heard what he said. But when the noise stopped, Father forgave Jerry and told him to say fifty rosaries. </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fifty rosaries seems like a lot. </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I asked Marilyn how many rosaries was usual after confession, she laughed. I think she knew I’d listened because she said,”Father raises the penance for Jerry every week. I think he hopes Jerry won’t have time for sinning if he’s on his knees praying every night.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sundays, Father celebrated mass at 10:30 am in the Moose Hall. Catholics brought their pillows from home for kneeling. The big buffet table, used for checking-in at dances, became an altar when three white table cloths were placed on top and two fat candles on either end. George Evans was the altar boy and got to wear that white lace shirt over his dungarees and say the Latin responses to Father’s calls: “Dominus vobiscum,” said Father. George’s answer: “Et cum spiritu tuo.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Father arrived early for mass and got the big cross out of the utility closet to hang behind the altar. He kept the chalice and communion wafers—his on-the-road sacraments–in a black Samsonite briefcase with a combination lock set to 12345 like all of our school lockers. Nobody in White Fish was combination-locked out of anywhere. People would wonder what you had to hide if you reset the numbers.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">George helped get everything arranged on the altar and made sure Father’s dog collar didn’t have grease stains. He filled up the swinging chalice with incense powder and lit the wick. After Father dimmed the lights, with the incense in the air, you couldn’t imagine people had been square dancing there the night before. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We weren’t Catholics—Emily and I weren’t anything since we found out about the unbaptized babies in Limbo and since Ricky got polio and since Dad had died at only thirty-nine. But I liked the Latin and Emily didn’t care if I sat at the back some Sundays just to hear the sound of it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Kyrie Eleison, Miserere Nobis, Credo in unum Dominum,” the Catholic girls chanted up in the second row. The little Johnson kid next to me picked his nose for most of the service except when his mother reached over and pushed his hand into his lap. When we got to the English prayer part, I could hear him saying, “Lasagna in the highest,” instead of “Hosanna in the highest.” I could hardly wait to tell Ricky that one. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As often as he could, Father based his sermons on life around White Fish. In our town full of bars, hangovers and regrets abounded on Sabbath mornings. Father spoke about excess and asked St. Bibiana, patron saint of hangovers, for a mass forgiveness. He encouraged private prayer to Saint Monica, patron saint of alcoholics. His messages were hopeful and he never said Hell, even once, that anyone could remember. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One Sunday I heard him give a funny sermon about saying prayers correctly. “Sometimes I think you people all need hearing aids,” he began. “Mary is full of </span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">grace</span><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> not grapes. I’m sure Mary liked eating as much as the rest of us, but come on, why would we pray to her like that? She was full of grace and don't forget it.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another time, Father Cassoti used his service station job as an example in the sermon. “You never know when something you learn will come in handy.” he said. “I worked as a mechanic in my uncle’s garage in college. Never thought I’d service a car again and yet, here I am,” he told his flock. Smiling, he quoted Proverbs 1:5 “Let the wise hear and increase in learning.” Hardly anyone fell asleep during Father’s sermons, not like over at the Lutherans where everyone nodded off. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If Father had an evening free in the winter, he played hockey with the kids. Watching him speed around the rink and slam the puck at the goal, no one would ever guess he was a priest. Once, when he missed a shot, he said “Bullshit,” loud enough that everyone heard. After the game, he told the guys “Bullshit is a Catholic-approved curse because the Lord’s name isn’t taken in vain.” Everyone laughed. He added,”Try to use better words than I do boys. Be gentlemen.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He joined in the weekly poker game with the guys at the Two Dot but only for toothpick wagers, never for money. Sam, the bartender, kept a missal card for St. Josephine taped to the inside of the refrigerator door so Father would see it when Sam got him a beer. Father liked the jukebox, just like the rest of us. Whenever he dropped by, Sam pushed A12—Glow Worm, by the Mills Brothers and D23—Jambalaya, by Jo Stafford, both Father’s favorites.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even though Dad hadn’t been a Catholic, he played cribbage and drank beer with Father. Dad called Father his friend. I remember one weekend when they went fishing at Webster’s landing. “Too much hiking,” they said, and I couldn’t go along. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One year, two days before Christmas, Father was cranky and impatient with the line of holiday confessors waiting with Mrs. Kidd. He climbed out from under a red Buick, wiped his hands on his overalls, kicked the blue stool and walked into the crowd.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Listen,” he said. “Like you, I have a life and want to spend Christmas with my friends. If you’ve got small sins on your minds, the usuals, like you fought with your relatives, exceeded the speed limit, said the Lord's name in vain or missed mass, I’m giving you a blanket absolution, right now. Say a good Act of Contrition, go home and wrap presents. If any of you have big sins, and you know who you are, come back at nine.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We liked what Robinson called Father’s practical Catholicism. It worked well in a town of people used to adapting and making do.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If Father Cassoti wasn’t in town, and somebody died, Robinson took care of the details. If Robinson was also out of town, picking up a coffin or at an AA meeting, Thorvaldsen, the Lutheran pastor, was the last resort. He smelled of lutefisk which nobody liked, particularly around dead people. Still, you couldn’t avoid him because all the funeral ceremonies happened at the Lutheran church—the only sanctified church space in town. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wondered what the Jewish family would do if someone died or if somebody in Keiko’s family died—they were Buddhists. What would happen to a dead Buddhist in a small Montana town? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If Dad had been around, he’d know. END</span></p><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><br style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;" /><script type="text/javascript">
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I've had enough gardening to last a lifetime - at least for the rest of my lifetime. The planting process is a pleasure for me; I love to dig a hole and feel so optimistic when the plants, fresh from the nursery, snuggle into their new homes. The on-going maintenance is the part I don't like. After a frenzy of planting two years ago, I'm now stuck with pots, pots, pots packed with plants all panting for trimming, fertilizing and various kind of specialized care...the sissy grevallias don't like phosphorous and can't be watered during the day, only during the night. The dragon fruit likes sex and pollination only in the moonlight. Am I getting up at midnight to propagate these plants or water them? What was I thinking when I dragged them home?<br />
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My vegetable plantings last year were very unsatisfactory. I harvested a single pitiful fava bean after hovering over the damn plants for a month. I had a few tough, stringy Chinese long beans. I can buy a handful of these beans (good looking ones) at the market for a buck. The gophers, ever present, always nibbling, drive me a bit bats. If I want a good fight, I can think of bigger fish to fry...wasting the energy battling gophers is the very epitome of the lost cause. All that remains of the vegetable garden is one giant fennel plant, mint (which you have to dynamite to get ride of), a few chives and a very persistent lemon grass plant. Fine with me.<br />
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I've killed plants by overcrowding them, overwatering them and underfeeding them. I've killed them by drowning, drying them up and letting various fungi overtake them. A plant murderess, I should turn myself in at Armstrong's and ask them to lock me up and let me out only to travel.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The future is bright. Fewer trees, succulents, artificial turf and a few, very few pots. Free at last. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-33684155555979672522021-05-27T07:20:00.000-07:002021-05-27T07:20:21.945-07:00Sepia Saturday 572 Remaining Belongings<span style="background-color: white;"><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HxpOPVP5B9I/YKu13pFtMNI/AAAAAAADwYg/wYx6R3HkwTs6OzIw4_mfSm66rkQK0-5PACLcBGAsYHQ/Sepia%2B572%2BRemaining%2BBelongings.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="303" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HxpOPVP5B9I/YKu13pFtMNI/AAAAAAADwYg/wYx6R3HkwTs6OzIw4_mfSm66rkQK0-5PACLcBGAsYHQ/w303-h303/Sepia%2B572%2BRemaining%2BBelongings.jpg" width="303" /></a></div><br />I hope this photo isn't the record of an unhappy or unwanted move. They have the essentials—a coal scuttle, a tea kettle, a mattress and a chair. </span></span></span><div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">I'm cleaning out our attic and garage and other storage spots around the house. The top shelves of closets and cupboards. Stuff, stuff, stuff. Now that I work at the Angel Shop and watch the donations coming in, I see we</span></span></span><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">all accumulate the same kinds of things—half completed craft projects, broken things you think you're going repair some day, paintings and wall hangings and decor stuff that doesn't fit into your decor anymore. Tons of clothes. Every time I hesitate over a thing, I envision it priced for a dollar at the shop. </span></span></div><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><br /></span></span></div><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Here's a typical heap of stuff I sort through on the Angel job. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-__hkjVq9JI4/YK5lMzoK-AI/AAAAAAADwZk/R3VUYcOGbkcls27oNbQPUt4YHh7bdjEUgCLcBGAsYHQ/IMG_1178.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-__hkjVq9JI4/YK5lMzoK-AI/AAAAAAADwZk/R3VUYcOGbkcls27oNbQPUt4YHh7bdjEUgCLcBGAsYHQ/IMG_1178.jpeg" width="180" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></span><div><br /></div><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;">George Carlin calls it what it is: shit. And like everyone else, we have too much of it.</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;" /><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;">Here's what George has to say:</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;" /><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: large;"> "<i>A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff!<br /><br />Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore. Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else's house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else's stuff is all over the goddamn place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven't used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven't moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there's usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there's NO ROOM for your stuff on it. Somebody else's shit is on the dresser."</i></span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: large;">Here's the whole schtick:</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><br style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.199999809265137px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: large;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac</a></span></i></span><script type="text/javascript">
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The fishermen assumed that this must be what Frenchmen looked like and, after a brief trial, summarily executed the monkey.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px;">Historians have pointed to the prior existence of a Scottish <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_song" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Folk song">folk song</a> called "And the Boddamers hung the Monkey-O". It describes how a monkey survived a shipwreck off the village of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boddam,_Aberdeenshire" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Boddam, Aberdeenshire">Boddam</a> near <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterhead" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Peterhead">Peterhead</a> in <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberdeenshire_(traditional)" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Aberdeenshire (traditional)">Aberdeenshire</a>. Because the villagers could only claim salvage rights if there were no survivors from the wreck, they allegedly hanged the monkey. There is also an English folk song detailing the later event called, appropriately enough, "The Hartlepool Monkey". In the English version the monkey is hanged as a French spy.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px;">"<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_hanger" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Monkey hanger">Monkey hanger</a>" and Chimp Choker are common terms of (semi-friendly) abuse aimed at "Poolies", often from footballing rivals <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlington" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Darlington">Darlington</a>. The mascot of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartlepool_United_F.C." style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Hartlepool United F.C.">Hartlepool United F.C.</a> is <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%27Angus" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="">H'Angus</a> the monkey</i>. The man in the monkey costume, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Drummond" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Stuart Drummond">Stuart Drummond</a>, stood for the post of mayor in 2002 as H'angus the monkey, and campaigned on a platform which included free bananas for schoolchildren. To widespread surprise, he won, becoming the first <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elected_mayors_in_the_United_Kingdom" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="County Durham">directly elected mayor</a> of Hartlepool, winning 7,400 votes with a 52% share of the vote and a turnout of 30%. He was re-elected by a landslide in 2005, winning 16,912 on a turnout of 51% – 10,000 votes more than his nearest rival, the Labour Party candidate.</p><p style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px;">The monkey legend is also linked with two of the town's sports clubs, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartlepool_Rovers" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Hartlepool Rovers">Hartlepool Rovers</a> RFC, which uses the hanging monkey as the club logo. Hartlepool (Old Boys) RFC use a hanging monkey kicking a rugby ball as their tie crest.</p></span></div>Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-5207461216820445322021-05-24T06:51:00.000-07:002021-05-24T06:51:42.732-07:00A Good Idea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The Sepia Saturday prompt this week is the letter G, as we are working our way through the alphabet. I couldn't find anything appropriate, so I've scraped the bottom of the barrel. G, for this post, introduces a Good Idea.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I watched Marie Kondo's show on NetFlix, <i>Tidying up with Marie Kondo.</i> Although she's a pleasure to watch, two episodes were more than enough. I'm not disorganized enough to benefit from most of her suggestions. The show features people drowning in stuff—epic messes far beyond my experience or imagination—families immobilized by their possessions. We're not that bad. All I have to clean up are two garden storage sheds and fifty boxes of memorabilia which I fear will end up in a thrift shop when Richard dies.<br />
