Category Archives: Community

Snow Day # 10

 

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Just as predicted, more snow.  And yes, schools are closed again.  This is a gorgeous, fluffy snow, the kind that appears to coat tree branches with cotton puffs.  While I got my fill of the white stuff several snow days ago, this one occurs at a welcome time.  My daughter returned yesterday morning from her annual drama trip to New York City.  It’s a twenty-four hour excursion, from 4 AM Saturday to 4 AM Sunday.  They saw the musical Pippin, did an improv workshop, toured the theatre district and went to the Top of the Rock. D slept until early afternoon but was still exhausted.  Today is a much-needed catch-up day, a time to ease back, slowly, into her regular schedule.  A 5:30 wake-up in our house is never pretty, but it would have been frightfully ugly this morning.  Thank you, St. Patrick’s Day snow!

On a sadder note, the kids may be in school until mid-July.

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Young Love, Old Love Notes, Part I

 

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When I was growing up, the exchange of love notes was among the essential elementary school experiences.  Most of us who came of age in the 60s and 70s, I would bet, took some part in the process, as sender, receiver, envious onlooker, or all of the above.  Because, as I’ve mentioned, I’m a saver, a documentarian of life’s minutiae, I have proof that I was, at least for a brief time, a player in that game.

A recent search for some tedious document in the chaos of our home office uncovered something I found far more interesting:  a Raggedy Anne stationery box stuffed with elementary school memorabilia.  Among various artifacts, it contains several notes I received in third grade.  I wish I could remember how I reacted when I received these as an eight-year old.  I was probably flattered, but puzzled.  Evidently I appreciated them, or I wouldn’t have saved them.  I do know that in recent years, they have never failed to make me smile.

In third grade, battling my OCD demons kept me too stressed and distracted to consider romance.  (See In the Way Back, the Old Swing Set, Going Back to Nature, July 2013.)  Schoolwork helped to silence the exhausting voices in my head, so I threw myself with frenzied gusto into learning my multiplication tables, reading Scholastic books and writing stories that starred my dog and stuffed animals.  I tried to keep my craziness under wraps during school hours.  These notes suggest that maybe I did.  Or maybe the sender wasn’t put off by a touch of crazy.  Maybe he was a little crazy himself.  Who knows, now?  Anyway, I’m glad I kept the notes.   No doubt there are those who’d say I’m insane for saving them all these years.

I treasure these old notes, a testament to the sender’s ingenuity and thoroughness. The one shown above follows a traditional format.  On heavy folded construction paper, a heart with carefully ruffled edges is drawn in pencil and colored in crayon. The message is simple, direct and emphatic.  I love you appears seven times throughout.  It’s signed by one boy, Danny, on the inside.  Oddly, on the back, there are two signatures:  Danny and Greg, accompanied by a pencil drawing that could be a flying saucer but is more likely a pair of lips.  Inside there is an additional message:  Kiss me after school please.  There was much difficulty with the writing and spelling of please.  It required several erasures, a cross-out and a correction.

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Because Danny (now Dan) and I are Facebook friends despite not having seen one another in over thirty years, we’ve been able to compare our recollections of the circumstances surrounding the note.  Soon after we got back in touch, he asked if I remembered receiving a love note from him in third grade.  He was more than surprised to learn that not only did I remember, I still had the note.  Dan distinctly recalled being dared by another boy (Bill, not Greg) to put a love note in my desk.  He took the dare and tucked the note in my desk after I’d left school, planning to retrieve it early the next morning before I arrived.  He forgot about the last part, and so when he entered the classroom he saw me unfolding the paper. 

Dan had no memory of the note’s appearance or wording.  He couldn’t remember conspiring with Greg in creating it.  He was completely astonished at the Kiss me message.  That didn’t sound at all like him at all, he said.  I had always thought that very same thing.  I remember Danny as a very funny boy, one who’d do anything for a laugh.  But he was quite shy.  I couldn’t see him demanding after-school kisses.  Maybe I assumed that was Greg’s handiwork.  I’d say he was bolder kid, one with a somewhat devil-may-care attitude.  And yes, I’m Facebook friends with Greg after all these years, as well.  When I asked if he remembered co-authoring a love note to me, he did not.  His response was diplomatic; he didn’t want to sound callous or disappoint me.  His heart, he gently but clearly recalled, belonged to another third grade girl. 

