Winedale Porchscape

Insufferable Mother-in-law

2010-03-13T16:53:00.001-06:00

Just reading a parenthood debate in the New York Times where one of the bloggers used the term "insufferable mother-in-law" with reference to unwanted advice.

But why do those terms go together so often? Why is a MIL automatically insufferable?

I remember mine, a formidable woman whom I found interesting and admirable, but who definitely wasn't much given to dispensing warmth. And it did annoy me when my husband at the time spent time alone with her without me. I decided immediately when my son got engaged that I would be different. I would be warm, giving, kind, supportive. I would offer no unsolicited advice.

Of course, it’s done no good at all. The operative issues, whatever they are, seem far too strong.

I have, however, passed through to the other side of the mirror. Granny’s desire for alone time with her son, had nothing to do with a desire to “shut me out,” even if that’s what it accomplished. She just wanted to re-establish her emotional connection with him, the kind of emotional connection that society rewards when it’s between mothers and daughters and snickers over when sons are involved. Mothers are not seen as potentially damaging to daughters, for some weird reason. Only sons.

So it’s the MIL who gets the rap, when the DIL’s are blogging, and I have a question for them: When unwanted advice is handed out in your family, who’s the source? How often is the voice suggesting improvement coming from between your mother’s lips?
Now, really, compared to that waterfall, how often has your MIL suggested something? Anything?

And yet, she’s a person, too. I know that may seem an odd thing to feel compelled to add, but my own experience to date indicates that the existence of an MIL appears as a distortion in the field of reality for many DIL’s. For them, the MIL is mainly a bundle of the DIL’s responses, whatever they may be, with the MIL herself invisible behind them.

The truth is that your MIL has feelings, interests, even passions of her own. She’s been around a while on the planet and has accumulated a variety of experience with responses to it that are sometimes humorous, sometimes stupid, sometimes verging suspiciously close to wise. But mainly she is here and real. Erasing her because of a personal insecurity, or even from a sense of superiority, is cruel. She will be gone soon enough.

Besides, the two of you should be on the same side, really. She loves her son and so do you. You will love your children and she will, too. A stronger possible bond than these two things, I cannot imagine.

New Blog

2010-03-03T16:31:00.002-06:00

I'm starting a new blog and hope if any of you followers are still checking out this blog that you'll come see the new one: The Book in the Drawer, http://bookcracker.blogspot.com

I've migrated the posts from my old Bookcrackers blog to this one, as well.

The Book in the Drawer will be focusing on the tensions between my day job and the need to keep writing fiction. And especially I'll be chronicling the effort to have my novel, ABSENT, published.

So come see how it goes! I've missed everyone and hope to keep up better from now on.

Fish on Friday

2009-10-10T06:20:00.002-05:00

I am reminded of my Catholic upbringing by a charming blog entry from Mary of Egypt (http://soluscumsolo.blogspot.com), writing yesterday about Fish Fridays. Mary is a poet who has left her husband (very temporarily and with his approval, apparently and amazingly) to spend a year at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

Inspired by her husband's solo dinners back in the states, she goes out to find something delectable to cook for herself. And here is the good part: she lives, not in a college town, or dorm room, or grubby student digs with hotplates--but rather in a fishing village on a peninsula of an island. Appropriately, she searches for lobster...one of her grandfather's favorite foods, I happen to know. She finds it not.

MOE is a Catholic convert, lively and celebratory soul, High Romantic and when she sweeps into a room, you know that Someone Special has arrived. Her relationship to the church is infused with all the intensity and yearning associated with it throughoug English literature. I see her as entering a room trailing colored silks that bear with them the music of the great Catholic poets of the long ago past. (It does not hurt that she is beautiful.)

Hers is a wonderful way of embracing religion and I find myself applauding her, even though my own relationship with the Church is considerably more problematic. (So much so that I no longer have a relationship with it. As with politics, the labels that carried the convictions of my forebears have drifted away from me.)

My Catholicism, in contrast, was dishearteningly plebian--fish on Friday meant I couldn't spend the night with a friend without either sinning or skipping dinner. At home, of course, it was a different matter: shrimp creole, crab mornay--both favorites--and only occasionally trout almondine (imperfectly boned, sad to say). I always got the bone that was missed while my parents were scarfing down the delicate morsels. But choking on a bone was OK, because the Church has a celebration for that. A celebration rife with anecdotes of dead children, a specialty of our church at the time, it seems.

So with images of little kids who choked in my mind, we at St. Anne's School trooped into the church for St. Blaise's Day, where the priests blessed our throats. I remember two candles, tied into the shape of an X, hovering at my neck--very briefly, I might add. Did I mention that this terrified me? That this was only one of the many Catholic Mysteries that still make my skin crawl?

Take the Revelation of Bernadette--the third mystery about which in those apocalyptic times much speculation clustered. If mankind did not mend its ways, disaster would come--within my lifetime! We were still being required to huddle periodically under our desks in class to practice for the day when the Bomb would Drop. It did not take genius to associate the third mystery with the dropping bomb.

We were required to attend Mass every morning, which I found boring past the point of pain. This was the plain, everyday mass in Latin (its sole glory); not the wonderful High Mass with the music that I loved--ancient music, not some kid on the altar with a guitar.

I had a solution for the boredom, though. I would read the stories of the martyrs in the back of the Missal. There is no atrocity of today's Middle East that exceeds the litany of tortures to be found in these exceedingly morbid stories. But they were stories and stories are not boring.

In class we were given a little magazine that featured stories about children--Saintly Children of our Time--who died. To this day I can't lie in a bed with my arms on each side of me so that they pin down the sheet because that is how the little boy was lying in the picture of his mute suffering prior to death.

Thus, the glorious mysteries of Catholicism that seem to inspire so many great writers have been swamped for me by the procession of relics (body parts of long dead Saints), the grisly stories of flayed and dismembered martyrs, the constant promise of lurking disaster for the living world and the superiority, really, of just getting it all over with so we could go on to eternal life with God.

But while still trapped in the misery of worldly life, we were not to date a member of another religion--a sin. We were not to so much as think "unclean" thoughts while in the presence of the opposite sex. If you had thought something unclean (unspecified, too, so it could be interpreted broadly) and be killed, you would go straight to hell.

Every one of these concepts that rail against life and celebrate death and sterility fell like hot embers upon my sensitive psyche, leaving many scars.

When I attained the exalted age of 22 and discovered that my mother's long and happy marriage to my father, a divorced man, had prevented her from taking the sacraments for all that time--a significant penalty for her--I decided that the Catholic Church as it functions in America was not for me.

I am hoping that the Church embraced by Mary of Egypt and her Thomas More has changed--or that its effect upon sensitive children has become less devastating.

October heat

2009-10-06T12:49:00.002-05:00

Ah, yes. October. The month I met my husband. The month I got married. (Not the same year.) Once October was beautiful in Texas, our best month: cool air, blue sky, warm sunshine, lots of lovely grasses.

Today we're told the heat index will reach 109 in Houston. Now I ask you: where do I lodge my protest?

In September, we had all the rain we didn't have in the summer. Now we have gardens! Blooms like spring. And weeds...oh, my, do we have weeds! Our poor confused pear tree is even blooming.

Actually, that's kind of interesting. She has bloomed before in the wrong season, misinterpreting drought as winter (obviously not registering the temperature). But now, it's just one limb, the limb that has sat throughout the summer leafless, looking for all the world as though it had died. Nope. Just waiting, I suppose.

Well, I'm waiting, too. For Autumn. Fall. For 78 degree days instead of 78 degree nights.

For October light. Last year we got it in mid-November. What's on the docket for this year? December? Autumn for Christmas?

Here's a contest: Pick a temperature for Christmas Day, and go on record for it. (I will say that 75 degrees fahrenheit is not unusual for us, even "normally.") I'll pick 81. I'll send the person closest to the right temp a cactus.

If I'm right, I'll hide somewhere and weep.

One Golden Raintree

2009-09-25T08:11:00.002-05:00

Waking up slowly this morning...zzzz...gray sky, little streaks of color variation but they're all gray...a nubbly carpet of treetops, deep green, dense again a year after Ike...I can barely see the flicker of car headlights heading east on San Felipe, broken by the dark green canopy.

And in the middle, there is one Golden Raintree in full bloom, like a dappled sun pushing its way upward between the shadowy foliage around it.

I am hypnotized by its light...

Smoky Josephine

2009-09-23T07:12:00.002-05:00

Actually there's no Josephine. At least that's not her name. But there is smoke. Where? In our Houston condo unit. Coming through the air vents in the living room.

No, folks. We do not smoke. Hale did thirty or forty years ago, but I didn't ever take up the habit. I was a very obediant girl back in my basketball playing days. The coach said she'd bench any girl who smoked and I darned well didn't intend to be benched. So I resisted the languourous long-fingered sophistication of smoking friends. (My fingers are short, anyway.)

But now we reside in a condo when we're in Houston, a high-rise condo, and the smoke from the rental unit down the hall infiltrates our living room, where I often perch to work when I don't need to be in the office below. (That is a separate matter.)

Is this fair? The law apparently allows a condo unit owner to do whatever he/she likes inside his unit. But if he decided to have a nice bonfire in the middle of the living room floor, would that be OK?

Isn't there any legal precedent for saying, fine, smoke in your unit but you cannot allow any smoke to leave your unit to mix with the common air, and you cannot allow your smoke to seep into the units of other residences.

Don't the non-smoking people who breathe have rights that supersede those of the addicted smokers whose exhalations have been proven to increase the incidence of heart attacks and other health disasters?

For that matter, what about protecting smokers against themselves? The common highways have speed limits, restrict cell phone use, etc.

Any ideas, folks?

Lion on the Road

2009-09-20T09:06:00.002-05:00

Amarillo by morning...and it's a beautiful one! To anyone travelling by car from New Mexico to Texas, I highly recommend the route following I-25 from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, then a left turn along I-40 to Amarillo. For scenery. Especially with the sun at your back.

We had amazing cloud structures above dreamy landscapes of ever diminishing mountains and it truly made the time pass quickly. So did the wonderful NM speed limits, a sensible 75 mph. (This is ignoring the construction we encountered, but surely someday they'll complete construction along that stretch of I-40!)

Actually, though, we're not in Amarillo. It's really Canyon, a few miles to the west, I think.

We spent hours with our dear friends Donna and Walt in Santa Fe; then a nice dinner last night with my cousin Soeurette and her husband Bob overlooking the sliver of the Palo Duro Canyon that is visible from her cabin at the Palo Duro Club. She is the CFO of our corporation, so we mixed a bit of business with the delicious meal.(Boeuf bourgignonne, salad, Monkey Bread, apple dumplings with ice cream. All prepared without salt and excellent! I have two teachers, now.)

Soeurette's recent excitement includes the mountain lion she encountered recently at the gate to the property, and LH was hoping for a glimpse. Apparently the lion is a mother with two cubs.

The first time she saw the lion, she'd been returning from Amarillo, and as she approached the gate she saw something large run across the road. She stopped; and it stopped; and they looked at one another. And looked. "She had such a sweet face..." Then the cat started to walk along parallel to Soeurette's car, so Soeurette began to roll along with her. Then the lion stopped and they looked at one another again. Then the animal bounded off.

This is a club of rustic cabins, mind you, tucked away in rugged terrain around a lake. Dogs and children run free; there are horses. So you might imagine that the reaction of the members is mixed. Some carry guns and are frightened; others celebrate this emergence of the wild into our over-citified lives. Presumably she is drawn by water, and food

What would you do if a mountain lion chose to live quietly in your neighborhood?

Hello, again

2009-09-16T21:37:00.003-05:00

Hello again to any of you who are still remembering this blog exists. I'm so sorry that I've been unable to post for so long. We had an encounter with the medical profession that took a lot of my energy--LH had a small cancer discovered in his bladder--and until it was removed and we received the good reports, I had no energy for anything else.

To celebrate the positive outcome, we undertook a driving trip to Santa Fe, to see old friends and renew acquaintance with the city where so many of our happy times took place.

So far, we haven't been very actively engaged in all that touching of bases since we both came down with altitude sickness.

Altitude sickness is a puzzling phenomenon. It doesn't care whether one is fit (I am not) or young (ditto). Some people have trouble at 7000 feet and some do not. No one knows exactly what determines this, apparently.

But oxygen helps; and acetominophen for the headache. And time appears to be the best help. We're feeling better now, on our fourth evening here. And so tomorrow, perhaps, we will venture forth as we originally planned.

Today, we were treated to a cozy, chilly day with clouds nestling in among the Sangre de Christo mountains--in particular one pale gray cloud shaped like an eel.

We should have lighted the fire in the fireplace...

Where Have All the Oak Trees Gone?

2009-08-03T07:31:00.003-05:00

The thing that surprises most first-time visitors I meet is how leafy Houston is, even inside the Loop, near downtown. When we moved into this 6th floor condo unit in 2002, I compared our view to the prized one from Fifth Avenue in New York, looking out over the canopy of trees in Central Park.