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But I have some important organization failings. One of them is my mess of a purse. How I confront the problem every day but continue to endure it, I don't know. It's my Waterloo. I've never managed to have an orderly purse and have so envied my friends who can reach into their bags and effortlessly retrieve an item. If I need something, there will be several minutes of pawing around and cursing and in the end, I'll have to half-empty the purse to find the thing. </div>
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The purse is black outside and inside—the inside is a dark maw. If I drop something into it, the item will probably get interleaved with the one hundred pieces of tissue or the twelve yards of cash register receipts floating around inside. If an item sinks, forget it. Fishing through the layers of paper is tedious and usually unproductive. It's so bad, that I frequently don't put important items into it, preferring a pocket or something I can trust, like my hands. How crazy is that?</div>
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I hand carry my phone when I'm shopping because if it drops in the purse, when it rings I have to search to find it, and when I do, it's usually too late and I've annoyed everyone around me with the uber-loud ring (which I have set like as loud as an air raid siren because of my bad hearing and because the phone is often muffled by the purse garbage when it slips to the bottom.) Yes, the purse has exterior pockets, but too many. For me, extra pockets just mean extra searching. <script type="text/javascript">
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But all of that is now in the past. This morning, I cleaned out a drawer in the bathroom near where I keep my purse when I'm at home. As Marie instructs, I emptied the purse into it and then from the mess, picked out the items I need—phone, wallet, key fob, pen, post-it notes. The rest remained in the drawer. Every day you do this. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R_fofBaXeD4/XEoQoDbkFfI/AAAAAAADhgo/OmaCMsZ2wx0uwi43ul8nRSUOaRIJh8AaQCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_2918.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R_fofBaXeD4/XEoQoDbkFfI/AAAAAAADhgo/OmaCMsZ2wx0uwi43ul8nRSUOaRIJh8AaQCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_2918.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Purse drawer</td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M9b-8HBmsQk/XEoQoItyZ1I/AAAAAAADhgk/uTCsa2Lfm0M1S4ZiZ64Mc4hYVkki0cz2QCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_2919.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M9b-8HBmsQk/XEoQoItyZ1I/AAAAAAADhgk/uTCsa2Lfm0M1S4ZiZ64Mc4hYVkki0cz2QCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_2919.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Purse and purse drawer</td></tr>
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You might say that this is simply cleaning out your purse every day. Not so. Dumping (my word, not Marie's) everything out into a temporary holding area and starting over isn't the same as cleaning it out. Not by a long shot. Dump/empty, I can do. Such is the particular genius of Marie Kondo. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stuff from purse</td></tr>
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Once a month, you empty out the drawer which you will find is full of tissue and cash register receipts and grocery lists you couldn't find when you needed them, spare change, wrapped mints from restaurants, flyers someone stuck under your windshield wiper, maybe an expired coupon. You do not look at any of it. It's proven itself to be useless by its very presence in the drawer. You dump/empty it all into the garbage.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LwLtX4tEsbM/XEoQrcHZUCI/AAAAAAADhg0/ZPvYwLV1UPQsO-QtpYLfIHPAFkCVQTXqACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_2922.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LwLtX4tEsbM/XEoQrcHZUCI/AAAAAAADhg0/ZPvYwLV1UPQsO-QtpYLfIHPAFkCVQTXqACLcBGAs/s320/IMG_2922.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stuff remaining after purse is refilled</td></tr>
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Using this system, you could actually change purses with confidence that you'll have everything you need. I have ten or fifteen purses, like most women and use none of them, because changing a purse—oh my God—is a huge hassle. </div>
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Speaking as an old dog, I'm very happy to have learned a new trick.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c7luyw6YfMU/XEoQrtGqtYI/AAAAAAADhg4/fQU3RoyROqA-4iFbQHPklP6JgYSgYjr-wCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_2923.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c7luyw6YfMU/XEoQrtGqtYI/AAAAAAADhg4/fQU3RoyROqA-4iFbQHPklP6JgYSgYjr-wCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_2923.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Essentials back in purse</td></tr>
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-76277555810557544492021-05-17T07:21:00.000-07:002021-05-17T07:21:00.757-07:00Sepia Saturday 570: Shadow of Frankenstein<script type="text/javascript">
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During Canadian winter weekends when it was too wickedly cold to go outdoors, when the jigsaw puzzle was finished and it was too early for cocktails, Dad would get out the most recent photos, his pen and ink, and catch up on the labeling. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; font-size: large;">At the time I thought the photo captions were corny and that he was defacing the images. Actually, I was five years old in 1947 and I probably didn't have an opinion at all. It was later, during my early teens, when I knew everything, that I remember criticizing my father for this practice.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; font-size: large;">Since then, I've learned a lot and realize what a good idea his notes were. Dad's been dead for almost sixty years and aside from one diary in which he wrote sporadically, I have little tangible evidence of his wit; these photo notations capture some of it; even though he's not actually </span><u style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; font-size: x-large;">in</u><span style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; font-size: large;">most of these photos, the notations make him a part of them. I wish I could go back in time and apologize to him for my baseless teenaged righteousness. </span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><div><br /></div></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">The "Shadow of Frankenstein" note, referring to himself as the photographer, was both amusing and a bit macabre. I like the way he fit the writing across the shadow. It's another clue to his creativity and my match for the prompt.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">I wondered what my Uncle Louis (on the left) and the other man (unknown) were doing out in a field dressed in their office attire? The date turned out to be a major clue and explained that knot of people in the background.</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">September 1st, 1947, the day before this photo, thirty-one people died in a disastrous train wreck in Dugald, Manitoba. The Minaki Camper's Special, a seasonal excursion railroad service, loaded with students and families riding the rails back to Winnipeg after the long weekend, hit a standing train in the station, head on. It was one of the ten worst train accidents in Canada. </span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">From the Manitoba history website: </span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">"Fire spread at a frightening rate, as the old wooden coaches of the Minaki Special were lit by gas lamps. Only seven of the victims could be identified and the remaining 24 were buried in a mass grave at the Brookside Cemetery, Winnipeg."</span></i><br /><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i><span style="font-size: large;">The wooden passenger cars were flimsy and Pintsch gas lights used in them ran on a compressed fuel gas derived from distilled naptha and stored in tanks. These lights were brighter than the alternatives of the time, but unfortunately the gas was very flammable. </span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">From the Lethbridge Herald, the Lethbridge ,Alberta newspaper, Sept 3rd, 1947:</span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #323232;"><span style="line-height: 19.6px;">"While relatives and friends </span><span style="line-height: 19.6px;">returned</span><span style="line-height: 19.6px;"> to the Transcona morgue again today, hoping that in a second visit they might recognize jewelry as belonging to the missing, work was resumed at Dugald of clearing away the maze of debris covering the tracks by the little red-walled flag station. </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #323232; line-height: 19.6px;">Their overnight rest was the first the workmen had had since the collision took place late Monday. Even before they retired last night carloads of spectators thronged the area, anxious to get a first-hand glimpse of the wrecked train.</span></i></span></div><div style="padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br style="background-color: white; color: #323232; line-height: 19.6px;" /><span style="background-color: #ffe599;"><span style="color: #323232; line-height: 19.6px;">Twelve R.C.M.P. constables were needed to control the traffic, while others were constantly on the alert to prevent the almost 10,000 visitors from pushing their way through the ash-strewn wreckage. </span><span style="color: #323232; line-height: 19.6px;">Today the number of visitors was down, only the odd automobile stopping at the small village. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #323232; line-height: 19.6px;">Workmen continued sifting through the ashes and police officials said that some of the dead would probably never be discovered, even if the sifting continued for a week, so devastating had been the flames which swept the train."</span></i></span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">I'm assuming my Dad, my Uncle and their friend decided along with 9,997 others to rush over to Dugald (population in 2011 was 384), fourteen miles from Winnipeg, to take a look. We didn't own a car in those days, but I presume Uncle Louis had one. The crash site must have been an incredible situation to keep under control with only twelve RCMP constables on duty and 10,000 rubberneckers! My guess is that the two men in my photo are "playing" in response to having viewed the gruesome scene; a bit of comic relief perhaps. Maybe they were simply stretching their legs before returning to their car. Dad must have taken the camera along with him thinking they'd record the event, but if he got any photos, they weren't in the photo box. Maybe he thought better about keeping disturbing photos of the wreckage at home. Here's one from the scene on that horrible day after. </span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XR70ySMbl00/U58dqFUEH2I/AAAAAAAAOh0/4AlEd60zuiM/s1600/dugaldtrain2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XR70ySMbl00/U58dqFUEH2I/AAAAAAAAOh0/4AlEd60zuiM/s1600/dugaldtrain2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Transcona Historical Museum</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span face=""myriad pro" , "myriad" , "trebuchet ms" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.6px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", georgia, times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><span face=""myriad pro" , "myriad" , "trebuchet ms" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #323232; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.6px;"><br /></span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: left;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Georgia, Times; padding-left: 18pt; padding-right: 18pt;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: large;">I wonder how many people caption their digital photos? —now that we have 60,000 (like me) or millions, like some?</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-21789475290852714632021-05-09T11:25:00.000-07:002021-05-09T11:25:08.744-07:00Fiction - Rescued<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(204, 0, 0); color: #cc0000; font-family: times; font-size: large; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">saw</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> you drive by and</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tried to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">look</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the other way to avoid your line of sight. That’s difficult when you’re stuck on a canvas like me and wedged sideways in a garbage can. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s face it, even</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> though I’m one dimensional, my measurements are 36</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">x</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 36”. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pretty zoftig</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by today</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">s standards and hard to hide. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FOdhReg8OiE/VyD_UO-Wd7I/AAAAAAACXzg/kweoWJM3pLUJl2uQZ9kHg6BkZFyllupBgCLcB/s1600/Nancy%2Band%2BBarbaras%2Brescued%2Bpainting.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="385" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FOdhReg8OiE/VyD_UO-Wd7I/AAAAAAACXzg/kweoWJM3pLUJl2uQZ9kHg6BkZFyllupBgCLcB/s400/Nancy%2Band%2BBarbaras%2Brescued%2Bpainting.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Unknown artist: photograph by Nancy Javier</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 18px;"></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d just gotten out of the basement. For twenty years I </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was shuffled</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in a pile of half-finished paintings—a stack of poor </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">judgment</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and bad taste; a heap of crappy art with </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mold</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> growing on the fake Picasso at the bottom threatening to engulf us all. Mr. Artist, pardon my sarcasm, painted and repainted me trying different styles—take a look at them below my text. Can you imagine how I felt. I should be thankful, I guess that I ended up at the top of the heap</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the others are still there with the junk.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feeling the sun on my face that morning when he took me outside was the best thing that happened in decades. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At first, I relished the warmth and the light but later, I realized where I was. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sign to my right said FRE,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and</span> I hoped it said, Freida, <span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">because that was my name. But the wind blew the paper sign and I could </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">see</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it said FREE. I </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">realized</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I wasn’t on an easel (sometimes it</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">s hard to tell). I was so humiliated. FREE? I’d hit bottom. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">heard</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> you brake, I cringed and if you’ve never seen a painting cringe, you can’t imagine. And then I </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">realized</span><span style="background-color: magenta; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the engine was going into reverse. A shudder ran over my canvas. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here we go into a thrift store,</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I thought. That’s what happens when you turn FREE.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d almost rather have remained in the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">moldy</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> basement than</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> plunked</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on a shelf at the Angel </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shop</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Once, I spent a humiliating six months in the store being pawed over and rejected, before he took me back. Every day, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thrifters</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> peered into my face trying to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">see</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> if there was “something of value” on the canvas, rejecting me to buy a cheap, chipped cup or a bad print. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now hanging on the wall in your living room I can recall those days and laugh. Do you notice me chuckling? I try not to do it when you’re around because I know you like me as I was . . . kind of sad and thoughtful. Do I worry about mold, or the Angel Shop or that tortured painter? No! My biggest concern is what we’re watching on Netflix tonight!</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Something artsy-</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fartsy</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? I hope so.</span></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-383df9cc-cd93-d81e-d186-59a41234da02"></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iu-58yt7WQk/WUsorc7n5zI/AAAAAAAC-_k/cpseHKYumykPmXP5QlaJsCaE9EBr3WtmQCLcBGAs/s1600/freida1.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="498" height="308" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iu-58yt7WQk/WUsorc7n5zI/AAAAAAAC-_k/cpseHKYumykPmXP5QlaJsCaE9EBr3WtmQCLcBGAs/s320/freida1.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">He painted me like this....</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LaD9tM_E-80/WUsorbeqpAI/AAAAAAAC-_o/fah-rRNmY1ozlhV4fhYDs21fDvGIU1yewCLcBGAs/s1600/freida2.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="498" height="308" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LaD9tM_E-80/WUsorbeqpAI/AAAAAAAC-_o/fah-rRNmY1ozlhV4fhYDs21fDvGIU1yewCLcBGAs/s320/freida2.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">And then he tried this.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XKyBZy96kMU/WUsorloixjI/AAAAAAAC-_w/slLtw4iDSjYATMHFq017SeFzhpco-_NGQCLcBGAs/s1600/freida3.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="498" height="308" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XKyBZy96kMU/WUsorloixjI/AAAAAAAC-_w/slLtw4iDSjYATMHFq017SeFzhpco-_NGQCLcBGAs/s320/freida3.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">Then, multiples.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BiP6HDBP0k4/WUsory01dKI/AAAAAAAC-_0/tnu_bvLR0Jc14qCHRIxMmPAYCQV82E-jQCLcBGAs/s1600/freida5.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="498" height="308" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BiP6HDBP0k4/WUsory01dKI/AAAAAAAC-_0/tnu_bvLR0Jc14qCHRIxMmPAYCQV82E-jQCLcBGAs/s320/freida5.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">psychedelia....</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o_5vii0cc1I/WUsorQ5kPYI/AAAAAAAC-_s/OUyoGlTZLEYQm3slWKTS7CXfTKihCsSwQCLcBGAs/s1600/freida%2B4.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="498" height="308" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o_5vii0cc1I/WUsorQ5kPYI/AAAAAAAC-_s/OUyoGlTZLEYQm3slWKTS7CXfTKihCsSwQCLcBGAs/s320/freida%2B4.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption">He ruined my eyes!!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><script type="text/javascript">
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} catch(err) {}</script>Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-71689906767710474302021-05-09T11:15:00.001-07:002021-05-09T15:40:19.528-07:00Jeune et Jolie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><script type="text/javascript">
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} catch(err) {}</script><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M9bHOSLLJI0/YJgi6OpM5gI/AAAAAAADwW8/_u_ldLyaH24cZm5fQxQCrBdEoRFlX-csACLcBGAsYHQ/s852/Ricotta%2Band%2BSquash%2Bleaves%2B-%2BJeune%2Bet%2BJolie.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="644" height="450" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M9bHOSLLJI0/YJgi6OpM5gI/AAAAAAADwW8/_u_ldLyaH24cZm5fQxQCrBdEoRFlX-csACLcBGAsYHQ/w340-h450/Ricotta%2Band%2BSquash%2Bleaves%2B-%2BJeune%2Bet%2BJolie.jpg" width="340" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Courgette. Early season squash, ricotta dumplings, abalone mushrooms, marjoram<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Birthday dinner at Jeune et Jolie in Carlsbad for my husband. Lovely restaurant with a energetic open kitchen. We asked to be seated neat the kitchen and sat almost in the action, fun if you like the details of foodservice. But the noise and activity is not for everyone, nor for every occasion. We loved it. Service was excellent but not stuffy or overly formal. For a quiet dinner, sit outside or near the front of the restaurant.<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.jeune-jolie.com/m-e-n-u">Jeune et Jolie</a><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-40400615882792431782021-05-09T07:40:00.002-07:002021-05-09T16:51:36.514-07:00"Bagel Kit"<span id="docs-internal-guid-0f308e0d-7fff-dda5-3448-395f90772081"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-RxQXniVrWiA/YJf0Re7KXhI/AAAAAAADwWk/DGlRmvdW6b8AVvsaClUmoIrmA-ktAu0NwCLcBGAsYHQ/b3a32745565afed9eb10685194649611.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-RxQXniVrWiA/YJf0Re7KXhI/AAAAAAADwWk/DGlRmvdW6b8AVvsaClUmoIrmA-ktAu0NwCLcBGAsYHQ/w267-h320/b3a32745565afed9eb10685194649611.jpg" width="267" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />I held my severed fingertip and stump in a towel applying pressure to staunch the blood. It was a two-handed job which made hailing a cab difficult. They kept passing me by until I stepped out on the street almost in front of one. </span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Bellevue, emergency,” I shouted, climbing in the back. The driver looked at me in his rearview mirror and pulled away. That’s when I realized my lab coat was covered in blood. No wonder the cabs wouldn’t stop. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nobody on the street had given me a second look either. I guess it’s true what they say about New Yorkers. I was in Manhattan working for a bagel company and I’d whacked off the tip of my finger in the appropriately named bagel guillotine. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the hospital emergency entrance, I handed the driver my purse and asked him to find the fare, another two-handed operation impossible for me at the moment. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Shall I take a tip?” he asked. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Take whatever you want and give me the purse back,” I snapped. Geez, the guy didn’t exhibit</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a drop of sympathy. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I went to the check-in window. A nurse was fiddling with papers. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Help!” I whined. “I’ve cut my finger tip off. I need to see someone right away,” I said, on the verge of tears or fainting. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sit down, honey. It’ll be a few minutes,” she said as she waved her hand towards the waiting room, about half-filled with people looking like me-- nervous and shell-shocked. A huge Black guy with about six inches of knife hilt protruding from his bicep sprawled over a couple of seats. He too had a towel and some kind of ice pack they’d given him. Seated next to him was another blood-soaked woman. I sat down and managed to keep my whimpers internalized. A volunteer brought me a cup of water. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bellevue emergency sees on average 290 patients a day. People poured in like it was a sale in Filene's basement. Everyone cooperated, giving up seats to the people who needed them most. It felt like a MASH unit. Eventually, it was my turn. I felt like apologizing for even being there after seeing how bad some of the others were. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Bagel Kit,” the young emergency room physician shouted after I unveiled my injury. My kind of accident happened so often in New York that they kept a kit just for the purpose of reattaching fingers, guillotined off, just as mine was. There was a nice selection of sutures and needles. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The young doctor told me I was lucky the guillotine had been clean and even luckier that I wasn’t a little bit older. He selected a needle and suture from the nice selection in the kit. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The older you get, the less likely bits like this will reattach. It should be fine.” He was right. But I never regained the feeling and I never typed as fast again. </span></p><br /></span><script type="text/javascript">