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Dan observed that the Kiss me sentence appears to have been written by a different hand.  The pencil lead is darker, and the words are printed, unlike Danny’s all-cursive I love you above it and those that appear on the front.  All the writing on the back, including both signatures, would appear to be written by the Kiss me author.  Dan concluded that, shy as he was, he must have mentioned the dare to Greg, who stepped in to offer moral support.  He probably wrote the Kiss me line on impulse, thinking, Why not?  Maybe this will get interesting!  Could be that’s when he decided to sign his own name and Danny’s, putting himself in the running for the kiss.

The note didn’t prompt me to kiss anyone after school.  I was definitely not that kind of girl in third grade.  But  these decades later, it’s nice to look back and know that I was asked.  And to know that someone, perhaps with a little encouragement from a friend, decided I was worth the effort of all that careful coloring and the writing of I Love You seven times.  That makes it  a note worth saving.
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The photo above shows our second grade class with our teacher Mrs. Small, the year before the note was written.  My third grade photo has gone missing.  Dan is the sweet-faced boy at the left end of the top row.  His mother tended to dress him in a suit on picture day.  I’m second from the right on the top row, wearing, of course, an outfit made entirely by my mother, down to my red, white and blue scarf, my hair pulled back in a pony tail. Years ago, when I first showed this photo to my daughter to see if she could find me, she had considerable difficulty.  After she pointed questioningly to many girls who were clearly not me, I grew a little exasperated and showed her.  Oh, she said, with much surprise.  I thought that was a boy, with short hair and a tie.  Greg does not appear in this photo; he was in the other second grade class that year. 

 

Snowmelt, and Can it Be, a Hint of Spring?

I can’t be alone, among those in the snowbound sections of our country, in having recently felt lost in some permanent winter limbo.  Last Friday that sensation was particularly acute.  I was on the fifth day of a nasty cold that was keeping me exhausted, shivering, stuffy, head-achy and generally miserable.  Each day brought a new symptom.  That morning I welcomed the onset of a deep, bone-shaking, throat-searing cough.  I had hoped for a couple of hours extra sleep after H and D left for work and school.  Typically on dark, overcast mornings, I go upstairs to find Kiko curled up on the foot of my bed.  As soon as I get out, he jumps in.  But this morning he had been continually underfoot, pacing, staring expectantly, demanding to walk as soon as possible.  He was oblivious to the morning’s gray hostility.  So by 7:30, under a leaden sky, my dog and I were picking our way across piles of dirty brown snow, a biting wind whipping at our ears.  He was scampering merrily.  I was trudging grumpily.

 This cold had hit me harder than most, and I was finding it difficult to power through.  Maybe the excessive chill of the winter had sapped my strength.  That Friday I was especially gloomy, knowing I wouldn’t be able to spend the day bundled on the sofa, dozing and working through weird Tivo selections such as Hal Ashby movies from the 70s.  I had managed to do little else for four days, but my time was up.  We needed groceries and every known household paper product.  Prescriptions were awaiting pick-up.  It was the day for my allergy shots.  Kiko would need another walk.  And I should probably make dinner for a change.  Ugh.  I counted the hours until I could go back to bed.

But Saturday was indeed a new day.  And best of all, it felt like a new, much-anticipated season.  The sun was shining with a glorious intensity, the sky was blue, and the temperature was climbing into the 60s.  The robins were feasting. The snow was melting.  Suddenly, winter was on the run. For the first time in what seemed like years, it felt like spring.

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The melting snow added a sense of drama to our first spring-like day.  This was an early spring day akin to those described in The Secret Garden  and my favorite books of childhood poetry.
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What do you know, there are tiny buds on the cherry trees!

It’s Snow Day #9. Will We Make it to #10?

For the ninth day since the beginning of this school year, classes are canceled in northern Virginia because of snow or extreme cold.  This has to be a record-setting number.

As for snow, I’ve had sufficient.  My dog and daughter, however, disagree. 

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Kiko enjoys dashing playfully through this snow, which isn’t as deep as our last one.  Just when I noticed that the snow had piled up on his multi-colored soccer ball so that it resembled an Easter egg, he ran to attack it, hoping I’d fight him for it. 