The amazing thing to us, even then, was that what looked like the treescape of a park from above, was actually a neighborhood of homes where people lived in harmony with the shade around them.

The ensuing seven years have seen tropical disturbances, construction, economic melt-down, a recession. The first of these would have been expected to damage our trees to some degree, and it did. It is the second, though, that has been responsible for the vastly greater damage, despite financial problems that should at least have brought it to a temporary halt.

MacMansions are on the march down Piping Rock west of Maconda, near River Oaks.

When we stand on our balcony looking to the southwest, the green canopy that once stretched toward the Loop has been replaced by gray expanses of roof in such close proximity that no oak tree can survive. Which is probably moot since whatever might have been there was removed for construction. If one or two remain out near the street, they present the sad aspect of patients with a terminal disease, their canopies thinning, their limbs serially amputated, a pitiful sight.

Higher density building is happening all over the neartown suburbs of Houston, and in many areas it is welcomed for the demand it will create for mass transit. Loss of trees is generally compensated for by decreased pollution damage from automobiles.

The MacMansions, though, do not contribute to beneficial urban population densities. They’re single-family houses and we’ve seen no sign of the large families one might expect to occupy them. You might call them “underoccupied” from the point of view of how much electricity they consume for cooling and other basic activities.

In the areas where this is happening, therefore, we are seeing the negatives of density with none of the potential positives. We’re losing our trees, and with them the oxygen they produce to help in our battle for clean air; we’re losing one of the few sources of natural beauty in our city—the one most likely to be noticed by visitors and tourists. And we’re getting nothing for it.

I should point out than when these oversized houses are planned for River Oaks, at least, a sign is posted noting that a variance has been requested. The variance, when granted, allows a house to be built that exceeds the neighborhood’s size restrictions. And they are always granted. I would like to know why. And I would like that answer to be public and specific.

JetBlue Misery

2009-07-20T20:24:00.002-05:00

Tonight I have a short rant. Been flying back and forth to New York on JetBlue four times, now. Three flights were great, but they were normal-sized airplanes--A380s I think. Today, coming back from New York, we were on an Embraer 190, narrow, cigar-shaped airplane, and we were back of the middle. Bad, bad, bad.

Forget the fact that my reading light had burned out. I was probably one of only three people on the flight who wanted to read...but like I said, never mind that.

The main difficulty was the temperature. I always carry a light jacket in expectation of cooler temperatures aloft. The plane flies at 30,000 plus feet, so one might expect cool air, don't you think? But no. Not only was it hot, but there was no air circulation without using those nasty little individual air jets which blow germs from all over the airplane right into your face.

I asked the female attendant, Dodi, if it were normal for the plane to be so warm. (I was not the only uncomfortable person by any means.) She said rather curtly: "I'll adjust it."

But no adjustment was forthcoming. I thought I might ask her about it again, but by then the attendants had erected their barrier against terrorists, or whatever, sealing off the front facilities and their service area from the rest of the cabin. I think it's so the captain can come out and use the restroom. At any rate, I decided to wait and hope for improvement.

So, an hour and a half later--after the barrier had been removed--I went up front to the restroom and, since I was feeling like I was being slowly deprived of sufficient oxygen, I asked her a couple more questions about how the AC worked. She said the AC system is supposed to balance the flow of air between the front of the plane and the back. She tried, she said, to increase the air flow to the back (which obviously meant reducing it to the front where she was sitting--and to be fair where the pilot and co-pilot were, as well--) but the control was very temperamental and any bump could dislodge it.

I am inclined to accept explanations from staff on airplanes. I want you to know that. I have my doubts about this, but we don't want the people flying the plane to have insufficient air and fall asleep, do we?

In the end, after considerable turbulence, we landed safely. The pilot and co-pilot did a great job. But the sense of insufficient air didn't go away until we walked out into the terminal where, fortunately, there was no problem with air or airconditioning, at all.

I'm not sure whether JetBlue is trying to save money by raising the temp on its planes and restricting the ingress of oxygen to the absolute limit. Or whether the Embraer 190 is just a crummy aircraft. Or whether we would have noticed a problem if we'd been sitting up front, where we usually sit.

It has made me thoughtful, though, about flying that airline again.

Today I would give JetBlue a big thumbs down.

New Pix

2009-07-18T15:02:00.004-05:00

The intersection near Cooper-Union in the East Village. The man near the right edge didn't appreciate having his picture taken. He screamed at me when he got close, clearly mistaking me for someone who was near his garbage can yesterday, perhaps competing for cans.

A few blocks away, near 4th Avenue and East Seventh St.

Striking graffitti in the Bowery

This leafy greeness is adjacent to a fine juice bar on 11th Street and 2nd Avenue named Liquiteria.

The rose-bedecked concrete playground on Thompson Street in SoHo.

Younger and faster

2009-07-16T09:08:00.002-05:00

I love New York but it's getting too young for me.

Last night we ate on East 4th St and 2nd avenue, surrounded by the future, age 22. Hordes of it, in every permutation of race and nationality, all looking fabulous and having a splendid time at the top of their lungs.

Everything about Manhattan changes as you go south. Buildings get smaller, the population on the street gets younger, the prices drop. Bicycles become pedestrian hazards as they disregard red lights. We almost got mowed down at Union Square by a motorized wheel chair whose occupant was in a hurry to cross the street before the light changed. He was aiming for the ramp at the curb into which we were about to step. Whoops! Lesson learned. Avoid those ramps, they have preferential users.

This kind of immersion experience is excellent for the circuits of the brain, I think. Every part of one's thinking apparatus has to keep functioning at all times--a little like driving Houston's freeways, except it really is ALL THE TIME. At night we drop into bed like stones.

I'm posting pictures of the trip on the blog: see below for one bunch.

New York Photos

2009-07-14T09:53:00.004-05:00

The commentary in this post is by Leon Hale. The photos are mine.

When I'm at home and think of New York City, this is the picture I visualize most often. It was shot in the lower end of Central Park, through the trees to the high-rises on the street called Central Park South.

Construction workers on the Upper East Side in Manhattan gather around a street vendor for their lunch. Taco and fajita time.

Vehicular traffic is no longer allowed in Times Square and on weekends the street is invaded by hordes of visitors. We heard half a dozen different languages spoken in this crowd.

They celebrated Bastille Day on Sunday with a street fair and three blocks of French food.

A little touch of the country in New York -- a tomato plant growing on the sidewalk on East 13th St.

It's cooler here

2009-07-13T17:14:00.002-05:00

Cooler in more than one sense, actually, although having weather less hot than Texas isn't all that difficult.

But we're presently in the haven of hip, in search of adventure. Not too much adventure, either. Just the right amount.

What I'm talking about is downtown Manhattan. New York City. The East Village, to be precise. We're in a condo I found on the internet. Not bad, either, if you overlook the motor on the AC in the bedroom, which sounds like a car engine that won't turn over.

We're going to find out if we can sleep with the noise. Or maybe it will be cool enough tonight that we can turn it off. Ah, yes. There is a nice thought.

We've been near here before during summertime, in my son's flat while he and his wife were on vacation elsewhere. That was a couple of years ago. A nice sunny flat like this one, except the airconditioner was a window unit about ten inches wide that sighed cool air. The only way we could be sure it was actually emitting anything was to put a hand on top of a vent. We enjoyed a very hot week. (But not like home, now. Oh, no.)

Today's high here wss a steaming 81, with high seventies promised for tomorrow. Every time we congratulate a New Yorker on the great weather, they remind us that they just came out of a solid month of rain. Every day. Isn't that just sickening?

Anyway, all we've done this afternoon after moving in is try to get the AC fixed (unsuccessfully). So we will experience the hipness tomorrow. It's pretty funny to imagine it: LH and me, who together are about a century and a quarter older than the oldest person around here. (There's a sobering thought!) Heck, we're older than most of the buildings. We will be invisible as we walk around.

We did see one hip sight, today, though. We were careering around a corner in the taxi that brought us here. A guy on a motorcycle wearing a black tank and black pants, both well strewn with shiny silver chains, was pivoting his steed in the middle of the intersection. Well, actually, you can see that some weekends right in front of Royers...

Where to?

2009-07-08T09:06:00.003-05:00

Do you know that Houston is actually less hot and more comfortable than central Texas? That's been true recently. Yesterday it was a balmy 86 in Houston and the temp for CT is promised to be 103 for today. Yikes! And both places are humid, except Houston actually had a nice rain yesterday. We were here for it, and so we know first hand that rain is still possible. We'd celebrate more noisily if it happened at Winedale, but we don't know if it did.

We're travelling in a moment back there, but just now, thinking about it, I've got New York City on my mind. Did you know that the average high for July there is 84? Doesn't that sound, well, sort of civilized?

We've had to abandon our retirement plan of winters in Texas and summers in NM on account of problems with altitude. We've been looking for alternatives. Surely summer in Manhattan wouldn't qualify as an alternative...would it? All the people who live there and can afford to leave in the summer, do--so how pleasant could it be?

Living in NYC isn't easy in the best circumstances. I mean, even the really nice co-op buildings have window AC units. Remember those?

And one has to walk. WALK! Do I remember how to do that?

Will keep you posted if we decide to look for answers to these questions. Meanwhile, I'm scoping out Oregon on the internet.

Incongruities

2009-06-28T08:24:00.006-05:00

Unexpected connections between people continue to pop up out of nowhere. Well, nowhere isn't quite the right word. Last night, it was at a Festival Hill concert.

Festival Hill is our unimaginably lavish classical music venue here in Round Top (pop. 77), the lifework of concert pianist James Dick. The architecture is a blend of real nineteenth century Europe (or earlier) blended with a fantasy version of the same, all done in hand cut stone by our local craftsman, Jack Finke. The acoustically live surface of the hall's interior is constructed from hand made diamond-shaped overlays in wood. Wonderful gardens and restored Victorian buildings complete the campus. Every summer advanced music students from all over the world come for the Institute, which gives master classes and many opportunities for performance, both chamber and full orchestra.

In the Hall, there is a room devoted to the life and work of David Guion, an American composer who had great success arranging, in particular, cowboy tunes such as Home on the Range. He is given the dubious distinction of having kicked off the "singing cowboy" craze in the mid-20th century with a Broadway show he wrote and performed in.

Before all that he was a boy in Ballinger, Texas, south of Abilene and about fifty miles away from where my father was born, a year later than Davey. I knew my father knew him, but I had never known why until last night.

So, I'm in the Guion Room at the Hall, waiting for the concert to start and the docent comes up. I'm looking at a picture of young DG in elegant winter clothes. "Oh, that's when he was in Vienna, in 1910," says Mr. Elsig, the docent.

"Vienna?" I turn to look at him.

"Yes," he says, "he went there to study piano with Leopold Godowsky."

I tell you, the room moved. "I'll be goddamned," I say, brilliantly in archaic Texan . "My father was studying with Leopold Godowsky in Vienna at the same time." Which is true. But two boys from obscure and tiny Texas towns, both taking classes with Godowsky? How likely is that?

I think also what shocked me was the re-emergence of my father into my conscious world. I've been thinking of him lately, as I begin the research part of my next story. The incongruities of his life seem compelling to me, in particular the period he spent in Vienna, from the age of 14-18, during the time of Freud and numerous musical masters, most of whom were friends of Godowsky. He travelled with Godowsky, as did a number of his fellow students, and when Godowsky went back to New York, Daddy did, too, for a while. Guion was there, as well.

Discovering the Guion connection gave me some dates to hang all Daddy's stories from. My father would never admit to his age, as he was a good deal older than my mother, and the age of a grandfather when I was born. So his stories tended to be a little blurry about dates.

Now, however, I know. It is a strange feeling.

Making the Rounds

2009-06-23T13:10:00.003-05:00

Back in hot Houston this AM, set off early to do errands. I was a little surprised at the neighborly connections that transpired, but maybe it's an inside the Loop thing...or maybe not.

First, take the shirts to the laundry--nice visit with the people there, one of whom reads the LH column.

Then, right after ten, to the bookstore. Nice visit with their fiction buyer and the manager. A drop-dead gorgeous young man walks in and starts to browse. There are a number of browsers, but who notices them? The manager and I start to talk about the architecture section and we fall into conversation with the handsome young man who turns out to be a recent architecture graduate from Austin. Says ours is the best bookstore for architecture in the state. Lovely to hear, even if it doesn't sell well...We ask him for advice and get some, gently given with much prodding.

A woman with a bike helmet comes in, on her way to work (moped, not bicycle). Really nice, likes the same kind of fiction I do (what I call lowbrow literary). Nice bookish visit.

I buy several books and then head over to pick up lunch at the coffee shop near St. Luke's Methodist. Run into the husband of a friend and we talk for about an hour. Mostly medical, but nice to hear what he and his wife have been up to.