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} catch(err) {}</script>Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-5934158045062731272021-05-09T07:37:00.001-07:002021-05-09T11:28:10.925-07:00Fiction: Double Moon Luck<span id="docs-internal-guid-8d4fa839-7fff-5960-7346-0aacca625190"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-80d0878b-7fff-3123-8cec-dccaa76a0812"><br /><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 352px; overflow: hidden; width: 551px;"><img height="352" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/gf7t78v_r4jOCmWbjvSjO0bB1qixuKs6SETQlIxvhjL5wJjNZKaJy-pvlbRTmkpj5v1k-VIzZtGjTcPx7zKjlpsJEZFm6r_8d2EWhEI2s6J4uvjO8A7uS6tW4V13o6lEjkb5C8Q" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="551" /></span><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #980000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">E</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very day in Chengdu ended with a double moon night. The real moon would appear, forever cycling through its phases followed by the replica moon, an intense orange ball, always full and ringed with a fluorescent icy blue halo or golden yellow light. When both moons aligned for a few minutes each night, the commingled shine radiated luck in love on any man who sat beneath it. Everybody in Chengdu knew this to be true. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sadly, you could no longer see mountains or seas on the replica and it had ceased to light up the city streets as in the past. The replica was dying, running out of essential thruster fuel which kept it in orbit. With expiration imminent, the moon had shifted on its own into an unengineered fuel savings mode, and cut its light by half. The handler rocketeers, bewildered by the replica’s independent behavior, were trying to keep it aloft longer before it got sucked into earth's gravitational pull and disappeared. Nobody could predict when. One night it would be there and the next, gone. This could happen any day.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had to get to Chengdu before the replica disappeared or its magic no longer worked. I’d promised Wingo.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unlike most people, I couldn’t make my travel arrangements online because my reaction to antibody testing was erratic. Even though my at-home monitors registered all clear, I failed at public testings, so I was using the services and pre-clearance convenience of a live travel agency. There were few of these left in the city and they specialized in cases like mine. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The office was on the forty-fifth floor of a half-empty glass tower, one of thousands in the city. They had converted the bottom half to rez use and the top was office space. I stepped through the heavy doors into an atrium and looked up to the sky, a small blue patch eighty floors up. Clothes, fluttering like bird wings, hung on lines that crisscrossed the open atrium space. Although laser cleaning had been available for a decade, many people still preferred to wash and dry using a clothesline. It made me dizzy to look up.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I walked toward the elevator the smell of smoke, wheatmeat ribs and caramelized sugar hung in the air. Special scrubbing exhausts were added to the structures after they turned rez, but the household cooking aromas, too boisterous to be contained, leaked out from under apartment windows and doors. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the elevator I checked my cloak and looked at myself in the reflective metal of the elevator control panel. I reminded myself to keep from adjusting my crotch—an unconscious nervous gesture. My mother had excoriated me all my life for this nasty habit from my childhood. Last week, when we were out together, she scolded me about it. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The cloak doesn’t cover that, you know,” she said. “Cut it out! No woman wants to be seen with a man whose hand wanders to his crotch. Not even his mother.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You’d never guess from the quiet hallway that the travel agency would be so busy. I stepped through the door into a riot of bustling people, flashing screens, people shouting and others talking into displays. There were old-fashioned screens on each desk rotating images and data at tremendous speed. Printers hissed and clattered, grinding out documents in a rainbow of colors. A young girl rode around the space on office skates, moving piles of boopaper from desk to desk. She’d pick up speed on a straightaway hallway and then brake suddenly, like a hockey player, and make a delivery. A gong sounded from somewhere and she’d be off again. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I chewed a mint to cover the smell of the lunch beer I’d shared with Lan and Zio, my best friends. They were sympathetic when I told them about my Violet experience, sympathetic and curious.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Did you call her?” Lan asked. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Nah. She made me uncomfortable,” I replied. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Uncomfortable might turn into something better,” he said.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought of her grope in the bathroom and shuddered. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I think you’re being a wimp,” said Zio. “So, she’s more aggressive than you bargained for. It could be a test. Shirley made me jump through a few hoops when we first met.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lan and Zio had been to Chengdu together last year and did the moon tour. Lan bumped into Ana in Chengdu and they married two months later. Zio was engaged to Shirley. I’d planned to go along with them, but failed to pass the antibody testing. Now they were starting new lives, and I still floundered around. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My display buzzed and a pretty travel agent greeted me with an elbow bump. Even before I saw her wedding ring, I guessed Shio Kew was married. Most of the attractive women in the city were taken. She waved me to a chair near her desk and pushed an envelope full of travel docs toward me. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We rarely get requests for boopaper docs these days. It’s quite a pile, isn’t it?”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Besides testing for this trip, my moon trip, I was at the agency because I wanted to have paper tickets and brochures as souvenirs. If everything worked out as I hoped, I’d meet a woman and I wanted to start out on the right foot. My last relationship had crashed because of my lack of romance. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You throw everything away!’ Lila said when she saw ticket stubs from a concert in the trash. We’d been dating for six months. Lila saved everything, even the wrappings from straws from restaurants we visited together. She glued her memorabilia into books or made collages from them. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What?” I was bewildered by her anger. An orderly person, I kept my apartment tidy and didn’t let paper of any kind lie around. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I don’t keep useless papers. Just clutters everything up.” I should have known better.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Useless?” Lila said. It was soon over between us. We broke up in one of those furious fights there’s no coming back from. But I learned something about how women think. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I told my mother about the break up, she was disappointed because she’d liked Lila and her family. But my excess status didn’t worry her as much as it did Wingo. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Don’t be too anxious,” my mother said. “Marriage is a cage. Those in want to get out and those out want to get in.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I shuffled through the papers, Kew cautioned, “Look over the details. Easy to fix now, harder later.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I concentrated on the itinerary and matched dates of trains and hotel reservations. My seat number, 088, was the luckiest number available for the moon platform. It had cost an extra triple premium for five nights and I made sure I had the boo tickets, confirmation of the fingerprint ID and the photo ID. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Modern China was in many ways unrecognizable from the Before Times, but the cultural superstitions hadn’t changed. My father paid a premium for his display number, which ended in 888. When apartments went up for sale, the eighth floor units were priced highest and sold fastest. Even the Chinese government had honored the lucky number tradition when the BT summer Olympics began in Beijing at 8:08 p.m., August 8th, 2008. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My tour included a round-trip ticket for the high-speed train to Chengdu, and five nights in the Moonlight hotel, a simple walk away from the moon observation platform. By day I’d visit the panda breeding station and the museum. I reserved one night for the face-changing Schezwan opera—the remaining four nights I’d bask in the moon glow.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Your seat has Feng Shui too,” the travel agent said. “And it faces the Sea of Fecundity.” She didn’t have to tell me this was the most desired position for men looking for wives, and for men unable to conceive a child. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The very last piece of business was the test. My armpits were damp. I ran my hands over my bald head and shifted in my seat.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’ve had trouble with the test,” I told Kew, understating my problem.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She shrugged and asked me to put my index finger in the V machine, which had double screens—one facing her and one facing me. I rubbed it on my shirt and inserted it. I could feel my heart rate increase. The ancient Mac sputtered and fussed for a few seconds as it woke up, and then data splashed across both monitors. My temperature, blood pressure and oxygen levels were all normal but the fucking antibody level was blinking red. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Oh, oh,” said Miss Kew. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not again! My corona vaccine reaction had been abnormal since my first shots twelve years ago. It took three rounds of jabs before it caught on with me and I boosted every January. I had sufficient antibodies, but they didn’t show up on many of the various screening tests still in use. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This agency test set-up with the finger was antiquated, but the trains accepted the results, unlike the airlines. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kew was reassuring. “Let’s take it again,” she said. “Take off your cloak.” I stood and let it fold itself and settle on the desk.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I pushed up my sleeve, shook my wrist to relax it, took a deep breath and stuck my finger in the machine again. New data sprinkled onto the screen. No red lines. I was clear to travel out of my sector, to Chengdu. </span></p></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><span id="docs-internal-guid-8d4fa839-7fff-5960-7346-0aacca625190"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><script type="text/javascript">
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My summer job in customer service at the Singer shop, was to record details about repairs requested. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Going out to the racetrack later, honey?” the man asked, between my questions. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Er...maybe,” I said. I was seventeen, too young to buy an entrance ticket. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Well, if you do, lay some cash on Ringadingding in the seventh. I’ve been training her and she’s ready to go.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Okay,” I said. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lay some cash on Ringadingding</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? It was an insider tip—a sure thing. I recognized this because I was no stranger to racetrack wagering. My maternal grandmother was a gambler. If you saw her sitting by the fire, a crocheted throw on her lap, you’d never guess she had odds running through her brain. Grandma and my three maiden aunts spent hours every week filling out contest forms. For them, chance was a serious business.They’d won their house in a church lottery; their car in an insurance company raffle.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I couldn’t wait until 4:00 pm when I left work and took the three buses to the racetrack. The cashier barely looked up as he slid me an entrance ticket. The odds were twenty-to-one on Ringadingding. I bought a twenty-dollar ticket to win, almost a week’s salary from Singer. Ringadingding ran her heart out and won by a neck. I collected my four hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. Dizzy with excitement, I got home and burst through the front door with news of my windfall. Dad was reading the paper. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Dad, I’m not going back to school!” I said, waving my stack of twenties. “I won four hundred dollars at the track on Ringadingding.” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Fine,” he said, as if he’d been anticipating my announcement. “Though I wouldn’t recommend that as a way to make a living.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “But Grandma has,” I said. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Dad sighed. “Your grandmother is an exceptional case. She gambled as a last resort. She’s very lucky and an expert money manager.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Maybe it’s genetic? Maybe I inherited her genes.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Dad looked resigned. “If you insist on keeping it up, do it through Grandma's bookie, George. It’s illegal for you to go to the track. You know that. And you can’t tell anyone about this.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A bookie? I was going to have a bookie. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And it was a secret—to add to the list of secrets I already had to keep: my step-grandfather was gay, my Aunt Nilla was a lesbian, Mom was pregnant when my parents got married. And now I was a gambler. You couldn’t open a closet in that family without being smothered in skeletons. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A month later I was broke just in time for my return to school. As it turned out I was lucky, like Grandma, because I lost so absolutely. The Slantomatic job opened a door into another world I learned to avoid early in life. My wise Dad never had to say another word on the subject. </span></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></span></span><script type="text/javascript">