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A Pescadero Classic: Duarte’s Tavern

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Our tour along the northern California coast ended on a festive note with dinner at Duarte’s Tavern, a Pescadero landmark and true American classic.  Duarte’s dates from 1894, when Frank Duarte, an immigrant from Portugal, bought the tavern and began selling whisky from a barrel.  The spot proved popular with local fishermen, whalers and farmers.  While Prohibition was a setback, the original bar survived intact, and in the 1930s the Duarte family expanded the business to include food service (sandwiches, ice cream and pies).  They also ran a barbershop on the premises.  While the barber chairs have disappeared, the plain, unassuming décor has changed very little, which, depending upon your point of view, contributes to the place’s simple charm (as I see it), or its lack thereof.  For the past several decades, Duarte’s has been famous for its flavorful soups, fresh fish, and delicious pies. The fourth generation of the family now runs the restaurant.

At the recommendation of our friends, who are Duarte’s regulars, we began with a combination of the two house specialty soups, cream of green chile and cream of artichoke.  Served with fresh sourdough bread, it was as tasty as they had said it would be.  The locally caught sole was just as described: absolutely fresh and simply prepared.  I only wish I’d been able to sample the Crab Cioppino.  My one Bay Area food regret is not tasting this regional specialty, a hearty seafood stew.  Next time.

No one missed out on Duarte’s most famous pie, however.  Our friends had spoken highly of the olallieberry pie.  You East Coasters might well ask What?– just  as I did.  Surely that’s a made-up word.  It sounds like something Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat would serve up on that cold, rainy day.  Perhaps in an early draft of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat, the happy couple dined on slices of olallieberry pie? (for which the runcible spoon would be well-suited.)

But no.  Olallieberry is a real word referring to a real berry, although one of fairly recent origin.  Essentially, it’s a locally grown blackberry-raspberry hybrid, a cross that was developed by way of the loganberry and youngberry,  (I had no idea my knowledge of berries was so rudimentary).  Olallie, interestingly, is a Pacific Northwest Native American word for berry.  At our table that day, all seven in our party ordered the olallieberry pie.  No one was disappointed.

When we return to California in a few years, we’ll make sure to seek out our good friends again. I’ll even give them more than a couple of day’s notice of our impending arrival.  And when we drive along the coast (next time we’ll venture farther south, to Monterey and Carmel), we’ll stop by Duarte’s.  I feel sure it will still be there.   Maybe the fifth generation of the family will be running the place by then.  On second thought, no.  We won’t wait that long.

In Pescadero: Harley Farms Goat Dairy

My final California posts have been much delayed.  That most tiresome and expected of reasons has kept me away from the blog for almost two weeks:  our old PC moved on to its greater reward.  It had been ailing for a while, and its misery was contagious.  Closing or opening a document had become a lengthy, frustrating process.  Our home office often resounded with groans, moans and furious mutterings as one of us sat staring beseechingly at an endlessly spinning “loading” symbol.  (Loading, loading, always loading, never loading.)  Once the PC had given up the ghost, of course, there followed the dreaded prospect of replacing it.  Fortunately, that falls under my husband’s purview, and he’s still dealing with the complex transition from old to new.  What would I do if I were single?

Now, a second-to-last look at our time in northern California.

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Because we toured the coast with local friends, we had the chance to visit some unique places we wouldn’t have discovered on our own.  One such spot, a favorite of our friends, is Harley Farms, a farm-to-table goat dairy in the rural seaside community of Pescadero.  This goat farm has a funky, unpretentious elegance and a chic sense of style.   It’s a friendly, family-run operation in an inviting setting of thoughtfully restored old farm buildings.  Two hundred furry, feisty Alpine goats munch and lounge happily in grassy pastures bordered by gardens and sheltered by rolling hills.  Llamas stand guard, exercising particular vigilance over the kids.  (Is anything cuter than a baby goat?  Maybe only a Shiba Inu puppy.)  The goats’ milk is processed on site into an array of award-winning cheeses.  These include crumbly feta, creamy chevre topped beautifully with edible flowers, as well as the softer consistency fromage blanc and ricotta cheeses.