And so, home. What does this say about the anonymous city life? Could this happen in New York? (Yes, of course it could...I know that.) But it felt like a small town experience.

Well Done

2009-06-21T17:04:00.003-05:00

Reading a post by Sizzie a few minutes ago, reminded me how I learned to cook. When I was a child in our southern household, my favorite place was the kitchen. I loved to stand and watch my grand'mere make orange marmalade in a big kettle, and I would have spent all day in there when the cook prepared Sunday dinner. Usually, however, I was shooed out. "Don't bother Victoria," my mother would say.

When we finally hired a cook for our house, Mother remained good to her word. I wasn't allowed to watch. I am still not sure why.

The result, however, was that I went away to grad school in London unable to cook anything other than scrambled eggs. I learned a few things from my flatmates, though. Bangers and mash, for instance. Pork sausages browned in a skillet with left over mashed potatoes and cabbage. Surprisingly good, actually. I could boil the potatoes, too, and mash them. And once I went over to Fortnum and Mason, the specialty store, and bought canned Mexican food items--Spanish rice, canned tamales, canned chili con carne. And I prepared a "Mexican" meal for my flatmates. They ate it and said it was good, but really!

So when I was on my own in DC a couple of years later, I was desperate. Fortunately someone had given me the first Julia Child cookbook. This was a brilliant idea. She broke the ingredients and process down into small increments that even a novice could understand. Moreover, she taught technique--how to chop, etc. Eventually I became a fairly competent cook, especially in the days when one could use butter and cream.

Using her cookbook, in fact, I made only one odd meal and that was garlic soup, which I prepared for my mother and my fiance about two years after that. The mistake I didn't catch involved the liquid that should be used. (Sizzie, please note: not the amount of liquid, but the kind.) The recipe said that one could use broth or water. I had no broth, but I did have water. And the result tasted exactly like that: garlic boiled in water. Not a success.

PS: A moment ago I looked up the recipe on the internet (its link is posted above) and they call it aigo buido, and lo! water is correct. However, I promise I followed the recipe to the letter and it was not good. Maybe I didn't use enough garlic!

Key

2009-06-20T22:04:00.002-05:00

I think I need to provide a key to the last blog.

The noodles are people I work with whom I needed to approve or reject a proposal with a tight deadline. They turned out to be more like overstarched shirt collars than noodles, but they still didn't do what I was hoping for. If I'd slowed down I might have avoided this outcome.

The cheese was an investment in the project I wanted to make privately. I am not supposed to do this because of appearances, even though we turned the project down. I do conduct other business with the project people, and perception is everything. Everything you can't eat, that is. (I do agree with them on this, though.)

The simmering water had two references: the first was to an episode of heat exhaustion I had early this week that affected my handling of the noodles; the second was a reminder to keep calm in the middle of highly emotional meetings.

In the last one, indigestion is a frequent side effect of business meetings and chilling out is the thing those of us who live in central Texas this summer most long to do.

Week's End

2009-06-19T16:05:00.004-05:00

It's been a rough week, folks, but a number of lessons have been learned.

Principal lesson is: do not try to push noodles uphill--and especially do not try to do so if you have a deadline staring you in the face.

Second lesson is: slow down. In general an advisable course of action. Or in this case, non-action. If you slow down, you may see that the noodles are in fact another type of starch altogether.

Third lesson is: never try to eat the cheese yourself.

Fourth lesson is, be careful not to climb into the water right before it boils. That's deadly for frogs and people.

Fifth, when the meal is over, no matter who's got or given indigestion, chill out.

The 100th post that was

2009-06-16T21:53:00.003-05:00

Oh my gosh, my last post was my 100th! How did that happen? How did I not notice it?

Ah, well. There's been a lot going on, not the least of which is the process of dragging the body around in this heat.

Even the pool is hot. I discovered that when I use the hose and automatic fill device to keep the pool level from dropping too far from evaporation, it adds HOT water. Hmmm.

No mystery, really. The hose remains full of water, and bakes in the sun, and--voila!--instant hot water for your pool!

Moreover, when I exercise in a pool with the water temp at 97 degrees, and the air temp at 96 it doesn't make me feel very good.

On top of that, today I think I had fifty or sixty emails from business associates about a meeting we'd scheduled. All but two of them were replies to some email of mine or another, even if the subject was slightly different. Hard to sort through that later.

But thank heaven I did reschedule and so tomorrow I should be able to breathe and fan and blot my face with cool cloths and read material for the meeting (all this is with the AC going). And maybe there will not be one contentious email message all day long.

One can hope.

Following Up

2009-06-08T23:26:00.002-05:00

Today I finished a draft of my novel, although I have to go back to make sure all the times of day in the last couple of chapters link up. It doesn't really relate as much to the story of the amnesiac woman whose family doubts her, as it might. My character has been amnesiac and lies about the duration, and is thought to lie about other things, but it's not quite the same. Her form is that of dissociative amnesia, or fugue--where the person runs away after an emotional trauma of some kind, and is unaware for a period of time who they are.

About the stalker, I referred to in the last post. He's a person who found me through my business. There is a romance to the history of where our company's main business is located--romance, that is, if the early oil industry interests a person. The alleged stalker seems to be a young man who takes the environmental necessity of green energy very seriously (as do I, for that matter). I feel he wishes to make a symbolic statement in the place where our business is located, and I am unsure whether that would cause physical harm to something or someone. His tone in the missives he sends in the wee hours of the morning indicate that he views himself as some kind of a savior. The grandiosity is what concerns me. Also the persistence.

We've had a stalker before, and we knew him and he seemed well meaning--but very persistent and needful of attention.

What do you all think? Have you ever had this kind of unwanted attention?

Art before News

2009-06-04T23:29:00.002-05:00

This is just a short entry on an odd coincidence. I received an email from Shirley, a member of my writing workshop, referring to the amnesiac woman whose family has doubted her story in public (front page Houston Chronicle today). She remarked that the story offers surprising parallels to the novel I'm writing--begun more than two years ago.

Then tonight I received a similar notice from Andrea White, who also spent time in the workshop with me--and whose books for young adults have received nice attention.

It's a little spooky to see something one imagined receive a realistic parallel like that and I'm not sure how it will affect the story, if at all. The woman's face, as it was shown in the paper a few weeks ago, is haunting.

On another matter, I feel as though I'm being stalked a bit. What does one do? I'll blog further about this later perhaps. Maybe you readers can help me figure out whether I should be worried.

But now, bonne nuit!

My News, Your News

2009-05-26T13:08:00.002-05:00

Last evening we were treated to a commercial for KPRC-TV news where the anchors explained with charming body language that the news they delivered was a "conversation", that what interested them was what interested us, that they were focused on giving us the news we want...

Let me think. What interests me are things like literary fiction, how to seed a pasture, when to plant haricots verts, how to prune a climbing rose. I don't really think that's going to get much air time on Channel 2 somehow. And I don't want it to.

I don't think it's healthy for a culture's news to be passed through the filter of what the listener wants to hear. For crying out loud, people! The news I want to hear doesn't exist yet. It doesn't even have the probability of existing without a sea-change in human nature. (Examples: peace and civility among all people; lives free from pain and deprivation; and a screeching halt to global warming.)

News should be news. Stuff happens that affects all of us: let's hear about it. A fire in an apartment house affects the people in the immediate neighborhood--strictly speaking, I'd let it pass. A man gets drunk and stabs someone--a terrible thing for the person stabbed, and for the drunk man, too, and for all their loved ones--but it's not affecting all of us, is it? And we certainly don't need to see the bereaved weeping for the camera's pleasure.

I want to know what laws get passed that affect us, what taxpayer funded projects hit complicating snags, how much pollution got spewed out into the air we all breathed last month, or more recently if those figures are available.

If the excellent residents of New Mexico march on Texas, or vice-versa, that would be news. If a refinery blows up, you bet: news. Drug murders along the border, crime sprees, those would qualify. How our sports teams fare, that would be news for a local station.

The defining filter would be the effect on the common good, upon the interets of a majority of people within the geographical radius served by the station.

It's the news we need to hear. Our love of trivia, our desperate need for entertainment have nothing to do with it. And if providing that news cuts ratings in half, then precede it with a half hour of amusing nonsense--oh, wait. They already do that.

Howdy

2009-05-21T02:22:00.003-05:00

I am thinking about handshakes. Three men we knew walked into the restaurant last night where we were having dinner, JW's in Carmine. One, the oldest, shook hands properly, man to man, the way I find so many do in business. I know how to shake the hand of that kind of man, with my own arthritic knobby one, but I go deep and squeeze enough to flex the protective muscle. He didn't try to win a pumping contest, either. Just nice and clean.

His son in law came next and it was limp and slightly moist. The question always rises: was it limp because I am a weak and womanish sort? Is there confusion at how one shakes such hands? Is he unaccustomed to shaking women's hands except as his mother taught him among her social friends? Is it a matter of limp character? (Negating this image is the reason for the first kind of handshake, compensatory or not, it makes an excellent impression.)

And the third, from a man who appears strong enough to hold a full bore motorcycle aloft with one hand while shaking yours with the other, and it is a curiously gentle shake, but that makes sense in the context. No doubt he has learned that a pressure normal from his perspective sends men and women alike to their knees. Men like that often have a gentle touch.

So: three men, three hands, too much revealed? Or perhaps nothing at all?

Home on the Range

2009-05-18T19:53:00.004-05:00

Our dog, Charlotte Bronte, lies on the back porch in the late afternoon and looks through the ballusters at the yard and pasture beyond, leading down to the creek. Birds chirp. Rabbits move among the grasses and scout the perimeter of the vegetable garden, which is thankfully well fenced.

I, sitting in the rocking chair, whisper: Rabbit, Bronte!

No response.

Look, B--(pointing)--Rabbit!

Oblivious.

After thirty seconds of this, escalating in volume, she lopes off the porch in the wrong direction.

Nothing has ever been as safe on our premises as those rabbits.

Oops. Maybe not.

After dinner, I stroll out the front door toward the gate to finish carving an entrance arch through the Lady Banks, so visitors won't have an eye poked out. The sun has just disappeared behind the trees and it's still light. Something moves in my peripheral vision. I stop. It moves again and I think: deer.

But no. Not deer.

A large grey and russet furred creature just outside our yard fence stops. He looks at me. I look at him.

Coyote. As big as Bronte, which is large for the local variety. Never seen one here in daylight.

We exchange looks for about ten seconds and then he trots off behind a clump of trees.

And where is the B dog? In the front yard, nose to the ground. Smelling the passage of rabbits, no doubt.

Mothers

2009-05-10T15:05:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking about motherhood today. Not so much individual mothers, as the experience itself. Women are waiting so much longer now to have children and I know something about the side effects of that, myself. My mother was 37 when I was born, which was nearly unheard of in the 1940s and 50s. I was called an "elderly primipara" myself when I was pregnant with my son, and I was 29.

The temptations and demands of career seem to be the reason for women having children later. We have control, now, to an extent unimaginable even fifty years ago. And so the bright young women fan out into their careers, with few distractions from the challenges of their jobs.

These young women are focused achievers, just like their male counterparts. Neither they or the young men have been required to place the needs of someone dependent ahead of their own. Or if they have done so, it hasn't been for long. It hasn't been for twenty years at a clip.

No wonder they regard parenthood as a fearful prospect. Also, an expensive one. Schools, clothes, food, doctoring--all become the main locus of expenditures. Personal indulgences shrink in number and kind. The idea of deferring personal gratification seems as disagreeable as it is novel.

I was afraid of having children, too, and as an only child, ignorant of everything involved. Married couples had children, though, and so we did. When my son was born, I felt stunned for the first few months, pulled by his daily needs to exist only in the present. How to interpret his cries? Would I ever again rest, sleep, think? And enveloping it all, breaking over every fear and worry, the most overwhelming surges of love, surely the great love of the human race, the one that keeps it all going.

This is the part of having children that the hesitant young women and men of today don't know. They don't feel this for even the closest sibling. They don't feel it for their pets. They don't even feel it for each other. It's simply more, greater, than everything else.

So, looking back on it now from the perspective of my sixties, I can see that the products of the ego, however lavish or glamorous, mean nothing in comparison to the experience of rearing/raising my child. If I had been able to do it, and refused for whatever reason, I would have missed out on the central experience of life.

A few additional words about elderly mothers. Once you manage to get pregnant, it's not your age when your child is born that matters so much, although it has an effect. Toddlers in particular take a lot of maternal energy. It's your age after that: To be nearly sixty when your oldest child graduates from college; to be seventy for the first grandchild; to absent yourselves from your grandchildren's lives by dying before they can really know you. We may live a lot longer now than people did in earlier generations, but not all of us enjoy that opportunity.

It's worth thinking about, if you have a choice.