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If it hadn’t been for <i>Lolita</i> perhaps I’d have fewer barnacles on my legs today. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It happened on a weekend camping trip in Baja at La Bufadora, Mexico, circa 1971. A dozen of us, family and friends, rented a large tent, and drove south across the border early Saturday morning. The day began overcast, a typical May gray, and after settling in, I changed into my polka dot bikini, grabbed my book and stretched out on the sand. Soon the fog burned off and I applied the suntan lotion/basting sauce of the day--baby oil and mercurochrome. In those days, we tried to get a tan, not prevent one, ignorant as we were to the dangers of the sun. As I lay, propped on my elbows, lost in the brilliant writing and the antics of Humbert Humbert, the backs of my legs roasted to medium rare.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> That night in the huge tent we had a nutty and memorable time. The tent, as it turned out, wasn't quite large enough, so we had to all roll over together and exit en masse to pee. We were awake most of the night convulsed with laughter at our poor planning, but at some point I began to feel the skin on my thighs shrinking. By early morning I had trouble bending my knees. Eventually I had to resort to a lock-kneed walk, like a North Korean soldier. Monday, the throbbing and swelling was so severe, I had to call in sick to work. There was no way I could pull panty hose over my tender flesh. While the blisters on my thighs healed I read </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pale Fire </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pnin.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A week later, Hell’s itch took over and nearly drove me mad. It took a month to fully recover and while I regret the sun damage, I don’t regret the weekend with Vladimir. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Khaled Hosseini was responsible for the second burn. In Bali, I was stretched out on a lounge, sensibly shaded under an umbrella. I spent a glorious afternoon there with Khaled Hosseini, gobbling up his novel, "A Thousand Splendid Suns." Just about when the two women protagonists are getting ready to murder their husband—it was a polygamous arrangement—I felt a twinge on my foot and realized it had slipped into the hot Balinese sun. Far from a thousand suns, it was just one, but equatorial and ferocious. From it’s cooked look, my foot had been baking for a while. I yanked it back into the shade under the umbrella and unable to quit, kept reading, until in the story, a shovel rains down on bad-hubby’s head several times. It wasn’t a serious burn that time; it soon faded and aside from a temporary limp, I was fine. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It’s rare these days to see someone reading a real book on the beach. Younger people read indoors or by pools, on their Kindles, I guess. Or they walk, and listen to books on earphones. And they’re careful about sunscreen and avoiding sunburn. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Decades past my polka-dot bikini heyday, soon I’m going to spend a reading day in Oceanside. My beach reading costume is now a pair of nylon shorts and a T-shirt. Covering up is key because nobody, not even me, needs to see my cellulite and saggy bits. Only a bit of thigh will be allowed to show— an older and wiser version of the poor burned mess of my youth. How I look forward to snuggling into the sand and preparing for a second seduction, fifty years after the first! </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ll open my book: </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo.Lee.Ta.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Lolita </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Valdimir Nabakov</span></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 513px; overflow: hidden; width: 615px;"><img height="513" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/awiy3mmCaYscZZp-Yf1VKqQcOZ9xhqj6UohjcQyWUuuuI_wJ7pg-9LpEmjpXJK_22uBtk3Jg0LEktw_XxcI6OzQ343in-IvXKb2I1_nxQICULTN1o5H1FwRcPaw1Bg" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="615" /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the Umbrella prompt; Richard’s mother and grandmother on the patio of the Studio City house. They set their books aside to pose together for this photo.</span></p><br /><br /></span><script type="text/javascript">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="1 Box 12-packets Old Vintage Candy Sen Sen Mint Licorice Breath" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcSXp26Be0VhOFhPDkBpU5nHuD1WSbNx-PHoiO9bNAkHT0Hc7qLT0s5YBuBFf7cANWSokZSYQOv0Z7mwxS2Amy-ox_aY7isuGb2GeTo5H6M&usqp=CAc" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">$399.00 on eBay. </td></tr>
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The last few packages of Sen-Sen on the planet are selling on eBay for $30 - $40 each. An investment possibility? What will they be worth in ten years when I’m 87 and in need of extra cash? Will everyone who remembers Sen-Sen be dead? Probably.<br />
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I mentioned it at the book store to Jean, my friend. We were discussing a perfume we both wear, called <i>Elixir </i>which I told her I thought smelled faintly like Sen-Sen. She disagreed but immediately recalled a moment from her childhood in a farm town in Iowa and an elderly man, Arnold, who went to their church. Her parents had always told her to be nice to Arnold, a WWI veteran, because he had the shakes. Arnold kept Sen-Sen candy loose in his pocket and would hand them out to the kids, each tiny piece accompanied with a lot of old-man pocket lint. Jean remembers taking the tiny gift, being slightly repulsed, and telling Arnold she would save hers "for later." Jean has never been much for lint. </div>
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My memories of Sen-Sen are related to drinking. I remember it as the tell-tale scent that surrounded the drinkers, and that was just about every man, when we were children. It was a big seller in bars and at the legion hall, but actually did the opposite of the intended masking. The minute you smelled it you knew something was being covered up and it stained the user's tongue a freaky greenish black.<br />
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For one crazy moment I thought about going into business, making a new version of Sen-Sen and contacted the manufacturer of a tableting machine. The more I read, the less interested I was. But then I read about one of the manufacturer's customers who had the brilliant idea to tabletize toothpaste. Pop a tablet in your mouth and it softens and becomes brushable. Goodbye billions of tubes and tops. After a little research I found this isn't a new idea. People have been making versions of this for years. <a href="https://ladylighttravel.com/2014/02/08/travel-hack-make-your-own-toothpaste-dots/">Here's</a> one method. Looks like fun to try.<br />
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-87202286805582788962020-01-27T13:42:00.002-08:002020-01-27T14:31:29.243-08:001917 Lucy's Letter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vIDOVIKSFwU/WCUN7QV2vsI/AAAAAAACq8A/3SbZI90M_P46zN4WxmZCwiKjR0ulyXAhQCLcB/s640/Dad%2Bww1%2Bstanding%2Bwith%2Bswagger%2Bstick.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francis Joseph Killeen 1917</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NtV3IO0viUE/Xi8724aIGCI/AAAAAAADrW4/iwq7H8IcrbUnrzgWlOk7PWiw3Rm_3UQdwCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/wwi-amiens-cdns-moving-under-fire-cwm-635x357.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NtV3IO0viUE/Xi8724aIGCI/AAAAAAADrW4/iwq7H8IcrbUnrzgWlOk7PWiw3Rm_3UQdwCK4BGAYYCw/s640/wwi-amiens-cdns-moving-under-fire-cwm-635x357.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Canadian forces at Arras, France</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We saw "1917" the other day. Great film and I have a special interest in the piece of history because of my father's story. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine this. It's Dec. 26th, 1916, Boxing day in Winnipeg, Canada. The neighbors pop into each other's houses up and down the block, admire each other's gifts, drink tea and feast on Christmas leftovers, mostly Christmas cake. Before they enter the house, the visitors stomp their feet on the doormat outside because their galoshes are caked with snow. The first real winter snowfall had started earlier in the morning. Deep winds have blown the snow into drifts. Diggers, a team of special snow removers, can't free the half-buried streetcars. The city is almost paralyzed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At my grandmother's house, Lucy Armstrong Killeen Massey and her second husband Bertie, twenty years her junior, along with most of her nine children receive their guests, pour tea and pass "dainties" around. In the middle of the celebration, my father leaves the house and makes his way, through terrible weather, to the recruitment station where he enlisted. Because he is under age, he lies on his Attestation papers stating that he was eighteen, not seventeen. What moves him to sign up on that very day— on a holiday, in a snowstorm? And what motivates his step-father, Bertie, at age thirty-two, to enlist the very next day, Dec. 27th?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The following appeared in the Winnipeg Tribune on that day. Is the sentiment enough to move a seventeen-year-old to enlist? </span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6ifiAMvE2ho/Xi8dBnvJLRI/AAAAAAADrWo/FXOxb3Ljja4tQUevXyUNg8P78uAxHu4yQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-27%2Bat%2B9.23.35%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="263" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6ifiAMvE2ho/Xi8dBnvJLRI/AAAAAAADrWo/FXOxb3Ljja4tQUevXyUNg8P78uAxHu4yQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-01-27%2Bat%2B9.23.35%2BAM.png" width="432" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WNO3GKN32q0/Xi88OWj9miI/AAAAAAADrXI/5NzMNqoS4SAXHznrt9q5H8iZOWuETgwQwCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/wpg%2Btribune%2B12%253A26%253A16.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WNO3GKN32q0/Xi88OWj9miI/AAAAAAADrXI/5NzMNqoS4SAXHznrt9q5H8iZOWuETgwQwCK4BGAYYCw/s320/wpg%2Btribune%2B12%253A26%253A16.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or maybe he is influenced by a neighbor who lived a block away and had recently returned from the front. Perhaps the neighbor comes to tea that day and tells exciting stories about his time overseas? At seventeen, Dad lists his occupation as Warehouseman on the Attestation paper. Knowing Dad, I imagine he was bored to tears and looking for excitement. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">He agreed "to serve in the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary force and to be attached to any arm of the service therein, for the term of one year, or during the war now existing between Great Britain and Germany should that war last longer than one year, and for six months after the termination of that war provided His Majesty should so long require my services or until legally discharged." </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My grandmother must have been dismayed but the recruitment posters plastered around the city encouraged women to send their sons to war. </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hqlC1g2aTUA/Xi9CQttrRPI/AAAAAAADrXk/yTUPkWCvexQMPYJAFCpmfD3Blh8N1YRlQCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/recruitment%2Bmothers.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hqlC1g2aTUA/Xi9CQttrRPI/AAAAAAADrXk/yTUPkWCvexQMPYJAFCpmfD3Blh8N1YRlQCK4BGAYYCw/s400/recruitment%2Bmothers.jpeg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>As in the film, there is an important letter involved in my story.</b> This one, from the HQ of the Overseas Military Forces of Canada, likely determined that my father survived World War 1</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span>Lucy wrote to HQ on January 7th,1918 including Dad's birth certificate. S<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">he received this letter back. Note the reply to her request was dated a little more than a month from when she wrote it—her letter traveled from Canada to England and she received a rapid reply in less than a month, during a war. </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eX_bzL-p0ZQ/TaTGUPilV5I/AAAAAAAAG2Q/qhXWWiVfvvM/s1600/Dad%2527s+letter+from+army+WW1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eX_bzL-p0ZQ/TaTGUPilV5I/AAAAAAAAG2Q/qhXWWiVfvvM/s400/Dad%2527s+letter+from+army+WW1.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why did Lucy wait until a year had passed to take action?</span> Dad had shipped out from Halifax and was trained at Shornecliff, England.<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;"> For most of the year, 2017, life at Shornecliff was pretty good for Canadians. They were well liked by the British.</span> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But in October, 2017 he was sent to France where Canadians were little more than cannon fodder. As of 10/22/17, he was at or near the front. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I can imagine Lucy opening a letter from Dad and reading about life in the trenches. I wonder what he said? He sent this cryptic post card in October.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Some bashful looking baby, eh?"</td></tr>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NnudIRdRcTM/Xi9SDHiehMI/AAAAAAADrXw/B504DSz8QeIToFKgvWqwsku5zRAvUNBIgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Joe%2Bphoto%2BOct%252C%2B201820200127_13104826.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NnudIRdRcTM/Xi9SDHiehMI/AAAAAAADrXw/B504DSz8QeIToFKgvWqwsku5zRAvUNBIgCK4BGAYYCw/s400/Joe%2Bphoto%2BOct%252C%2B201820200127_13104826.jpg" width="261" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Oct 8/17 Dear Mother, Just a few lines to say I am well and enjoying health, and hope you are and also little Pearl. Tell Lorne and Hilda that will not be able to write them for a couple of weeks. <b>Don't be surprised if you don't hear from me for a while.</b> Will write you soon if possible. Your loving son, Joe</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> I'm sure any excitement he might have felt for the first months in England had faded away and he was at risk every minute of every day. I don't believe Lucy wasted any time and acted as soon as she could.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Because of Lucy's letter,</b> Dad was pulled back from the front and out of the trenches at Arras, France, which is captured in the film in gruesome detail—the terror, the lack of information, the close quarters where everyone was squashed together like sardines enduring the noise, the smells, the weather. Instead, Dad spent several months in the rear, dragging ammunition around. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; white-space: pre-wrap;">As soon he turned nineteen he was moved back to the firing line and was wounded (gunshot to the eye) on his first day back. It was September 3rd and he was in the 2nd Battle of Arras where the objective was to break the German Drocourt-Queant line. He was shipped to Cambridge Hospital in Aldershot England to recover. Fortunately the war ended and he never had to return to combat. <span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span id="goog_367531472"></span><span id="goog_367531473"></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Today, January 27th, 2020 is the 101st anniversary of Dad's discharge.</b> On his discharge papers he was nineteen years and five months old. His trade was listed as student. He had a small scar on lid of his right eye. <b>I'd say h</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>e was a lucky guy.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; white-space: pre-wrap;">He couldn't wait to get back to school. Dad graduated law school and passed the bar in 1923. He left the military between the wars and was in private practice for years, but he volunteered again during WWII in 1939. He was forty when he enlisted this time, trained troops in Fort William, Ontario and served as a Judge Advocate. After the war he threw himself into being a veteran. He served as the legal counsel for Deer Lodge Hospital, the Veterans hospital, in Winnipeg. He worked for the Department of Veterans affairs and the Veterans Land act. He was a lifelong member of the Canadian Legion which was formed after WWI as a place where veterans could talk to each other. Long before we recognized PTSD, these men were treating each others trauma by befriending each other and providing mutual support. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; white-space: pre-wrap;">Go see the film, kids. You'll get the real feeling for what your Grandfather, Great Grandfather, Great Great Grandfather and Great Great Great Grandfather endured. And how close we all were to not being here at all!!! </span><br />