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In the cozy restored barn that houses the shop, cheeses may be sampled and purchased.  Prior to our visit, while I had no objection to goat cheese, I wasn’t an outspoken fan. Harley Farms changed that.  After nibbling on a wide range of samples, we left with three tasty varieties.  My favorite may be the Monet chevre, seasoned with herbes de Provence.  The lavender and honey chevre runs a close second.  Also available in the shop are soaps, lotions and other bath and body products, all made with the milk of Harley goats.  Additionally, the farm produces nine lovely colors of durable, environmentally friendly FarmPaint. The barn’s hayloft, with its unique fir table that seats twenty-two, serves as a truly atmospheric event space.  Looking for a wedding venue like no other?  Harley Farms will handle all the details.

A goat farm had not been on our list of northern California must-sees.  But thanks to our friends, it is now.

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Some of the Harley nanny goats.  One appears to be kneeling in prayer.

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A guard llama eyes us warily.

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An immense eucalyptus tree shades the milk processors.

An Afternoon in Half-Moon Bay

To continue our tour of the northern California coast, we met up with good friends who had settled in Palo Alto to raise their family.  Although we’d kept in touch through Christmas cards, it had been perhaps seventeen years since I’d seen my former housemate Laura, and probably twenty since I’d seen her husband.  Laura and I became fast friends when we lived on the same small gray corridor of the New Graduate College in Princeton.  Together with our buddy and hallmate Ben, we could face anything the weird world of ivy-league graduate study could throw at us.  We considered ourselves a formidable trio.  And, when we weren’t working hard, we sure had fun.

When Laura completed her master’s degree and landed a job at Bell Labs, she stayed in Princeton and we rented a funny little blue house on Humbert Street near the cemetary.  More accurately, Laura rented it, and I provided her with pocket change.  I was still a poor student, and she graciously let me share the house, accepting as payment no more than the fractional amount my stipend would allow.  When our landlord sold that house, we moved across the borough to the lower level of a really lovely Victorian home on Murray Place.  I was with Laura at a Grad School cookout when we met two new engineering students, one of whom would later become my husband.  Our Murray Place house was conveniently near the E-Quad, where H spent his days in the lab.  He often parked on our street, which made it easy for me to plan to run into him by accident.  Laura was from New Jersey, with lots of family nearby.  On many Thanksgivings, Super Bowl Sundays and various holidays when I couldn’t get back to Atlanta, they welcomed me as one of their own.

With such a foundation of shared history, a couple of decades is nothing.  We picked up easily, and the years fell away.  We met the children we had watched grow up in photographs.  Laura’s son is sixteen, her daughter fourteen, with D right in the middle at fifteen.  The kids had little trouble breaking the ice; it was almost as if they were old friends, as well.  The same was true when D had the chance, several years ago, to meet Ben’s kids.

One of our coastal convoy’s first stops was Half Moon Bay, about thirty minutes south of San Francisco.  This quaint town has gained worldwide renown for its proximity to the phenomenal surfing spot known as Mavericks.  Until the 1990s, the enormous waves that develop under certain weather conditions were a closely kept local secret.  Since then, though, the word has been out, and elite surfers cross the globe to catch the waves, prove themselves (and risk their lives) at Half Moon Bay.

Today, as I write, the conditions for those near-legendary waves are ideal.  Twenty-four of the world’s top surfers, from as far away as Australia, South Africa and Brazil, are gathered at Half Moon Bay for the Mavericks Invitational surfing competition.   Waves as high as forty-five feet are forecasted.  Crowds have flocked to witness the action at waterfront hotels and restaurants.  No one is allowed to observe from the beach, however, due to the unpredictable nature of the waves.  Several years ago, a dozen spectators at Mavericks were injured by a rogue wave, an ever-present danger along this section of the coast.

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In this Dec. 30 view of Half Moon Bay, looking toward the harbor,
the waters are deceptively calm.


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The coast is rocky,


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and the bluffs are steep.  Sudden strong waves reared up periodically, seemingly out of nowhere, even on the day of our visit, when no surfers were out.


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A view along Main Street.


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The town’s historic Methodist Episcopal Church.