Cop Shows

2009-05-05T22:22:00.003-05:00

I confess to the guilty habit of watching TV cop/FBI shows, but I'm about to quit. I stopped CSI years ago because of all the dead bodies. If I wanted to look at dead bodies I would be, right now, an M.D.

The Mentalist is OK; Law and Order is still generally OK, with the puzzle the main thing, and I can usually figure it out in the first ten minutes or less, so the fun is in being right about something for once (or twice), except when I'm wrong.

But the rest of these things are disgusting. Especially Medium which has been getting more grisly with every season. It's like CSI spawned a virus that's infected all of them. I watched Medium last night with my eyes closed every time there was a tight camera angle on someone or on a door about to be opened.

Down with decomposition, I say, and up with people. Stories about living people who are not murderers or child molesters.

Brothers and Sisters, anyone?

Am I in her head?

2009-05-03T19:05:00.003-05:00

Either I'm obsessing or I've discovered a major failing in my writing. At this juncture, darn it. Why not twenty years ago?

My problem has been, I think, that I am fluent, especially on a computer word processor. Refining the fluency has been my focus for a long time. Getting the sentence to say exactly what I intend and to do so in a fresh manner.

Unfortunately the result is often boring. Sort of pretty but dull.

I was lolloping along today, feeling like I've been spiralling ever closer complete stasis, when two words popped in my head: Narrative Distance.

When I succeed in being in the character's head, the writing is more interesting. Light bulb flashing on! That's being in their head, not describing what it's like in their head. Not spending fifteen years looking for the right words to describe what they're feeling.

Am I on to something? Is this an oh-oh moment? Or is it an oh s--t moment, if you'll pardon the Anglo-Saxon reference?

Catching Up

2009-05-02T15:03:00.002-05:00

I've been scarce lately on this blog. The main reason is that I've been working hard to complete a draft of my novel. That draws on some of the same energy as blogging. (Other reasons, too, but they're boring.)

Nevertheless, blogging has people on the other end while novel revision is just me and the screen and all those characters I have immobilized there until I decide things like the order of chapters, etc.

So: hello.

Developments around our place include three green tomatoes, first of the season; petunias in place of cactus in our window boxes--the cactus were not happy;
the first vines coiling up our pergola (thanks to Richard for removing the poison ivy flooring beneath it--even though he got poison oak for his trouble--maybe not from my poison oak, I can only hope).

We found a small copperhead snake in the pool skimmer. Everyone knows what that means. I'll make a careful search from now on before doing my water therapy.

Dog ate a small nest of baby rabbits, I think. I know she was eating where one of our many rabbits spends the night. I've actually watched a dog do that before (gulp, gulp, gulp and gulp) and it isn't pretty. This time, I didn't investigate, frankly.

Yes, I know that a swimming pool sounds extravagant. It probably is extravagant. But this is a narrow exercise pool to keep me ambulatory. I am hopeful that the result will prove the expense entirely worthwhile.

The twenty-five year old climbing rose that was devouring the side of our porch was brutally cut back in the winter with a saw. It is now reborn, sending up the most prolifigate number of shoots, most of which have new growth that is curled back upon itself. I can't tell for sure what's doing it. So I have no idea what to do to fix it.

The cardinals are everywhere, and in the mornings, we are treated to a splendid refrain of at least seven different bird species, possibly more, with no volume control.

I do love it here.

They're on the Move

2009-04-30T21:17:00.002-05:00

For the past couple of days, I've been managing my husband's blog while he's out of town.

Yesterday I posted a short one on the numerous turtles I've been seeing on the roads around here. I wanted to know whether you're supposed to stop and help one across. And if you are (without causing a wreck), is it good luck? Or is it bad luck to just straddle the turtle and go on your way?

Some of the responses we've had are quite interesting. Check it out.

Before the Storm

2009-04-14T03:01:00.003-05:00

For a piece of fiction I'm writing, I've been trying to re-enter the frame of mind within which one functions as a hurricane hovers out in the Gulf, targeting us. In the story, it is hurricane Ike, an uncomfortable week during which one haunted the television and computer screen, looking for a change of direction from the track that took a bead on Galveston. Now it's obvious that the track was remarkably dead on.

My character is afraid of storms, though. Every gust of wind buffets her as well as the leaves above her. How to convey this? How many days in advance did one feel the advance belts of rain, gusts of wind?

The information available on the internet has been digested, with most of the juices extracted.

My memory of the event has been similarly dessicated. The third threatening storm in quick succession--it seemed almost unreal that this could happen. A Cat 2, how-bad-could-it-be, mentality seemed to govern, so a great many people did not evacuate.

The winds and belts of rain in the days that lead up to a storm rachet up the tension of the communities to be affected, but never until the last minute are some people sure enough to leave their homes, their things, and head for higher ground.

Any suggestions of blog posts about this would be most welcome.

Rejoice

2009-04-12T09:38:00.006-05:00

In central Texas this Easter morning, it is raining. Slowly, in fits and starts, but with luxurious quantity.

After the drought of the past few years, we open to rain in the way a resurrection plant from West Texas does.

We lie dormant, brown, dessicated--and then the slow rain falls and we fill with moisture; we swell, become plump again with greenness. We ready ourselves to receive sunlight once more and grow.

Slow Words

2009-04-07T12:16:00.003-05:00

How many of us are familiar with the Slow Food Movement? That's slow food, as contrasted with fast food--Burger King, MacDonald's,the Colonel, et al. The idea is that by taking care with the preparation of food, and giving ourselves time to eat it in the company of family and friends, we enrich our lives--and improve our digestion, BTW.

I think that communication has undergone a similar transformation--to fast words: These are words that move from our transient whim to the cyber-verse in a split second. Think Facebook status update, or Twitter: Bam! You've spoken. You blink and your blink is seen by people you really don't know very well, if at all. How tasty and satisfying is that, after you've gotten over the initial intoxication?

(I grant that a blog might seem like a strange place to be commenting on this, but most bloggers take time to reflect before posting.)

I think that the current obsession with speed speaks to a fundamental emptiness in our culture. I think we have a greed for ease in every area of our lives. It has driven the rise of convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and much of the cell phone universe, as well as providing all the wonderful machines that have made women's lives in particular less burdensome.

But it's like we've responded by being always in a hurry, and the more mod-cons (modern conveniences) we get, the faster we whirl. Why? Why do we need an eight minute lunch? What awaits us that's so urgent? It can't be work, since so many people spend so much office time on Twitter and FB, fighting boredom.

Why do we need constantly updated news? Why do we need instantaneous books? What are we afraid that we're missing?

So I'm advocating a change. Try Slow Words for a start. Don't buy a book on Amazon if there's a bookstore within reach as you follow your daily routine. Call the store and order the book you want; pick it up next week. Savor it under a tree, in the bath, at the swimming pool, in your living room (with the TV turned off). A book is the longest lasting, least expensive form of escape and entertainment there is.

Instead of momentary diversion with fast words, followed by emptiness, take time for Slow Words. They taste good and leave you feeling full of fine feelings accompanied by deep and satisfying thought.

Brrrr

2009-04-06T22:58:00.002-05:00

Oh, darn,darn. All day we've been watching as the weather site forecasts 37 degrees overnight which is close to a frost, but barely misses it for us. And then, just before bedtime, we check again and suddently they've surrounded us with promises of 31 to 33 degrees--as in a freeze.

It's nice and still outside right now, moonlit, crisp and dry, lots of stars--beautiful and the worst possible weather for plants in a freeze. All I can think of is our heirloom tomato plants, lined up so green and healthy and waiting for the nice warm growing weather they'll have tomorrow afternoon. If they're still alive by then.

I hate freezes in April. It's plumb unnatural.

Calming Down

2009-04-05T15:08:00.004-05:00

That big wind that's blowing today across central Texas is the result of area shop and restaurant owners letting out a long breath of relief. Antique fortnight is over. That is, the spring version is over; the whole thing happens again in October.

It was a busy final Saturday, though.

The Winedale Historical Center had its spring symposium, focusing this year on Early Texas Furniture. (For the disbelieving non-Texans who might be reading this, the furniture in question is not made of rustic logs.)

Central Texas enjoyed a large influx of German immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century, and they included a surprising number of accomplished cabinetmakers. The seminal book on this subject by Lonn Taylor and David Warren came out in 1975, and now sells for a surprising amount of money in rare book stores. (I did 1/3 of the photos in that book with a 2 1/4 Rolleiflex, a fascinating experience as we had to shoot the furniture, often quite large, in the owners' houses or front yards.)

The authors are currently in the process of updating it with many new discoveries, hence the content of their presentation yesterday. (The photo below of the mockingbird was taken on the grounds of the center.)

Also, the DYD Club of Round Top concluded its "fair on the square". DYD stands for Do Your Duty. (The pix of the sparkling whatevers and of the girl in her new cowboy boots were taken within a few feet of each other in the midst of that event.)

On the way home the back way via Hackemack Road we spotted a blue barn with bluebonnets that epitomized for me the serenity that will return to our neighborhood tomorrow. The bluebonnets are at their peak, and joined now in fields and verges with stands of Indian Paintbrush (red), pale Pink Evening Primrose, magenta verbena, and vivid yellow daisy-like flowers, too small to be rudbeckia. With any rain at all, the flower show, at least, should last a while longer.

Springtime in Texas, II

2009-03-29T14:02:00.001-05:00

This is the continuation of the previous post:

Springtime in Texas, I

2009-03-29T13:37:00.004-05:00

Despite a "Jack Frost" (local term for a frost) the past two nights, we have the following springtime scenes. The antique show here is at Warrenton, part of the Antique Fortnight along Highway 237 and nearby roads that ends around April 4. The first image is a typical back road before the antiquing began.

Slow and Easy

2009-03-25T21:45:00.001-05:00

I’ve been thinking about the slow food movement and wishing that we could extend its main precepts to other realms of human activity. It’s a cliché that older people find the world moving too fast for them. I am certainly aware of the many reasons for that sensation. Interestingly, however, it appears that the world is moving too fast for everyone, at present.

Some examples:

• The effect of the 24/7 news cycle on the news media;
• The effect of the internet on the well-being of newspapers;
• The effect of the 24/7, digitally enhanced, world financial market on almost every nation’s financial well-being;
• The way an accelerated speed of communication allowed hasty judgments to multiply in a geometric progression as investment bankers and hedge fund operators raced to keep up with the creation of new money-making instruments;
• The way the accelerated speed of communication allows for hysterical responses to each new piece of economic or political news;

The seduction of the “breaking news report” in general, and “news” in one’s specific area of expertise on a smaller scale, distracts both the writer and reader. We are hard-wired as a species, in fact, to prefer breaking news. It gave us an edge on survival. The saber-toothed tiger is eating people, village by village. Run!

What is being lost is the opportunity for reflection, not just by the purveyors of information, but by its consumers, and all of us suffer as a result. The writers of the news stumble over themselves trying to keep their breaking stories updated. There’s no time for fact-checking or digging a bit deeper. There’s no lag time between the arrival of information onto the writer’s desk and its launch into the public arena, where the public panics and inundates Congress with email.

One really good example involves the AIG bonus debacle. It ought not to have become public knowledge within minutes of the moment the Obama Administration heard about it. Instead of hysterical headlines, leading to panicky and angry action by Congress, there ought to have been judicious jaw-boning on the part of the Obama administration, resulting in the voluntary refusal of the controversial bonuses by their recipients.

Even a few years ago the scenario for this mess would have gone down like this: Treasury Secretary Geithner would have been informed by staff of a rumor that AIG was about to hand out huge bonuses to the bozos that created the risky instruments that caused the world-wide financial melt-down. He and the President and other economic advisers would have had a few hours before the news hit the first newspaper editions during which time they could explain to AIG that this would be a disaster of monumental proportions and must not happen (jaw-boning). And it would not have happened. Honestly, this has been the way a number of near-disasters have been averted in years gone by. It’s a technique of governance that we no longer have at our disposal in this 24-7 news hungry world.

And it’s not going to get better, I’m afraid. Newspapers, which are the originators of most in-depth news coverage, are down-sizing with dizzying speed, in size of the paper format, in complexity and amount of material covered, in accuracy of the speeded up coverage, and most importantly (since this affects the quality of coverage) in size of staff.

You have to look carefully to ascertain the degree to which the diversity of print media is vanishing across the country, since the individual papers affected often carry only vaguely worded stories. Daily papers decrease to 3 days a week; some go out of print altogether; no major daily has the same staff they had 6 months ago. Floods of talented, experienced journalists—people who had perspective on what they were covering—are out of work, or working in fields where their valuable understanding can no longer be used for the public’s benefit. Instead, we have young reporters learning the ropes on internet editions. We have many, many blogs, some by people with a broad and deep knowledge of their subject area, some just with bloated opinions. We have lost the middle-man, the filter, who could help us see the larger picture.