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-46101734444870108682020-01-20T11:52:00.000-08:002020-01-20T11:52:09.271-08:00Back to Bali for Christmas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset from Candidasa</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Breakfast every morning at Villa Sarchi</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A young Bali beauty</td></tr>
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This year we flew JAL staying overnight in Tokyo before going on to Jakarta the next morning. It's easy to fly from Jakarta to Denpasar on Air Asia, which is like Southwest Airlines, no frills, on time, gets the job done. <script type="text/javascript">
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Like last year, we were again surprised as the ever-worsening traffic and the demise of many things we loved about the island. The place is bulging with tourists from China and Russia and of course the Aussies. The Balinese keep themselves more and more separate from the tourists, except for work. They must do this to protect their culture. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Villa view in Candidasa. Beach and Mt. Agung.</td></tr>
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At the last minute, the reservation at our villa in Singaraja was cancelled. The owner called to tell us the place was falling apart. Attacks by termites and some serious deterioration of the pool forced her to close the place for repairs. Graciously she offered to help us find a place and she paid for the difference in the price. Fortunately a place I've always wanted to try, the Samuh Hill Residence was available and we spent a glorious six days there, agog at the view and amazed at the service.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Full moon in Amed</td></tr>
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The villa in Amed was just as enjoyable the second time around. It has the best pool I've ever had the pleasure of soaking in for ten days. In Ubud we enjoyed a place owned by a Balinese (a rarity) with a rice field in a jungle-like setting. Ate a great restaurant across the way from it — Sacred Rice. Lovely place.<br />
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We had a great time in our own very familiar places in Bali. But sadly, most of the island is disappearing under concrete, tourists and cars.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Salt man</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-75AMKqbX7Kg/XiYCiR-73aI/AAAAAAADrP4/iL9Lyp4WPrIGRrRxocGa3XC8zpKKR7O1ACK4BGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_7147.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-75AMKqbX7Kg/XiYCiR-73aI/AAAAAAADrP4/iL9Lyp4WPrIGRrRxocGa3XC8zpKKR7O1ACK4BGAYYCw/s320/IMG_7147.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They solved the dog problem and now they have a cat problem.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4SQX9vdhKk/XiYClIh_TvI/AAAAAAADrQA/mDdpZOMAIEUlh_AiTpRsBvgpr2lKAkz1gCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_6854.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4SQX9vdhKk/XiYClIh_TvI/AAAAAAADrQA/mDdpZOMAIEUlh_AiTpRsBvgpr2lKAkz1gCK4BGAYYCw/s640/IMG_6854.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sacred Rice restaurant</td></tr>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WNt1qZzGwmw/XiYCZZMBCeI/AAAAAAADrPo/qdr-QjcIr5IYyJdMYfr4z28j9xz26duAQCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_6660.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WNt1qZzGwmw/XiYCZZMBCeI/AAAAAAADrPo/qdr-QjcIr5IYyJdMYfr4z28j9xz26duAQCK4BGAYYCw/s320/IMG_6660.jpg" width="240" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qLj3dtpzuaI/XiX-S36xMXI/AAAAAAADrOE/-6i0ijesi4EUQidK6r-KsfxCQccMDqRQgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_7362.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qLj3dtpzuaI/XiX-S36xMXI/AAAAAAADrOE/-6i0ijesi4EUQidK6r-KsfxCQccMDqRQgCK4BGAYYCw/s400/IMG_7362.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wonderful clouds over Indonesia flying to Jakarta. </td></tr>
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-12607886271951224832019-09-20T07:03:00.000-07:002019-09-20T07:03:48.271-07:00 Coincidence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
"Good morning, Doctor," I said to the excellent customer at the Bottom Shelf. He's usually there early in the morning. He knows what he likes and makes decisions quickly.<br />
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"What do you like best about shopping here," I asked him recently.</div>
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"This is a gold mine for the discerning collector," he said and added quietly,</div>
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"You know, I'm a dying man. But this is one of my pleasures."</div>
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"What?" I said.</div>
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"Right now—I'm all hooked up with leads to a Holter monitor. It's just a matter of time for me." He lowered his head back to the $.10 bookshelf.</div>
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"Is this a coincidence or what?" I said, laughing hard. I whipped open my loose jacket to expose the monitor dangling around my neck.</div>
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"I'm wearing the same thing!"<br />
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No reaction from the doctor. It was an awkward situation—my jacket gaping and my impulsive words hanging in the air between us. It was a good time to stop talking but instead of shutting up, I talked more and faster.<br />
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"But I'm not dying just yet, I hope. Only monitoring my heartbeat to see if I have Afib. I thought it was routine." I laughed some more and waited for him to join me. But he didn't think it was funny as I did. He was somber-looking <span style="color: #141414; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #fcfcff; font-size: 13.3333px;">as </span></span>he quoted Epicurus —<i>the art of living well and dying well are one. </i><br />
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I stopped laughing and said goodbye. I never know how to answer somebody who quotes. <i> </i></div>
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When I got home, I googled the quote to see<i> </i>if I'd missed something in our exchange and I found this statement which put words to my friend's frame of mind. Personally, I can't see the value of viewing all of your unfolding life as a prelude to death. And I don't get the notion of living and dying being of equal value. </div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">“You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value."--Nimit in "Thailand” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;">― </span><span class="authorOrTitle" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "lato" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold;">Haruki Murakami, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"></span><span id="quote_book_link_11299" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/6179815" style="color: #333333; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: none;">After the Quake</a></span><br />
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<span id="quote_book_link_11299" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j2rmeHwy78o/XYTbj0HTPJI/AAAAAAADn0I/Fy7TcFIMjwIc6zkUnmSEPLsnZFJccMCLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/DE1DC333-F164-425B-BDF4-21D40C703753.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1052" data-original-width="840" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j2rmeHwy78o/XYTbj0HTPJI/AAAAAAADn0I/Fy7TcFIMjwIc6zkUnmSEPLsnZFJccMCLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/DE1DC333-F164-425B-BDF4-21D40C703753.jpeg" width="255" /></a></span></div>
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-35095930433326736772019-09-20T06:57:00.000-07:002019-09-20T06:57:03.139-07:00Cruising on the Okhotsk Sea<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Earlier this year we cruised from Tokyo to Vancouver with a couple of Russian ports on the itinerary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Captain just now announced the temperature of the Okhotsk Sea is 2 degrees centigrade (36F), the same temperature as the air. I saw a lone hardy couple outside waddling along the deck past the window of the library where I’m reading and snoozing. They’re so bundled up with thermo-block padding and zero-proof stuffing, they look like walking bowling pins. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Viking Orion’s library, comfortable and warm, is advertised as having been curated by Heywood Hill, a London bookshop owned by the Duke of Devonshire. </span><a href="https://www.heywoodhill.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Heywood Hill</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Unconfinable, like dandelion seeds blown off a stem, the library is scattered all over the ship. Books are stacked by the swimming pools, in the bars, in every public room, in the restaurants. We don’t walk around this ship; we thumb our way around from glossy photography books and art portfolios to best sellers and leather-covered volumes of Chaucer and Walter Scott. Readers slouch against the bookcases, lounge in the leather chairs, curl up in front of the fire. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yesterday in our first Russian port, we took back-to-back tours in Korsakov/Sakhalin. After being tendered ashore, we searched for our bus, number fifteen, headed for the Chekhov museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalin. Past rows of shiny public buses, a beat-up greyish-white chariot awaited with our number on the windshield. The several hundred other people who were taking a cultural tour (statue of Lenin, war memorial, statue to commemorate the Korean diaspora) were escorted into public buses commandeered for the occasion. The twenty-nine of us who opted for Chekhov got the “Party Bus” so named by Victor, our guide and host. Inside, it was decorated with an explosion of doilies, an essential element of interior decorating in this part of the world. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Victor, a tall handsome man, wore a thin Clark Gable style mustache. He had flawless skin, not a mark or wrinkle to be seen on his face or hands despite his fifty-eight years. A former history teacher, oil company worker, amateur wood carver and tour guide he was the best part of the tour. He knew, as he said, how sausages and politics are made and told us about his views on both—great conversation on the longish bus ride through the targa and past the depressing local daschas which have evolved during this recent period of prosperity from “dog houses” (Victor’s word) into cheap boxy kit houses worth half a million each (building cost). In the grey drizzle, the holiday houses looked as inviting as prison camps. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our first stop was the municipal sports complex/tourist trap for the toilet and big surprise—to shop a display of locally made trinkets. The toilet was a big hit (few of us were under sixty) but why did they think we’d be interested in nesting dolls and nesting Putins, ball caps with Korsakov/Sakhalin written in tiny letters (so it fits) across the bill and felt christmas ornaments made by the local children? I doubt they made a single sale as few of us have rubles and the ship doesn’t do currency exchange. It’s illegal for private citizens to exchange currency, so we were all at a stand-off. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back on the bus we leaned into our crocheted head-rests as we rolled through the plain town (lots of boxy apartment buildings, one fancy condo building for oil executives) onward to the Chekhov museum, a modern structure, and not as billed, the former home of Chekhov and his family. Oh well, we got the usual negative Russian greeting from three middle-aged ladies wearing aprons and half-barricading the way. Volleys of loud Russian ping-ponged back and forth between Victor and the women as we stood in front of a diorama of a ship’s prow splitting a foamy sea. A couple of stairs led to a real ship's wheel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Victor explained the loud volley was just the usual Russian thing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Whoever gets here/there first makes the rules,” he said, shaking his head. Whatever the argument, Victor with his princely bearing and booming voice won. The ladies retreated to the back of the crowd clucking their tongues and looking distraught. Our weak smiles were met with glares. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Climb the stairs (of the diorama) and play Captain,” suggested Victor, lightening the mood. We all shifted nervously from foot to foot dreading that he’d pick one of us to play Piggie. Thankfully, he didn’t and we moved on to view a manuscript, the only real Chekhov item in the museum, Victor told us. Then he launched into a few terrible anecdotes about the conditions in the Sakhalin prison which Chekov is famous for exposing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“They called them lamb,” Victor said, referring to the escaped prisoners, caught by the guards and cooked up for dinner. “What else are you going to do with them?” he asked with an uneasy chuckle. “There was no food around for hundreds of miles.” Victor made sure we recognized his sarcasm. Richard, unable to contain himself, baa-aa’ed softly in my ear.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We trudged through more dioramas of bizarre, inhumane prison conditions (the Russians have always excelled at imprisoning their citizens) and walked in the rain to the deluxe hotel next door for blinis and tea. After the cannibalism talk, we were starving and much to our surprise the food was delicious, but </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. A Chekhov expert followed with a forty-minute lecture, earnest but humorless and dull. She failed to paint any kind of picture of one the most interesting authors in Russian literature. We only heard the boring bits of biography—dates and more dates interspersed with the names of musty Chekhov scholars. Victor translated and fortunately editorialized a bit. The speaker would close her book as if the end was in sight and then open it again and continue. Victor said, “A Russian never means goodbye when she say goodbye for the first time.” Richard sat us in the front, right under the speaker’s nose, so my struggle to stay awake was on full display. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At last it was over and we dashed in the rain from the party bus to number thirty-nine where Sergei, our new guide, was waiting. Educated in Korea by a professor from Tennessee, Serge shared his world view of things and sounded like the millennials do world-wide. He escorted us to a song and dance performance by a local troupe presented in an auditorium with the worst seats ever, well almost—the eleven-inch wide seats at La Scala still hold the record—followed by more opportunities to buy awful handicrafts, poorly displayed. Then came a round of public square and statue visiting. Our guide gave us a lot of interesting information about the Koreans on the island which piqued our interest. All you can ask from a tour. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="324" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/OMtWKw1u0EcCohJHHGuuX5SG2ZsiFWbUdAclZRrERj5Dnep1sFLwaF93arVBDjkmSkP8gnn1J4-WShBwPuXNN1SzSlCpwq0NA-wmRtx8T2HIndqTySeAoJBdW58998xAvupHjRsA" style="border: none;" width="432" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The theater seats were designed so that everyone had a head view.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wet, cold and tired we were happy to get back to the warm ship where they greeted us with hot cider. We need the next two days at sea to recuperate before arrival at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Kamchatka, Russia. The weather forecast isn’t good so we’re happy we cancelled our fishing trip. What fishing trip you ask?...to be continued.</span></div>