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Another Main Street view.  Flanked by mountains and the sea, lush with picturesque foliage, Half Moon Bay is one of those charming California towns that I had suspected existed only on movie lots.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

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The current extreme cold isn’t news to anyone in more than half of the country.  Still, it is remarkable.  The need to talk about the weather seems to be an almost inescapable element of our humanity.  It’s in our nature, and it’s hard to avoid.  As we’ve been told, we can blame the deep freeze on the polar vortex, which has gone kinky.  Oh dear!

Here in Northern Virginia, for the first time I can remember, school was canceled due to the cold, much to our daughter’s great joy.  Our porch thermometer read -1 at 7 AM.  D, who enjoys the sleep of the dead on school mornings, was inspired to get up and go out, briefly, just to experience the temperature.

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The morning view from our upstairs rooms was almost completely obscured by frost, thanks to our leaky storm windows.  If we ever get new windows, we won’t know, immediately upon waking, how to dress for the day.  Justification, perhaps, for keeping the old windows.

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Kiko and I walked, as usual, around 8 AM.  I bundled up sensibly, in layers, as any regular dog walker does.  I overdid the bundling, in fact, so I got a little warm.  The ice crystals that collected in my scarf were the only indication that this cold was more serious than usual.  Kiko kept up a brisk pace, thankfully.  He seemed to enjoy the frosty air but had the sense not to linger over the day’s smorgasbord of smells.

When we returned about 45 minutes later, Kiko rushed onto the porch, forgoing his usual attempt to ambush squirrels at the back yard bird feeder. Once inside, he didn’t pause to check his food bowl, but hurried to a sizable patch of sun in the playroom.  For several hours, he followed the sun to spots it rarely takes him. He kept himself tightly curled, like a little fox.  My furry friend had evidently felt the chill.

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Finally, warm enough to unwind.

A day off school often seems like a break from ordinary time, so I decided to do something different and make French onion soup for lunch.  Standing by the stove, caramelizing onions, working the New York Times crossword while listening to John Prine and Robert Earl Keen turned out to be an ideal way to keep warm in our drafty house. Maybe this afternoon, I can convince D to watch the last half of Downton Abbey with me.

To all of you sharing this icy spell, I wish you safety, warmth, comfort, and a welcome break from the usual!

Goodbye to the King: Elvis the Cat, 1995 – 2013

Elvis the Cat was my friend Doug’s beloved companion.  Doug passed away almost two years ago, after a long, hard-fought battle with the rare disease syringomyelia.  (See Remembering Doug, February 2012.) During Doug’s last years, when his illness had deprived him of nearly all mobility, Elvis must have been an especially great comfort.  After Doug died, Elvis was there to offer love and support for Doug’s wife.  Now Elvis has gone on to his eternal reward.  He was eighteen years old.  Like Doug, he was a unique character.  Like Doug, he will be greatly missed.

 

During visits to my parents in Atlanta, my daughter and I enjoyed dropping in to talk with Doug, who never failed to entertain; his love of life remained robust no matter his level of discomfort.  If we lingered a while, we would usually be graced by Elvis’s regal presence.  He was reserved around all but immediate family, not one to dole out affection indiscriminately.  Elvis was especially wary of children.  As Doug advised D when she was a preschooler, Elvis didn’t appreciate loud voices and sudden movements.  She took this advice to heart, and it often paid off.  Elvis would first peer in from the hall, sizing us up with his cool yellow cat eyes.  Sometimes he decided we weren’t worth his time.  With a flip of his tail, he’d disappear.  Other times he gave us the OK and  approached tentatively, gracefully, on tip-toe.  D was delighted when he decided to settle in beside her, allowing her to stroke his abundantly fluffy black fur and hear his deep, growly purr.

Doug’s wife told my mother that although the house feels oddly empty, now that Elvis is no longer there, she has much to be thankful for.  She is grateful that Elvis was with Doug until the end, and that he stayed a while afterwards to offer solace as she began the process of adjusting to life without her husband.  Anyone lucky enough to be helped through a difficult time by the precious comfort of a pet must know the feeling.

Rest in peace, dear Elvis.  It was our good fortune to know you.

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Elvis, ignoring a cat toy, 2013.

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And beautifying the Christmas tree, 2012.