What we are experiencing as a result is the rise of democracy in place of the representative system of government our forefathers created. They gave us representatives for a reason: reflection; distance from the whim of the masses. Now the passions and fears of the masses have become the governors of us all and our representatives in Washington have become their prisoners instead of their leaders.

Falling Sky

2009-03-23T14:59:00.003-05:00

Every year about this time, the sky falls into pools of blue all across Texas--this was the way a writer described our annual bluebonnet season. Some years, the blues are mixed with scarlet Indian Paintbrush and/or Pink Evening Primrose. This year, however, the blues pretty much have the fields to themselves, so far at least.

The highway department seeds bluebonnets, a form of lupine, so that highway verges throughout central Texas and parts of the Hill Country seem carpeted in blue flowers for several weeks. They seed other wildflowers, too, part of Lady Bird Johnson's wonderful bequest to all of us.

I love those flowers, of course, but what really pleases me are the old fields where the bluebonnets are nature's way to nourish poor, farmed out soil.

But don't think of that. Just enjoy the show. And yes, the blue is really that intense.

Black and White

2009-03-21T18:41:00.003-05:00

We just returned from a retrospective at the Copper Shade Tree and Gallery at Round Top of photographs made by Alfred Black. (A benefit for the Round Top Library.) Most of them are black and white, made with a 70mm Hasselblad (sp)large format camera. This is the type of box camera where you get under a hood and compose the photograph on ground glass, upside down. The result in the hands of a competent photographer--and Black was much more than competent--is gorgeous. Blacks like silk, whites burning with intensity. I was searching the internet for examples of his work, but I couldn't find any. Black worked as a petroleum landman for much of his career, making photographs in the places where his work would take him. Seeing those beautiful, hand-developed pictures just makes me ache again for the skill, the patience, the equipment, necessary to render light so seductively.

Show Biz

2009-03-19T08:42:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my son's birthday, and I treated his mother (me) to a Broadway play while he was at work. Inexplicably to some people, my idea of a Broadway play does not normally involve music. (Although now that I think of it, I might have liked to see South Pacific, if it's still on.)

The play I saw, in matinee, did feature music, however, in the form of a piano playing snips from Beethoven's 33 Variations, also the name of the play. It was sold out, but the reason has less to do with Beethoven than with the star, Jane Fonda.

The story was about a mother and daughter, really. The mother is an academic working on her last paper, tracking down the mystery of why Beethoven composed his 33 variations. Sut she's dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). The daughter who has never quite measured up to her mother's high expectations opposes the European trip her mother wants to make for her research. And there you go. Tom Hanks's son plays the mother's nurse and the daughter's boyfriend. I thought it was quite good and very affecting.

I had cause later to think about the theatrical dynasties I'd been watching at work, namely, Fonda and Hanks, when I learned of the tragic death of Natasha Richardson, a member of the distinguished Redgrave family. When someone so lovely dies in such a freak accident, we all feel sadness, I think. This death was particularly upsetting because its cause seemed so trivial. Everyone falls when they're learning to ski, and quite often thereafter. To sustain a mortal injury and not know it or show any signs for an hour is a concept quite shattering to consider.

One thing I gleaned from the coverage of this sorrowful event is that guarding against this eventuality is the reason why medical personnel choose to keep people with head injuries "under observation" for a time after the event. I had never thought of that.

NYSPD

2009-03-17T22:25:00.002-05:00

Ach and begorrah! I'm in New York on Saint Paddy's Day. But I missed the parade. At least the official parade. I did get to see the folks winding their way home when it concluded. A gaggle of Korean-looking people on Park and 60th, in full Irish regalia, a gaggle of people in from the boroughs, decked out similarly, lots of walkers with bits of green here and there--and a beat cop in full uniform crossing Lexington carrying a long plastic trumpet.

Son Will's birthday is tomorrow so I bought him a wee present (is wee Scots, or is it Celtic enough for SPD?) I bought a sandwich at Starbucks (I was desperate and there wasn't any line); I bought water at Duane and Reade (if I got the name right; I bought a pair of shoes with wee heels so I could wear the warmish pants I brought which are too long for flats. (I had left the proper shoes back in Houston.)

Had dinner tonight at Union Street Cafe, which is a great restaurant I'd never been to before, and it lived up to the kudos.

And so to beddy-bye.

What I missed in Winedale was the slate mantel falling off the wall in the living room during some repairs further up the wall. Fortunately no one was hurt. Poor Hale is having to deal with getting this repaired, and I bless him.

Green City Pause

2009-03-12T17:41:00.006-05:00

I'm back in Houston for a couple of days and we have had rain (here and back at Winedale, thank heaven), together with a formidable cold snap. The sky from my gray apartment is fluffy shades of gray, and every other living thing that's visible shines brilliant green. I have all the shades up as dusk gathers. (The photo was taken yesterday not long after dawn. Too dark, now.)

This visit has re-inforced a lesson I've learned before but always forget immediately. And that's the importance of pacing. My tendency is to cram my days in Houston with activities. At the same time, on a given week, I press to minimize the days away from the country place and LH. Result: overload. I had scheduled events yesterday practically to the minute, not concluding until I drove into the garage at 9:30PM, exhausted. More for today. There were a number of results, none salutary.

The best of them, however, is my decision to wait until tomorrow to return to the country. Meanwhile, to rest. I wonder whether many of us in our wired, electronically connected world have figured out the right time to stop. Temporarily. Is there a reminder string we can mentally tie around our schedules to sound an alarm before we plunge into overload? Unfortunately, I always receive the reminder one day too late, as I recover.

Up Early

2009-03-08T06:23:00.003-05:00

It's the neither fish nor fowl season, if you ask me. The countryside here in central Texas looks half asleep, much of it still in the wintry mode of leafless trees, stark against the sky; some of it flowering into spring. Our lop-sided pear tree is one of the latter, as is the red-bud up by the gate, its fog of magenta bloom a welcome respite among the desert-y expanse of former pasture. The pasture remains a casualty of the drought, which continues. We are in the worst-hit part, as rain clouds drift upward often from the south, only to part as they near us to rain somewhere else.

Daylight savings time began again today. So I awoke at 3:15 AM instead of 2:15 AM with a recurrence of my headache. I think the culprit is switching from coffee to tea, although both have caffeine. I had been drinking about four shots a day of espresso, so maybe 2 large cups of black tea can't compete. I succumbed at 4AM to a single shot of espresso with milk and am feeling much better, although I should be asleep. I'm saying that just to show my inner self that I know what it needs, even if I can't supply it.

When I'm up in the middle of the night I always wake up one of the computers, too, and read in an undisciplined fashion, like a car careering across an empty parking lot. (It's a heady feeling to ignore all the lines telling you where to go.)

This morning I read Frank Rich who was talking about Thorton Wilder's Our Town, a play we did in summer camp that is enjoying a revival on Broadway now. My twelve year old self, playing a bit part, found it an upsetting play, with its great compaction of the joys and tragedies of life, precisely at a time my life when was starting out. An odd choice for girls 8-16 I thought then, but it has become a high school staple.

Then I went back to looking at maps of France. For some absurd reason that makes me happy. I love the place names, which sound familiar to me either from multiple visits over the years or from innumerable map porings like the one a few moments ago. I saw the website for the 4 Seasons Resort in the Var, east of Marseille(s) and north of the Riviera. Nothing about it but the view says "this is France." There is another place and time, I guess, called Four Seasons where you can feel as though you've never left the States, although the view around you changes like slides on a surrounding screen. Not why I go to France, at least. (More about that another time.)

Bon jour, mes amis.

The Lovely Blue World

2009-03-04T09:41:00.002-06:00

Last night for the first time I resisted the nightly news. What a relief! Then this morning I read Thomas Friedman and now I'm going to ignore the unhappy weight of that by focusing on the box I wrote about several posts ago.

The bluebirds are back, both of them this time--just as PJ predicted!

All day yesterday, the female evaluated, as the male went in and out. She's got the same russet breast and bright blue tail, but her back and wings are grayish.

Finally, she decided to check it out, too. She'd no more than got her shoulders partway in than a large male Cardinal, red as flame, landed on the roof of the box inches away from her head. Instantly she flew at him and he swooped into the nearest tree, where he stayed. (The male Cardinals are newly aggressive this week, in preparation for mating season, I believe. All the birds were exceptionally active yesterday.)

And this morning the blue duo are at work, flying back and forth. It remains to be seen whether they will stick and build their nest, but if they do it will be wonderful to watch from my attic workspace. In the hopes of decreasing bird and squirrel traffic, Hale thinks he should stop putting seed on the adjacent fence posts, where we have been putting it for many years. But I'm wondering whether the bluebirds might actually like the activity, somehow. It was active when the male selected it, after all.

Anyway, I took all this as a good sign, and in late afternoon I received an all clear on the first of my medical tests. Whew! One to go...

Cordon Noir

2009-02-28T10:04:00.003-06:00

I'm off in a minute on the trek, albeit quite short, back to Winedale. Yesterday was the last test and I feel like midterms are over. Remember?

Anyway, I got the filthy car washed afterward. (Brilliant material, here, no?) Then I went to a shop where a friend said I could find dust ruffles (for beds) that don't require lifting the mattress. The shop was Indulge on Saint Street. (Isn't that a lovely juxtaposition of names? Doesn't a shop called "Indulge" just flick your wicket in our current economic situation?) Now, if it sold chocolate instead of bedding...

But I digress. (I do have a point in here somewhere...)

In the entry of the shop, there is a large antique wicker birdcage with two birds in it. Cordon Bleu Finches. I looked them up on the internet, but the picture in no way does justice to the beauty of these little birds. They have red bills like jewels, and for the most part their plumage is bright blue. Naturally I spoke to them, and they seemed to respond (anthropomorphic of me, I know).

One started elevating himself to the top of the cage before returning to the perch beside his companion. (The people in the store think they're sisters, but I think they're both males.) When he returned to the perch he turned his head so his bill pointed straight up. Then he elevated himself, helicopter-style, once more. And repeated the bill-point. Never before have I seen a bird do that, but then I rarely see caged birds, right?

I awoke in the middle of the night and the thought came to me: those little birds never see the sky.

That upset me considerably for quite a while.They're natives of Africa, which I imagine they've never seen either.

What kind of life is it for a bird, to live in a cage with a companion of the same sex, never to fly in freedom? Just thinking of it makes me both angry and sad. What do you all think?

Tests

2009-02-25T08:46:00.002-06:00

I never liked the word "tests" in school. And I don't like it any better now. We're back in Houston for me to have a couple of the medical variety, and I'm not regarding the prospect with equanimity. This is by way of apology for no posts for a couple of days.

For the past half hour we have been treated here on the 6th floor of our condominium to a beautiful mockingbird solo. We appear to have a pair at Winedale for the first time, but so far we haven't heard any song. We keep hoping.

And I hope to return to discover that and many other things--are the redbuds finally blooming?--this weekend.

May your day be a happy one.

Seasonal Change

2009-02-21T09:28:00.003-06:00

We revolve and spring is out there, somewhere, waiting. Or perhaps it approaches, teasing, like the children's game we used to play--one giant step forward, a little one back. The past two days, it has been warmish in daytime, with a spring freshness in the air, quite cold at night. In Texas we watch the limbs of certain untrickable trees to decide when the last frost is past. Post oaks, on our little acreage. Mesquites in south Texas. The post oaks still look dead, and a light frost nipped Hale's optimistic tomato plants.

Yesterday we found the kind of beetle we call a "June" bug, walking along our kitchen counter. He or she or it looked newly hatched, and none too healthy. We put it out on the porch. In a month or two (I always thought these bugs were wrongly named), there will be hundreds, clamoring for entry.

This morning the bluebird was back, just as commenters to my previous post foretold. He was exploring another box out closer to the big yard gate eighty feet from the porch. We try never to use that gate, in the hopes that the construction damage to the ground around it can repair itself. I was so thrilled that I whispered to Hale to look and something in my voice attracted Bronte, instead. She came bustling up to the screen door, ears forward, and barked. Out of hope, really, that there was something worth barking at. Naturally the bird flew off. And has not returned. I fussed at her, I'm ashamed to say.

To compensate, I hope, I directed her attention to the omnipresent squirrels on the back bird feeder whom she loves to chase. This feeder is a tray that PJ's Richard has constructed and attached to our porch railing. The squirrels, being squirrels, are very cheeky in appropriating the sunflower seed, and they spook the little birds. We know chasing them back to the tree is a losing battle, of course. What is needed is something squirrels love to eat that birds dislike...Personally, I have no idea what that would be.

The native grass across the bare front pasture is renewing itself in a green flush, perceptible now from our porch. This amazes the husband, because there's been so little rain. Apparently hope springs eternal in the veins of vegetation, too, along with a stubborn determination to live.

We all feel hopeful this morning--despite the deplorable news blaring at us from every media venue--and I attribute it to the stirrings of plants and birds, the faintest hint of infant vegetation in the air. Who can think of spring and not feel hope of some kind?