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-3019542606144993242019-09-19T14:56:00.000-07:002019-09-19T14:56:19.423-07:00La Scala<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm back to blogging again after more frustration with fiction.<br />
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Milan, last year:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boring photo of the ticket space</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looks calm but confusion reigned in six or seven languages<br /></td></tr>
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Getting tickets to La Scala was a more interesting experience than the actual opera, <i>Alibaba and the forty Thieves</i>, itself. We guessed, in a fightback against scalpers, the Italian government had installed checks and re-checks on buying tickets at the box office. We had to get on one list with our names and passport numbers. After a long wait, we were escorted to a machine where we were supposed to relist everything which would then allow us to get on the <b>real</b> ticket list. By tuning into other conversations and watching people, we realized we didn't have to check-in at the machine. Somehow we ended up in a group allowed to buy the really cheap tickets, eleven euros each. Italians seem to enjoy everything—even the lines and confusion had a good-natured vibe.<script type="text/javascript">
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The tickets were terrible but even the best seats at La Scala for 250 euros aren't very good. We were in the nose-bleed section and could barely see the top of the curtains running across the stage. By standing up we got an occasional glimpse. The opera was awful...overture not bad, but everything else, mediocre. Our seatmate (we were almost in each other's laps) was a nineteen-year-old Italian kid, thrilled to be sitting next to two Californians. He'd spent a summer vacation in a house trade with people from San Clemente. At intermission, we said, "Ciao" to the kid and snuck out.<br />
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Here's a review by Renata Verga on the Bachtrack website:<br />
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<a href="https://bachtrack.com/review-cherubini-ali-baba-academy-scala-milan-september-2018">https://bachtrack.com/review-cherubini-ali-baba-academy-scala-milan-september-2018</a><br />
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At the head of the instrumentalists, conductor Paolo Carignani managed to get the sounds and the right tempi of a score that, after the brilliant overture, is often limited to supporting the singers in their melodic lines without turning into a tune to remember. Yes, the wisdom of Cherubini's writing is admirable, but one remains indifferent to the plot and to the two-dimensional characters on stage. <em>Ali Baba</em> is not a grand-opéra, but has its own dances, here wittily cavorted by young, some very young, ballet students in Emanuela Tagliavia's choreography.</div>
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Liliana Cavani, who took care of the staging, has clearly expressed her intent to relate the story in a very linear fashion, without opting either for the comic nor for the fairy-tale tone. The result was a visual rendition without a backbone which, even if it nods to contemporary taste – the library in which the four main characters as students read the folk tale and have their first love skirmishes; the getaway in motor-scooter in the finale – fall back on outdated staging and scenery. It does not put to use some twists of the plot, such as the procession of slaves with the treasures stolen by Nadir, which could have given a more theatrical touch to the staging. Meanwhile, the director trivializes other moments: why the need to show Delia having a footbath during her only true great aria? Also, one could have willingly done without the sight of the burnt corpses of the thieves during the cheerful and hurried conclusion.</div>
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Afterward, we stopped into the new Starbucks cathedral (no line at 9:45, just before closing), had a pizza and bought croissants for breakfast.<br />
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Mixed feelings from the Italians we talked to about Starbucks. They love their own coffee but most agree what Starbucks did to an abandoned post office building in mid-Milan is fantastic. And the Starbucks itself is a marvel, although still shaking out the opening problems.<br />
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I noticed the next day, which we spent at the Cathedral, that the garden at the front of the Cathedral square was donated by and being maintained by Starbucks. They are good neighbors. </div>
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-60603869554311145552019-09-19T14:45:00.000-07:002019-09-19T14:45:02.514-07:00and more months.....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The trees are leafing out nicely. Instead of looking like broccoli spears, they're starting to look like trees again. Soon we'll have to start watering unless we get some early rain.
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We had a pleasant afternoon at the Bottom Shelf yesterday. A woman came in and bought books she intends to send to the Solomon Islands, where her brother runs a seafood cannery. If you've donated books recently to the store, they might be on their way here:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">One of many interesting facts about the islands:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> Blond hair occurs in 10% of the population in the islands.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> <b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This is the highest occurrence of blond hair outside of European influence in the world.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; white-space: nowrap;"> </span> </b>After years of questions, studies have resulted in the better understanding of the blond gene. The findings show that the blond hair trait is due to an amino acid change of protein </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TYRP1" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration-line: none;" title="TYRP1">TYRP1</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">While 10% of Solomon Islanders display the blond phenotype, about 26% of the population carry the recessive trait for it as well.</span></div>
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Here's how the blond gene is expressed: </div>
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We had among our customers, a teacher who refused her discount. "You charge so little I couldn't think of it." And a woman moving to Northwest Arkansas who came in to donate a box of books and left with a good-sized bag of purchases. For book lovers, it's difficult to get out of the store empty-handed. </div>
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Despite swearing we'll resist and leave the books in the store, I picked up two small but powerful books:<br />
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Has a great index:</div>
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A customer brought this book, <i>Merde</i>, to our attention and thought we should take it off the shelf. I rescued it from la poubelle (the trash) and flipping through the pages discovered a bit of historical language antagonism. One of the many French words for condom is une capote anglaise, (note that it's a feminine noun), literally an English cape or coat. Funny, since we (our troops overseas in WWll) called them French letters. Why? Because they were distributed to the troops in France in small envelopes.<br />
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Nice to know about withstanding all climates and that they're British Made.<br />
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Donations were flowing in all day. The addition of credit card capability has had an impact on sales. Instead of putting books on hold, we get the sale! When people don't have the cash and say they'll come back, they often don't. Now we're capturing those sales on the spot, a big return for the small fee the credit card companies charge. The store is on track to earn about $88,000.00 this year.<br />
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-52751855559657495072019-04-19T11:04:00.000-07:002019-04-19T11:04:06.326-07:00Months pass...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"What the f---? Are they out of their friggin minds? Where did the trees go?" said Pink, disgusted, as he peeked out the door. He stood, half-in and half-out, moving forward and then backing up. He stuck his nose out and sniffed. "Charlie wasn't here last night." Charlie, a big homeless Tom, visited regularly, attempting to claim ownership of the patio, spraying the pillars and sometimes even the door—the very door Pink and Cashew claimed as their own. The one they used to go in and out, and in and out, and in and out and in and out. And that's just the morning. ...</div>
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Cashew bobbed around behind, trying to see past Pink. "Thank God, that freeloader's gone," he said. "At least something good's come out of all that chain-saw noise and people shouting. Uh oh--look at that lizard. Let me out!!"</div>
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Pink turned around and hissed. "Will you stop crowding me? There's no place to hide out there now. Geez...all I can see are stumps. The grove looks like a scarecrow convention. Why didn't they warn us? My favorite spot by the oak tree is totally exposed now. Where am I going to sit?"</div>
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"Don't speak to them anymore!" said Cashew. "I'm not going to. Eat and sleep. That's it from now on!" He backed into the house, indignant. He was frightened but as cats are wont to do, he raised his back leg as high as it would go and licked his arse, glancing around casually to see if anyone was noticing his gymnastic moves. He made another attempt to push past Pink and get out, but Pink wasn't budging—he stood his ground, half-way through the door, muttering to himself.</div>
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"Do you mean––are you suggesting—no making biscuits?" said Pink, incredulous at the mean streak in his brother. "You can't mean we're giving up on purring? And curling up in their laps?"</div>
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"Yes, that's what I mean. Nada. Nothing. See how they like it." Cashew walked out of the room, tail swishing and continued his venomous diatribe. "Punish 'em. Double up in the annoying department -- bother them in the bathroom and run ahead of them into the closet to hide and walk on their computer keyboards and scratch our claws on the carpet, don't come when called and jump up on the kitchen counter and drink out of the toilet and fight with each other and all that kind of human-annoying stuff."</div>
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"...but, but...they have the can opener," said Pink, astonished at the stupidity of his sibling. <i>No wonder they call him the Idiot,</i><i class=""> </i>he thought. </div>
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Our avocado trees have been stumped and today the <i>surgeons</i> began painting them white and re-establishing our irrigation system. Although I miss living in a green bubble, it's refreshing to get<br />
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light in the house and recover some of the views hidden for years behind the huge trees. The cats, used to sneaking around as cats do, under the leafy cover, are a bit shell-shocked. They stick close to the house and crouch under the deck, muttering to themselves. </div>