Blue is the color of spring, I.

2009-02-19T10:16:00.002-06:00

I was at my desk this morning when a flash of blue caught my eye. It was flying directly between me and the corner post depicted in the blurry photo below. We have a number of blue jays around here, so I thought—okay. Then I thought: Wait, it’s a different, more intense, blue, isn't it?

The bird landed on the wire between posts, revealing its rosy breast.

OMG! My first bluebird! I’ve heard their shy burble for years, mostly when my husband points it out underneath the calls of more assertive birds. But I’ve never actually seen one before.

The bird, a male Western Bluebird, in fact, moved over to the bluebird box attached to the post. It’s been fastened there for more than twenty-years and no bluebird has ever deigned to notice it before.

He stuck his head into the box for awhile. Then removed it and flew back over to the wire. I thought he might have something in his beak, but I couldn’t be sure.

He returned to the box and repeated the procedure. Then after a few moments reflection, he flew away.

As the photo indicates, it’s far too popular a spot for any bluebird nest, of course. Too many birds, too much activity. But we have other bluebird boxes in more secluded locations around the place, so—one can always hope.

Necking

2009-02-16T17:03:00.002-06:00

Lately my mirror has been showing me too much neck. I try to check my hair, but neck is all I see. I begin to put on lipstick, but my neck rises up before me and obliterates the view.

In desperation, I turn to my closet. Take out a turtleneck sweater, slip it on. Now it looks as though I’ve been doing those exercises schoolboys do to strengthen their, yes, necks for football and wrestling. Even a black turtleneck has this effect. All that’s missing are shoulder pads.

I take off the sweater, pull down a long scarf and start winding. And winding. When I finish enveloping the neck, I keep going, wrap it around my head, like Audrey Hepburn in that movie with Albert Finney.

I do not look like Audrey Hepburn, though. (See wrestling effect above.)

I unwind the scarf.

I reach up and grip my neck with one hand from behind, pulling gently, Miraculous! The real me is restored, but my arm quickly cramps. I remember reading that Jacqueline de Ribes used to go to parties with a special theatre tape, anchoring her chin in its girlhood location.

Where do I find theatre tape? Even though my hair is too short for that solution, perhaps I would rather people see tape than my…I hate even to say the word…neck.

Am I the only one who admires a woman in the public eye for the condition of her neck every bit as much as her intellect?

Nora Ephron has written a funny book about getting older in which she says the following: “You have to cut down a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn’t have to if it had a neck.” For some reason I find the thought of a tree with a neck hilarious.

Or clams…except that ugly thing that sticks out is called a foot, isn’t it?

The truth of the matter is that I really don’t have a neck any more. What I have is my mother’s neck…

Thorns

2009-02-15T16:23:00.003-06:00

My hands at this moment are showing the effects of several days’ dealing with prickly things. The most recent is the cactus in our new window boxes. Having read here that one box fell, their creator came over yesterday (on his day off) and fixed them with screws. They will now be there as long as the wall they’re attached to.

So today I planted the little cacti, most of which survived with their thorns intact. Some will grow to 15 inches, some to six. I have no idea whether they will like their boxes and grow at all, but we will see.

On Thursday, a young man came to help us cut back the roses and perennials that sprawl among our flower beds. I helped him, of course. Yanked up dead verbena (didn’t know those have invisible prickles, but discovered it when I tried to grip something else afterwards); cut back several large cramoisi superieurs; disentangled a great quantity of dead climbing rose where it had grown around the fretwork, on the back porch, in its effort to pull the porch down.

We cut back the rose itself a couple of weeks ago, and have been waiting for the long canes to dry out, so they’d be easier to remove. They are intertwined with long canes from what we call our “fried egg” rose, Mermaid. The only way to tell them apart was to let the severed ones dry out a bit.

Problem is, I don’t wear gloves. I know that’s strange. I tell people that the reason is, if I do wear gloves, I can’t feel what I’m doing. I know that they think I mean that I can’t feel what I’m gripping, or cutting, which is true. But that’s not quite it.

Wading into a rose bush with a pair of clippers in mid February in our part of Texas means you will be lopping off healthy foliage, bursting with life. I hate that. Yet, if I don’t do it, the rose becomes so spindly that it is vulnerable to a variety of unhappy things come summer. So I take my cutters and begin. And when I am snagged—as I will be inevitably more than once—I feel that it’s only fair. I should share the pain. It keeps me mindful of what I am really doing, and reminds me to take no more than is absolutely necessary. To prune the rose with care.

25 Ways to Not-Write

2009-02-14T06:42:00.002-06:00

Yesterday our internet was intermittent--oh, frustration--but this morning it's back (so far) and I want to post this list of 25 ways to avoid writing fiction:

1. Check Facebook
2. Read blogs—good for hours and hours of not-writing
3. Prune roses
4. Eat chocolate covered almonds
5. Fix piece of toast, with marmalade
6. Check email
7. Walk down to the pond to see if it caught any water last night
8. Unload the dishwasher
9. Fill window boxes with gravel, sand, growing mix for cactus
10. Plant cactus, carefully and slowly
11. Eat a banana
12. Think about what to make for dinner
13. Drive to the grocery store
14. Check Facebook again
15. Eat another handful of chocolate covered almonds
16. Sit at your desk and look out the window
17. Look up that new bird on the feeder
18. Take a picture of new bird, if it will just hold still
19. Check for blog comments
20. Sweep seed shells off back porch
21. Put out fresh seed
22. Check that noise—whomp!—outside
23. Pick up cacti where they got buried in dirt when window box fell apart
24. Wedge big stick under second window box so it won’t fall
25. Start a list like this

Morning Light

2009-02-11T10:11:00.003-06:00

A rainstorm and mild cool front passed through with bluster in the night, leaving crystalline skies and brilliant sun this morning.

Immediately the spirit lifts, climbing the light, drawn to its source.

The sky still wears a wintry pallor. Only in summer on especially clear dry days does it deepen.

Even so, the contrast with shadow is complete, as the white light pours itself over fence posts, flickers on shiny live oak leaves.

Hope bubbles up and with it the question: is this the other half of low spirits under dark and gray skies? Does the very intensity of one's response to the light measure the parallel response we have to the shadows?

Face Time

2009-02-10T13:07:00.005-06:00

We have been exploring Facebook for the past few weeks and I can feel a mild addiction taking hold. As if blogging weren’t enough…

What are you doing right now? That’s what they ask. And people respond. Really. I thought that was a little solipsistic, you know? (A lot solipsistic, actually.) And then I wrote one in for Hale. Then later another one for Hale (with his permission, of course). That broke the ice.

Now I find myself having to resist answering the question. What would my answer be, anyway? Avoiding work; wasting time; preparing to work; not working…duh. But how interesting is the truth: Taking a break from researching geothermal energy? Or procrastinating the cooking of a meal?

Then there’s the really addictive part: logging onto your page to see what your friends are posting. This business of “friends” is a chastening experience. My grandniece has 917. Her brother has about the same number. Amazing. We won’t speak about mine, but I just started.

Actually, it’s amazing I have any. I wouldn’t if, the moment you sign on, the app didn’t pop up all your email associates who are on Facebook already. Then, if you agree, it sends out requests for them to be your “friends”. You can choose, of course. No reason for your business contacts to be able to read your most meaningless trivia.

My son’s response was: why? Why would you want to do this? But I noticed he has 150 friends, so there you go.

Of course, you can search for friends. I turned up a very old friend I’d lost contact with. Very nice. And you can troll your high school class, or college classmates. There are a lot of networking groups. Hale got a number of friends from the Chronicle and Texas Institute of Letters networks.

Then what? Well, not much. Friends will post photos, or weird things happening to them, or funny things. For instance, Justin Cronin sent out a link to William Shakespeare’s “25 things.” Pretty funny in the boy-humor department. And people comment on that. The way you find out is that there’s a feed where anything that your “friends” post on their personal page pops up on yours, so you can just stay in touch. It’s really kind of nice. (I took a series of workshops with Justin, hence the contact.)

I’m in the process of setting up a professional page for Hale, which gives his book purchasing information and links to his blog, etc. I don’t know how that works, yet, but it’s a way to bring your “brand” and its details to the attention of the giant Facebook community. More to come about whether it works.

Photos today are random ones, taken recently before the clouds and rain began:

Rain

2009-02-09T11:27:00.004-06:00

This morning I awoke to a double concert of coyotes, an ancient predictor of rain. And indeed, it is raining! Slow rain falling straight down! I can almost hear the plants and trees opening to it. Hale and I were down on the stone deck untangling a particularly convoluted hose when it started. Neither of us minded getting wet, believe me.

Sydney asked me a question about our country property. We were amazed even to find it more than 20 years ago, It happened by complete luck, as it belonged to the realtor who was helping us look for a place. It was a small parcel adjacent to his father’s larger acreage, and cut off from it by a creek. Very few small places were available then; now they are more common, as developers have struck. What the downturn will do to the prices is open to question.

We do have a small pond (currently more mud than water); we do have said wet weather creek. We might have a horse or two if Hale hadn’t made me promise that we would never have any livestock that required feeding. Frankly, we have so much fun trying to discourage rabbits and armadillos that I can’t imagine what we would do with a horse. Someone suggested goats to eat the poison ivy, but we seem to have managed to eliminate that without them.

Yes, I write much more up here. I love my study, which is in the loft/attic we made years ago by raising the roof a little. I sit at my desk in the dormer and can look out across the yard into the woods that lead down to the creek (currently dry). I hear birds, and assorted wild or bovine cries, as well as any drilling rig within four miles, it seems, depending on which way the wind is blowing. Right now, the horse farm on Winedale Road seems to be in the process of creating a track of some sort. They have brought in great quantities of dirt, piled it up, and leveled it off some 6 feet above grade. I am hopeful that whatever it is won’t involve combustion engines or a loudspeaker system. We are particularly vulnerable here in this unincorporated area which has no noise ordinances.

This first photo is of the wet lichen on a branch of our most endangered live oak.

This second photo is of an egg I plucked from a container of free range eggs we bought on Saturday at the Farmers' Market on Eastside in Houston. Complete with small reddish feather. The eggs came from a farm located in Weimar, and at Winedale we are closer to it than to where we bought the eggs in Houston. Not very green of us, is it?

Blood and birds

2009-02-08T08:46:00.004-06:00

This morning, back at Winedale, there was fresh blood on the porch railing and a single whitish underfeather on the floor beneath it. A hawk strike? We'll never know for sure. It was directly under the (empty) suet block holder that the squirrel was stretching for in my previous post.

The sight is a reminder, though, that the wonderful tapestry of birdsong we so love to wake to in the mornings denotes something quite different to those who sing. Some sounds of distress are unmistakeable, of course. When a blue jay is upset, the whole world is informed. If he's complaining near the house, the customary cause, I find, derives from snake or hawk--our two great predators of small creatures around here. Reputedly we have bobcats, but I've never seen one. Oh, and owls and coyotes...

The chatter among the trees and underbrush this morning, however, appears to be mainly a clamoring for spring. The weather is mild--66 degrees farenheit--and expected to climb into the high seventies. (A titmouse just turned up his beak at the odd-looking seed my husband has distributed. We're out of sunflower seed and suet. That means a seed-run into Brenham today. Our birds have no loyalty whatsoever. If we don't feed them, they leave.)

The urge for spring is mounting in people, too, culminating in the drive to Plant Something. Even though it's WAY TOO SOON! We've had hard freezes in March on this acreage, we must remember.

Also, and more sadly, our drought continues. This is far from funny, folks. Brown grass we can live with. Even moribund perennials are okay. But I have such fear for our live oaks, in particular the ones around the house that were impacted by the construction last year.

Learning not to grieve in advance over their possible demise is one of my challenges, at present. One youngish live oak away from the house does seem to be flourishing, however, (see photo) and I find that a hopeful sign. Also, as LH points out, the older trees I'm so worried about withstood the awful drought of the 1950s, so they should be fine.

There in a nutshell you see why he's Hale at 87. Attitude, attitude.

Multi-tasking

2009-02-05T09:53:00.003-06:00

(I wonder how Bentley the Lab sees through that broken windshield while he's driving?)

It's not a bad metaphor for the way I feel when I'm back in Houston--like my ability to see where I'm going is fragmented by a multitude of little tasks that take me in multiple directions.

Women are supposed to be good at it, right? Maybe it came with the territory of raising children. Because there is certainly no way to put in sustained effort on one thing in the middle of a houseful of kids. A mother has to be able to stop one thing, start two or three other things, then go back and complete the first thing, or maybe never complete any of it, and not go stark, staring mad in the process.

I was never very good at that, I admit. And I'm certainly not getting any better. Which is unfortunate, since the nature of my job is multiple projects, none of which ever really ends; and the nature of our life is trundling back and forth between two places, one located conveniently near medical facilities, one located in a place of clean air and birdsong and lovely light--making both equally necessary, even though each one comes with its own set of urgent tasks.

So coming back to Houston for me is like the butterfly crawling back into its cocoon, where the cocoon has many compartments. Yesterday we filed for four hours. Yes, really. We have temporary file boxes stacked in the middle of the floor, and we are making progress, slowly. Before that, I spent a delightful half hour trying to get inside the head of a character in my novel--something I should have tried two years ago. Then I pulled out of her head, I hope, before I sent email to our building's manager on efforts elsewhere to make condos non-smoking. Also, I did a couple of hours work on my company's business--three or four different items there. Also, had physical therapy, and fixed a couple of meals. A normal day all in all. No stretch necessary.

Followup

2009-02-02T07:54:00.002-06:00

A short note, here: Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California, San Diego Medical School, published a paper last week that documents some of the side effects of Lipitor, Crestor and similar statin drugs. She has been studying it for some time and is a recognized researcher in the field, not a crank. The side effects, like foggy thinking and muscle pain and weakness, are not imaginary or the result of aging. They're the result of the way the drugs deplete the production of co-enzyme Q-10, which delivers energy to muscles. So the report says.

Beauty Parlor Wisdom

2009-01-31T15:28:00.004-06:00

In the city I get my hair cut in a hair salon. Up here, though, I go to a beauty parlor. I doubt they’d call it that, but there are important differences. In the beauty parlor, for example, no one wears black. Jeans are a favorite outfit, in fact. And the stations sport personal assemblages of family photos and other memorabilia. Not just one or two, either, but a great sprouting of them, almost a family tree of pictures, in fact. And finally, the prices are less than half. Not a small matter, these days.

The conversation in a hair salon tends to be one-on-one, your hair cutter and you. In the beauty parlor, conversation can involve everyone. This morning’s subject was cholesterol drugs.

Anyone who has looked up Lipitor or Crestor on the internet knows that horror stories abound. I always thought: well, you’re going to hear from the ones who are having trouble. You don’t hear from the millions who don’t have trouble.
In the salon, today, I had a somewhat different response.

There were approximately ten people in the room; three of them were having the active conversation. Each of the three, and one husband, had experienced very strange side effects from Lipitor as prescribed by their individual physicians. Severe joint and muscle pain for two; mental fogginess to the point of interfering with daily activities for the other two; all of this occurring rapidly after the medication was prescribed and not before.

The doctors in question seem to have difficulty believing that rapid physical deterioration in a patient after they have been prescribed a statin has anything much to do with the statin. They will, if asked, recommend a different statin, but that’s about it.

So, is the problem the patient's perception? A patient is prescribed a statin usually as a response to a high cholesterol count. This is a problem without symptoms, for the most part. Suddenly, following use of the drug for a time, problems arise, which the doctor often ascribes to “aging.” Blood tests are performed, and if there is no sign of a particular pernicious muscle wasting side effect, the doctor attributes the changes to “aging.”

But why would “aging” symptoms dramatically increase in a short amount of time after the drug is prescribed, when they weren’t present beforehand?

We are sure that statins lower cholesterol. They seem to decrease the incidence of stroke and heart attack. They seem to increase muscle weakness and joint and memory problems. Are we now placed in the position of naming our poison? And of doing so without candid or informed advice?

(The two charmers below, who were roaming around Treeland Garden Center this afternoon, don't have need of beauty parlors, do they?)

More odd things

2009-01-30T09:50:00.006-06:00

I've been trying to get back into the routine of taking photographs, as an adjunct to daily life. Being in Houston for those weeks intervened, but yesterday I made a foray, first into the yard and then out onto the country roads.

The first image above is what they call, hereabouts, a "bottle tree." Self-explanatory, except for the obvious work putting it together.

The second image is what happened to the "Odd Round Thing" I blogged about months ago. It is not a black and white image. That's just the color of the ground here at present. We all decided it was a fungus.

The third image, if you look closely, involves a tiny frog among the leaves. He moved or I wouldn't have spotted him.

The last two are views from the roads I traveled: a nice barn and the tunnel formed by greenery along Mayer Cemetery Road. A little further along I saw Oso, our neighbor's white Lab disappearing companionably into the brush with his chocolate Lab lady friend from Trails West.

Framing Cards

2009-01-29T21:24:00.004-06:00

I've found a neat frame for artists' cards, handpainted ones like PJ's, and I wanted to show a picture of it. They're in dark gray steel or shinier steel, and they're made in New York by Bedford Downing Glass. I got this one at Surroundings in Houston. I think they're great for the purpose, since you can see both sides.

You have to use a card of some kind to slip the card in and position it, but then, there you are.

Monday, Monday

2009-01-26T09:48:00.003-06:00

While on Sunday I seem always to be thinking about politics, probably on account of the newspapers we read, Mondays are different. Fortunately. On Monday, we're propelled back into our weekly routine, hurtling forward to accomplish the items on our to-do list, lacking the time or inclination for mulling the fate of nations. It's a relief, frankly.

This Monday, here at Winedale, there is rain. Yep. That wet stuff falling on the tin roof. The air is misty with it. A woodpecker has just let out a long run of his medium-pitched clacking sound. On the road, a truck rolls slowly by, its tires slushing a little across the damp surface. Our road used to be a reddish gravel, but in the past few years the county has decided to top it with a caliche mixture, whitish, that splashes up on your car's backside in a very unpleasant way.

The country is relatively quiet in January, however. The restaurants are mostly empty. Tourists tend to stay home, which is a shame because the countryside offers some rewarding pleasures this time of year. The monochrome landscape is wonderfully subtle in its variations. With the understory knocked back, the skeleton of the land is more visible. Barns and houses appear where you've never noticed them before. And, no, they're not new construction, thank heaven.

And sometimes, driving along one of the roads, you will see surprising sights. These llamas are definitely not an indigenous animal, hereabouts.

Good or Bad

2009-01-25T18:01:00.000-06:00

I've just finished reading John LeCarre's A Most Wanted Man, which I really enjoyed. At the same time, I've been re-reading Leon Hale's Bonney's Place. Two more different books would be hard to find. Yet...the subject matter is the same. Let me explain.

In the Le Carre thriller, the Muslim target is a public figure whose charitable contributions are said to be 95% "good" and only 5% "bad." The five percent relates to the money and goods siphoned off to fund terrorists. So the question becomes: is that five percent bad enough to cancel out the vast preponderance of good works? The Americans in this story think so. And so (spoiler alert) he's basically toast.

In Bonney's Place the question is whether a man who bilks an old man out of a considerable sum of money can possibly be anything other than "bad." This man also spotlights deer out of season, repeatedly cheats a pompous customer, slaughters the same customer's heifer and serves it to the poor people of his community, and performs other larcenies, here and there. At the same time, he takes in people who need help and performs many small acts of kindness in his community.

It seems to me that our society has entered a time where many of our citizens desperately want clarity between actions that may be called good, or bad. But instead we find ever larger situations where the actions encompass both polarities. I'm thinking of things like how to treat people suspected of terrorism when they are arrested; and how we respond to suspicions of terrorist activities. There is no clear and immediate answer, and we grope toward an understanding of the boundaries we cannot allow ourselves to cross.

Our new administration will be caught in the complexities of this process, but it may be able to handle them in a more satisfactory fashion than did its predecessor. Because of the value the president places on the pre-eminence of the rule of law, we have drawn a boundary for ourselves. That will help guide us, and possibly allow us to avoid the pitfalls of ideology.

Without law, there is no civilization. When we must deal with nations and tribes who reject common understandings of law, including their own religious law, and we respond by doing the same, we abandon all concepts of civilization. I suggest that this constitutes another boundary for us. If we must abandon our civilization in order to prevail against the enemy, what have we achieved in the victory?

Moving

2009-01-23T15:20:00.004-06:00

Thanks to everyone for the nice comments on my previous entry. It's been pretty thick this week, so I've not had time to post. But we're on the road back to Winedale today which will definitely help.

Larry McMurtry gave a talk on Wednesday at Rice and my spies tell me he was very pessimistic on the future for reading. His focus, of course, is books. He defines himself first and foremost as a "bookman". His comments stimulated a spirited discussion in my writers group. He was talking about the publishing industry and the rare book area, where many rare book dealers have contacted him over the past several years asking him to take over their store of books.

What do you all think?

It should be noted, of course, that Larry has written about his own depression following open heart surgery. And his last talk at Rice in the early 80's was seriously pessimistic about writers over the age of 40. So we're not dealing with Pollyanna here.

It was more than a color

2009-01-19T15:50:00.002-06:00

Many years ago I was working in Washington, DC, and one of my roommates fixed me up with a blind date. The young man had attended St. Paul’s School and graduated from Harvard. He was tall and handsome, with a serious face and hazel eyes. And he was bi-racial. In fact, his skin was scarcely darker than mine.

We climbed into his sports car, and pulled away into Georgetown traffic. We talked while he drove. I don’t remember what we talked about. Neither do I remember where we were going. All I recall of the evening was that at one point we drove past the White House. It was blazing with light and I blurted out: “It certainly is white, isn’t it?”

This admittedly stupid remark made him very angry.

I’ve thought of this young man often as I watched Barack Obama over the past two years. He would be in his sixties, now, and I hope—and expect—that he has been successful. But it gives me great satisfaction to know that no young man or woman will ever again have to look at our beautiful White House and think that the color of its paint says something important about them and their future in our society.

Old Folks

2009-01-18T10:54:00.002-06:00

We received a photo of this painting as a Christmas card this year from the artist, Bill E. Morgan. He’s got the postures so right that it really appealed to me. The location is, most likely, the village of Tremolat in the Dordogne region of France, where Mr. Morgan lives and paints for much of the year. The life and buildings of that village form the subject of his art, to the extent I am familiar with it.

My own grandmother, as well as her sister and brother, came from that general area of France and I’ve spent some time there myself. It seems to me that Mr. Morgan has precisely captured these people, who are individuals, yet also examples of their types—especially the women, who can be nothing other than French. He’s even got the shoes exactly right.

But what do we see when we look at them? I can remember what I would have thought a few years ago. I would have thought: oh, old folks. And that would have been that. I would have felt a distance along with a dismissal of any possible connection to me, ever.

How a few years changes things…

How old do you suppose they are? The women are clearly mobile, and two, at least, still have husbands. I met an elderly cousin when I was over there in the 90’s and she wore a similar cardigan and dress. She was in her late eighties.

What are they talking about? Is it the changes their small village has seen in the past decade and a half? Is it the fact that English is spoken as often as French in the village grocery?

My husband wrote a column about our visit to the village a few years ago, and sent it to the paper via email. The next morning our landlord told Hale that the mayor of the village had sent him a copy of the column. Seems the mayor checks Google every morning for references to Tremolat.

Those ladies have a surfeit of change to talk about. That’s clear. But they’re probably listening to a story of someone’s daughter’s husband’s brother who totally messed up.

Not even a bite

2009-01-14T20:35:00.003-06:00

Cold fronts keep rolling through Texas, so they reach all the way to Houston in a way they haven’t done for a number of years. People are pulling wooly sweaters and even overcoats out of their closets.

By four PM today, however, it had warmed into the sixties, so I took our B dog for her walk. On the street behind our building, a few houses down from the razed house I blogged about earlier, a woman keeps a lovely rose garden. Even this time of year, it has blossoms—souvenir de la malmaison, for one.

The woman who nurtures these roses was out in the garden, in the sunshine, and I wondered if she was preparing to prune them. It would have been early, of course. Pruning roses is done traditionally in our area in mid-February.

I spoke to her, and she called me over to show me something. She pointed to the pink rose, spread generously across one bed, and then to the arched trellis. “Cherry tomatoes,” she said.

The tomato bush was a good eight feet in width, and lush, even before it climbed the trellis. A few yellow blossoms peeked out from beneath the foliage. “Here,” she said, and she handed me a tiny golden tomato, no bigger than my thumbnail. “I’ve picked a lot of them today, and this is the last one,” she said.

There was an eggplant, too, although that plant—even bigger than the tomato—had been nipped by a freeze.

“How deep are these beds?” I asked.

“Oh, they’ve been there a long time and they keep sinking. Three feet deep, I guess.”

Maybe that’s the reason for the prolific vegetables. Or maybe it has to do with her fertilizer—a diet of banana peels, alfalfa and fish emulsion, covered with a nice deep mulch of pine needles.

Something to ponder.

Time Travel

2009-01-13T10:09:00.004-06:00

One of my repeating fantasies is that of returning to the past, where I can see and interact as the person I am now, with the people I was fond of then, most of them family. On Sunday, though, I got a taste of the experience, and it was strange.