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-82749428938157797972019-04-19T10:54:00.001-07:002019-04-19T10:54:41.184-07:00Cookbooks and Conversation at the Bottom Shelf<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Someone in our small town has hung up their apron for the last time—probably a well-heeled and enthusiastic cook. I’m sure of this because ten boxes of good cookbooks are piled up in the workroom. Cooks don’t donate their cookbooks to the Bottom Shelf bookstore just because they’ve moved. It takes more than a change of address to separate them from their collections. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The best cookbooks we get, in my opinion, are dog-eared and rich with marginalia. Often a flutter of magazine clippings and cook’s notes will fall out of the pages.They reveal more about the donors than the book choices. On a recipe for sweet potatoes—”Thanksgiving—everyone liked it. Add one tsp. vanilla.” The author/cook cannot leave well enough alone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I don’t like shiny food,” says Jean, our shift manager, as she scans a couple of the photos and thumbs through recipes. She has a keen and discriminating eye. She shows me more photos. A slab of unidentifiable meat bathed in maroon sauce glistens under the light. She shudders and marks the book $.10. The book sold for $29.95 when it was new. Now it has the same value as a tissue-thin plastic bag from Walmart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jean looks over the five boxes on our work table. “Set aside anything with gelatin in the title,” she says. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Here’s one—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jello Jigglers,” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Miranda says</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">plucking a thin volume from the pile</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At twenty-eight, Miranda is the youngest of us. “How did you all survive eating this stuff? It’s so obviously devoid of any nutrition. What’s in it? Chemicals, food coloring and sugar?” Jean at eighty-six is the oldest of our managers. She and Miranda share a love for </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The New Yorker </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and James Thurber. Somehow, the conversation has drifted to a discussion of favorite Thurber works. I enjoy listening to the intergenerational discussion which includes details about Thurber’s height (short) and temperament (mean). Both Jean and Miranda like Thurber’s dominant women and spineless men. Although I don’t join in, I think about Walter Mitty, my favorite Thurber creation and his made-up medical jargon like “obsteosis of the ductal tract.” My own father suffered from a number of such illnesses which would strike without fail just before mass on Sunday morning and require immediate bed rest. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Where’s your father this morning?” the priest, Father McIlhenny, would ask us after mass as my sister and I filled by.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“He’s got hypotocusis in the hoodinacapap,” I would answer. My older sister, by then wise to my father’s jokes, let me tell the priest. The words came easily and fast to me because I said/sang them while I skipped rope. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Again?” Father McIlhenny would smile. I suspect he was a Thurber fan too. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back in the workroom, I look through the jiggly book. The jello photography is disastrous—plates crowded with clashing colors and shapes, vegetables frozen in aspic like tortured souls in hell. The color separations are poor and the printing is fuzzy enough to make me think my freshly de-cataracted eyes are failing. Miranda, wicked smart and energetic, eats only organic vegetarian foods—a living testimony to the health benefits of kale. She makes me feel like rushing home to eat a bag of carrots.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ask her opinion about the political correctness of the word “jiggler” which sounds vaguely offensive to my ear. I think of big round Santa Claus bellies, massive ungirdled asses, the handles of running toilets. There were no recipe sensitivity readers when these were printed. I wonder if there are now? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Years ago, I used “prick” in the instructions on a package of frozen pie dough. My boss reddened with embarrassment from his collar to his hairline, as he read my instructions and told me I could not use the word in print. EVER. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“But that’s what you do,” I said, in disbelief. “You prick a pie crust before you bake it. It’s a culinary term.” My arguments fell on deaf ears. “Pierce with the times of a fork,” was the expression we used instead. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pierce</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was much more tolerable for my straight-laced Swedish boss but still bothers me forty years later. I wonder what he’d say today now that the word </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pierce,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hijacked by the body-art business, conjures up different thoughts. People pierce body parts I didn’t even know existed like the frenulum and ampallang. My niece talks about her industrial and tragus jewelry. God only knows where they are. If I was still writing instructions, Ole, my boss, might now prefer “prick” over “pierce.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jean picks up a non-cookbook volume which reminds her of her small Iowa town’s daily newspaper, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Eagletown Echo </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and the “What’s happening” column which contained all the local news. “They talk about Facebook disclosing too much now,” she laughs. “That’s crazier than a fart in a skillet. You didn’t have any secrets back then. If you traveled all the way to Des Moines, fifty miles away, the</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Eagleton Echo </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">would have a reporter on your doorstep asking for details. And before nightfall, everyone in town would have read the story and judged everything you did.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A customer interrupts. “What’s that?” She points to a handwritten note on the counter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Oh, probably something somebody found in a book,” I say. “We keep those. They’re amusing. This looks like a shopping list: one-half pound ground lamb,”…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hey,” she says. “That sounds like what I’m off to buy. I need lamb for the meatballs I'm making.” She gropes around in her big floral tote, looks up at me and back at the list. “Hey, that’s my list! I must have dropped it.” We laugh that we were both oblivious, thinking it a coincidence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“So, what are you making?” I say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“An Alton Brown recipe for meatballs you put in paper egg cartons and bake in the oven. The grease is absorbed and the meatballs get crispy.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I suggest she add a fire extinguisher to the list of ingredients.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4/16/19 </span></div>
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-60666106807508470192018-12-19T19:48:00.000-08:002018-12-19T19:49:05.744-08:00 Christmas 2018<p dir="auto">“Java?” he asked, simply wanting another cup of coffee.<br>“Why not,” she replied and left the room to pack. “And Bali too,” she <br>added from the closet, from where bathing suits and sandals and sun hats <br>were piling up in a heap.</p><p>And so we set off on our Christmas trip 2018 for the temples Borobudur and Prambanan in Java near Yogyakarta. And now we’re lounging around in Bali. </p><p>The avocado grove has been seriously pruned and needs little attention for the next year. We’re footloose, fancy free and still able to get around—a little slower during the day perhaps; bed time is earlier and we run our checklists on the road carefully.</p><p>“Passports?”<br>“Check.”<br>“Back up glasses?”<br>“Check.”<br>“Passports?”<br>“Didn’t we just do that?”</p><p>As of this writing, we don’t need trusses, adult Kimbies, pain killers, anti-psychotics, denture adhesive, canes, walkers or braces but as we know at our age, they could be part of our lives any day now. We don’t special request a wheelchair at the gate, nor do we need advance boarding. Security checks have become easier because after age seventy-five you don’t have to remove your shoes or jackets, probably because it takes too much time to get all the stuff off and get out of the way. We have no metal replacement parts yet so special hand baton checks aren’t necessary.</p><p>Reading airport signs will be easier for me on our next trip, Richard’s birthday request, to Moscow and on to Vladivostok by train across six time zones, because I’m scheduled for cataract surgery in late January. Fortunately, Richard has excellent eyes, but four fully functioning eyes at our age will be a big bonus. I’ll be able to see clearly, in the Cyrillic alphabet, words I don’t understand, but Richard does. On the hearing front, the score currently is Richard-two operating ears, me-one. As a bonus for the hearing loss, I developed tinnitus and am celebrating my ninth year of continuous buzz, clang and hiss. Conversation goes as it did at breakfast this morning:</p><p>“Why is she asking if we want a cigar...it’s breakfast,” I say, puzzled.<br>Richard explains, smiling patiently, “She’s asking if you want sugar.”</p><p>Here in Indonesia, Richard is addressed as Pak and I am Ibu, terms of respect for grandparents. Not many older people were “on the road” on Java, so we found ourselves a bit of a curiosity. Kids stared. Groups asked us to pose with them and arranged and rearranged themselves in lines putting us in the middle, then on the ends. The photos were taken on five or six phones at a time.</p><p>When back in Fallbrook we’ll be using What’s App to stay connected to our new Javanese friends, adding them to the world-spanning list of wonderful folks we’ve met over the years. </p><p>Life, when at home in Fallbrook is peaceful and this year, thankfully, fire free. After a week to recover from jet lag, we’ll start seriously organizing our next adventures. We putter around the rancho between trips and to kill time we volunteer at the library and pursue our hobbies and long list of projects. Like everyone our age we approach the New Year with much resolve to divest ourselves of our junk. Maybe this year, 2019, Yearof the Pig will be our magical year of tidying up. </p><p>As we say here in Bali,<br>Selemat Malan </p><p>Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Qg0l4Kxf_wg/XBsRLkTYo1I/AAAAAAADgck/XCRojObik6g9dz4qbklhf5ex2qaGDoTHgCHMYCw/s9999/IMG_8314.jpg" width="874" height="655"></div>Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-73408529510233185452018-11-14T06:34:00.000-08:002018-11-15T10:54:26.677-08:00Florence 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Homeaway rentals are usually pretty good once you’re settled in. Sometimes settling can be unsettling. We were instructed to call from the train station when we arrived. The damn phone with it’s new Vodaphone SiM card decided to ask for a pass code. Of course, the code was packed away. In the train station, I had to open up my suitcase and rummage through it to find the card and get it operable again. Then, the phone went to an answering machine that no doubt gave a witty reply. I didn’t understand a word, in fact, I thought the disembodied voice was advising that the phone had been disconnected. I left a message after the growly noise. Not a beep, a growly sort of noise. With no other options, we got into a cab and went to the apartment office.<br />
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As we expected, on Saturday, the office was closed. I checked the phone, just in case, and found seventeen messages from our greeter. She came from around the corner and brought us into our apartment. Happy ending.<br />
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The accommodation is perfectly located and comfortable although chilly. Even though it’s warm outside, these marble and stone buildings trap cold air at night and are hard to warm up. I remembered freezing in October in Italy and we brought thick socks and sweaters to wear inside.<br />
The clothing we had wasn't enough and we ended up going to H&M where I bought heavy sweats and a black knit cap to wear indoors.<br />
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This morning we’re having toast. The “Jolly” toast machine looks like a kind of catapult. Sometimes Italian design is clownish. Don’t you think this toaster is a bit much? The blue handles lift the toast in and out of the slots. Form dominates function.</div>
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As expected, the streets are mobbed in Florence. Yesterday, a beautiful sunny day, about 75 degrees brought everyone out into the squares, the restaurants, and the shops. We wandered around getting familiar with our location on Belledonna steps away from the Piazza Santa Maria Novella.</div>
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For lunch, we ate yet another panini, this time on foccacia. These sandwiches are always good, with salty meat and cheeses - hearty and flavorful. We ate dinner at Osteria Belledonna, right next door to us - a salad, tagliatelle with porcini for me and a pork and white bean dish for Richard. When we ordered Aperol Spritzes, our waiter said, “Why not?” I guess you don’t order these to drink with dinner.<br />
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We were surprised to have two plates loaded with crostini topped with tomatoes and chicken livers placed in front of us. The waiter told us, “Yes, your appetizer.” We shrugged and ate a little thinking perhaps it was a free appetizer, offered by some of the tourist joints. Finally, another waiter noticed us looking perplexed. It was someone else’s order.<br />
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Two close calls during the day. A motorcycle almost clipped me. A overly vigorous, reckless runner almost topped Richard over. Plowed right on by without so much a glance.</div>
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-78063565962904415052018-09-30T10:19:00.001-07:002018-09-30T13:14:45.635-07:00Florence 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F05a8u0MqG4/W7EuszjQKFI/AAAAAAADeKw/i2E_RnpMGes6l_i4hnOoSn1Zt9N1kxTRACHMYCw/s9999/P1050647.jpg" width="700" height="525"></div><p><br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Z6wif9na4N0/W7EusqIpmCI/AAAAAAADeKs/tM9vC3aFTsgO1WTAs1TthLhPdWitq-AfwCHMYCw/s9999/IMG_3726.jpg" width="674" height="900"></div><p><br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-YS5RuQY7J4M/W7Eusej6UuI/AAAAAAADeKo/dqk78QRl9kUf5Vz0sgr4H6KnH7zKajD2gCHMYCw/s9999/IMG_3716.jpg" width="674" height="900"></div><p><br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VjcTv302fZk/W7EurxaEz1I/AAAAAAADeKg/cMQeBlkQ_qEU42uyhZZo5kyu9HB2RxCkgCHMYCw/s9999/IMG_3579.jpg" width="599" height="800"></div><p><br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3r7FlXnbAf0/W7Eur5qNf-I/AAAAAAADeKk/z0UAM-YmCEgudZI4wQ-uVM8OY9cNFXcIQCHMYCw/s9999/P1050645.jpg" width="675" height="900"></div><p><br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UyCnMpXUlxI/W7Euqth4cVI/AAAAAAADeKc/F8EDBvJwim0XjmSfnHwiA4ZYtWdqbRDKwCHMYCw/s9999/P1050624.jpg" width="675" height="900"></div><p><br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-tNt7Rt5itlg/W7EuqWuyGoI/AAAAAAADeKU/rgx_hY66-jk5PsTwNji7YETLtSFz7efSgCHMYCw/s9999/P1050623.jpg" width="800" height="600"></div><p><br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-bcdWiMpPPx8/W7EuqbG9FSI/AAAAAAADeKY/7c9u8_UB0_YuBTEDMh50jahyvwgYIvEiwCHMYCw/s9999/P1050618.jpg" width="800" height="640"></div><p><br></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Jq6XwFUGUKc/W7EuqQJUqDI/AAAAAAADeKQ/ciY6QN2fo7ULj3yb25SyPr_CH5RXzYqLwCHMYCw/s9999/P1050621.jpg" width="674" height="900"></div>Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36955857.post-63491889806841393842018-09-30T03:40:00.000-07:002018-09-30T03:40:25.958-07:00Milan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In Milan recovering from jet lag and enjoying glorious warm days. The city is recovering from Fashion Week; the beautiful people linger—people watching scores ten out of ten. The roof of the duomo offers stunning views of the roof itself covered with buttresses, statues, corbels. Breath taking.<script type="text/javascript">
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Helen Killeen Bauch McHarguehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07042488205276127209noreply@blogger.com0