I must be one of the few people in America today whose family never shot videotape of each other. Still photos, sure, but nothing that moved. So we don’t have those embarrassing videos of relatives and friends with bushy sideburns and strange hair, doing odd things. And we don’t have the precious ones of children we love, moving and talking as they did. (Oh, I’d give a lot for that to be otherwise.)

Well, on Sunday we went to the Menil Collection, where they're showing a film shot in 1973 by Francois de Menil, and edited more recently by his son, John. It documents the preparations for a major exhibition of the de Menils' collection of works by Max Ernst. For an hour we watched Dominique de Menil "hang" the show and get ready for the opening. The camera was in the style of just lurking around, focusing on the faces a great deal, as you’d do if you were there. That made it easy to pass through the plane of the screen into the scene.

So, in that fashion, we accompanied her and the artist to the pre-opening party and then to the opening of the exhibition, and all along we heard Dominique or Ernst making little comments, or arts patrons trying to converse, some of them a bit awkwardly, with this iconic master of 20th century art. Of course, on the periphery, the camera inadvertently captured glimpses of Houstonians I once knew, most of them--sad to say—now dead.

During the time of the film, I was pregnant with my son and married to a museum curator. So I knew a few of these patrons of what passed in Houston then as the artistic avant garde. And it was distinctly odd to have them appear suddenly, briefly, before me, the nuance of their faces displayed as it cannot be in memory.

Even more peculiar, though, is the way it feels today—as though on Sunday I actually spent time inside the large white room at Rice where the exhibition was held, a room I remember as much for its chalky emptiness, as for the art.

It seems as though I was there, as Maisie Marshall attempted to put Herr Ernst at ease, with a little graceful inclination of the head that I instantly recognized, but had forgotten. There were a number of others, too: Daphne Murray, looking surprisingly sad as the camera caught her behind Dominique; Elsa and Bob Kaim; David Adickes—the only one of the people I knew in the group who is still alive. And Dominique, herself, lovely in an elegant strapless gown (at sixty-seven) speaking to friends who milled about as people do at openings, and finally exiting the building, with her escort, Miles Glaser—an old friend of mine, as well—strolling diffidently in her wake.

As the images linger, fading slowly, it feels more like a dream I had than a documentary.

(This is the formerly full moon going to bed on Monday morning.)

Made sunshine

2009-01-10T09:31:00.007-06:00

Today presents us with a transcendence of grey. Our view is grey, grey variegated sky, grey buildings. Through a brilliance of initial concept (mine), the walls of our flat are also grey. The French birds, paint on board, with a painted frame, offer mere punctuation.

So, looking outward, I strive to perceive the details within neutrality, the soft cottony rolls of light and darker clouds, the multiple shades presented by the blocky buildings of Greenway Plaza and along the West Loop.

Inside, however, there are few variations to perceive. The spirit wavers, and then to lift itself, it goes for sunshine into a painting I've had for years. It's by a Canadian artist, Darryl Hughto, who no longer paints, I hear. But it's a fine surprise of Southwestern sun on a grey day.
(detail)

Gone

2009-01-08T17:21:00.004-06:00

Well, we're definitely back in Houston, folks, and what is the most fitting symbol of that? A bulldozer.

So this morning we were greeted by the very thing, hard at work on the residence right under our western windows. It's the same roof that I blogged about awhile back, as a man removed its chimney brick by brick, while his lunch waited nearby.

Or was.

Cityscape

2009-01-07T21:23:00.004-06:00

We're back in Houston from the country for a bit. Packing and travelling yesterday is why I didn't post. And today, I've begun a massive organization project of the office and home files, so I never made it outside. Still, at sunset I noticed some unusual patterns in the southwestern sky so I photographed them from our balcony. The tall building is Williams Tower, formerly Transco Tower. The man responsible for building it lives in our building now.

Patterns

2009-01-05T20:45:00.003-06:00

I am continually surprised at the variation of pattern and texture I find as I drive around our area. Here are some of them:

Norther (revised)

2009-01-04T12:10:00.006-06:00

Today we're back inside winter, once more. Blustery and dark, occasional bouts of rain. Much colder.

For warmth, I turn to the newspapers. When the house is chilled, my own blood begins to flow faster with the words of Frank Rich at the New York Times. (We have it online, here in the country.)

Well, as the Weaver of Grass said yesterday--one jolt of the news per day is more than enough. I'll turn instead toward this stealthy neighborhood hunter (click to see the eyes). Field mice, beware:

Spring in January

2009-01-03T11:07:00.003-06:00

Today is so beautiful! Blue sky, breeze, seventy-five degrees!

One of the things visitors to central and southern Texas often don't realize is how beautiful it can be in winter. In between cold fronts (which don't last long, for that matter), you have soft breezes and days where you need neither heat nor air conditioning. That's the time to visit Houston in particular. Spectacular January.

I have the windows open right now and I can hear the birds chittering. They flit between feeders and trees, but their movement has lost the desperate energy it possessed only a couple of days ago. It's almost as if they believe it might actually be such an early spring.

We human inhabitants of this small parcel of real estate, however, know better. And we'll just enjoy it while it's here.

Dog Books

2009-01-02T17:02:00.005-06:00

There is a phenomenon trotting across the landscape of publishing, and it is the dog-book. (I blogged about this in my first post in December on my other blog.) Possibly the reason for so many in one year is the phenomenal success of Marley and Me.

Whatever the cause, it has emboldened me to try short fiction from the point of view of a dog. This is an illuminating mind-meld. We all can immediately imagine the amount of interest a dog has in food or the pleasures of chasing prey. But what then?

Dogs sleep a lot, and they dream. What do they dream of?

If ever you really study a dog, you will see all sorts of expressions cross his or her face. I think anxiety of one kind or another is fairly frequent. Just think of it--here's this wonderful hunting machine, capable of high intelligence as it interacts with its world, an individual, adult creature, and now it exists at the whim of an owner. An owner it didn't ask for, but still manages somehow to love depite the owner's necessary failings.

The owner is leaving. Will she return? The day is growing dark. Will they remember to feed me? I am thirsty and the toilets are closed (or perhaps the dog hasn't learned the availability of the eternal spring). I am a creature that NEEDS to smell many things, and I am confined to a closed house or apartment for endless hours. When will they take me for a walk? Well, you get the drift.

Love is clearly one of those emotions a dog feels, though. We were at a neighbor's house on New Year's Eve and one of the dogs--who has visited us several times on his wanderings around the neighborhood--spent much of the evening lying at, and sometimes on, my feet. He likes me, and I have no idea why.

Has that ever happened to you?

I don't know whether a story will coalesce out of my imaginings, but the seven pages I've written so far are the first fiction I've felt like writing for a couple of months. So, viva!

Roads

2009-01-01T13:13:00.002-06:00

The road ahead

The road behind

Resolutions?

2008-12-31T14:46:00.006-06:00

Personally, I’m glad to see 2008 on its way out. Beyond the politics, Hurricane Ike, the financial meltdown and all war-related issues, we were diminished by the loss of two close associates and friends, Drew MacWilliam and Marjorie Arsht. Over the past several years, I’d spent more time with them than with anyone else I know, except my husband, so their loss created a considerable void at the center of my life.

In fact, looking forward to 2009, I find myself a little intimidated. We have no idea of the new challenges we will encounter and I feel a little panicky, just thinking about them.

So, instead, I try to focus on small things—like finding a way to make sweat pants attractive. Or getting my business and personal files in order. Maybe this will be the year those things happen.

And exercise! That’s a verb, not a noun—a distinction I keep fudging.

I hope to make more time for creative work. Short stories. Try to complete 10, maybe, that I’m not ashamed to show people. Is that too small a goal?

Of course, in a serious vein, I pray for my husband’s continued good health, and my own, and that of all our family and close associates and friends, including those who blog. And I hope to attain for myself an outlook that embraces optimism and serenity, and allows me to discover both of these in the midst of whatever else may be going on.

That latter goal is why, right now--on New Year’s Eve--I’m trying to look past the artificial marks of the calendar. Instead, I’m thinking of today, as just that—today, a sunlit Wednesday. Tomorrow is tomorrow, Thursday. And after that comes Friday and the weekend. (I love weekends.) Night falls, day blooms once more, winter offers its mild interludes, prophesying spring, and so on. These are the measures the earth provides, as it moves around the sun. Like the world, itself, they carry no lines or numbers or man-made demarcations.

See? Already, I’m feeling better.

Some road shots

2008-12-30T22:02:00.002-06:00

Driving back from Round Top this afternoon, I decided to go have a look at the new cell phone tower. We know folks on Kneipp Road who can probably see the thing from their front porch. I hope I'm wrong. It's just a cell tower, but still...

The following are two scenes that caught my eye as I drove--the first because it is what it is, a chimney and fireplace that have survived when the house around them has disappeared.

The second one interested me because of the geometric shapes.

Friends

2008-12-29T19:40:00.005-06:00

The bovines here seem emblematic of a kind of friendship, looking out as one upon the moving world beyond the fence. Or perhaps they are mother and daughter.

In any event, following a visit from an old dear friend this weekend, I’ve been thinking about friendship, the kind we have in a world where families are fragmented and people dispersed thousands of miles from where they were born. This circumstance has been more the rule than the exception for my generation, and those born even a decade or so before me.

One result, of course, is that it has become difficult to stay involved in the lives of friends, particularly the friends of one’s youth.

Maybe it was inevitable that the internet would spring up to collapse those distances with an ease not dreamed of by my immigrant grandmother, who did her connecting with pen and paper. She wrote letters every day, to siblings and cousins in France and Germany, to best friends from school even though one of them lived in Hong Kong, and the other had become a nun in Tennessee. She wrote letters to her four daughters, wherever they were, and the circulation of these letters provides for her descendants a window into the world they inhabited.

We today use email, and we blog. We find new friends, blogging, and the connection does a great deal to fill the holes left by the distances we have moved across the planet in our diaspora of prosperity and commerce.

So when the chance arrives to spend time with a childhood friend, it’s both rare and extraordinarily special.

My friend Donna lived two streets away from me in high school. We played basketball, tennis, and other sports together; we carpooled; together in my car, we snuck into Rice University to visit her boyfriend; I was there the morning after her dad—brandishing his shotgun—ran off a carload of boys intent on wrapping her trees with toilet paper. He’d grown tired of removing this emblem of adolescent popularity. Later, I lent her the first SLR she’d used, and she quickly surpassed me in her photographic skill. We married very different men, and for a long time we lived quite different lives less than two blocks apart on the eastern side of the neighborhood where we grew up. She moved away, finally.

Then, when LH and I began to live parttime in Santa Fe, there she was, with her second husband, Walt. After half a lifetime, two marriages and one divorce each, we reconnected. We see each other now in bursts, when grandchildren bring her and Walt to Texas. And at those times, we find ourselves moving forward in conversations deepened by references both of us—and few others—understand. There is considerable comfort to this, and to the way we can see the other shining through the changes time has wrought upon our exteriors. She remains each incarnation of the self she has been over time, and I can only hope I am the same for her.

Howdy and Co.

2008-12-28T21:30:00.005-06:00

Some old dear friends, passing through, stayed with us last night and gave our guest area, otherwise known as my office, a particularly good test. That's because they brought their dog, a Labradoodle named Howdy, and he spent the night up there with them, navigating our narrow steep staircase with aplomb.

Howdy is a Labrador crossed with a poodle, the offspring of which is crossed again with a poodle. The resulting pup bears a designation involving letters and numbers, but the reality is the most adorable big dog you'll ever want to see.

Really big, folks.

He has a Labrador-sized head, with curly fur on it, which makes a truly impressive spectacle. And he is fast. He had many opportunities to indulge his speed, as we have a considerable assortment of lethargic rabbits and squirrels who have grown lazy under the disinterested gaze of Bronte.

When he wasn't out chasing these creatures, he made sure to keep an eagle eye out for any interlopers who might dare to trespass. We thought he looked just like a boy in a dog suit. Click on the images to see why.

Turkey for hire

2008-12-26T11:46:00.005-06:00

Companies I work with were generous this Christmas. Please note the amazing flower arrangement behind the less colorful, but surely more tasty, smoked turkey, above.

Problem is, LH is on a lowest sodium possible diet, so smoked turkey is OUT.

I'm trying to find a worthy home for this delicious hickory smoked item from New Braunfels Smokehouse. I tried a church in Brenham, no answer. Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Round Top suggested AMEN in LaGrange, but they're closed until Monday.

Anyone got any ideas???

Christmas Books

2008-12-25T12:41:00.007-06:00

This year, for the second time, we decided to give only books to each other for the holiday. That's right. Books from Brazos Bookstore in Houston. Brazos is one of the last remaining independent bookstores, and at the holiday season, it is absolutely stuffed with wonderfulness. (I say that even though I have a small ownership interest in the store which might prejudice me somewhat.)

I thought some people might be interested in what books we actually gave and received.

Hale, for example, has been immersed all morning in National Geographic: The Photographs. I was in the store hoping for inspiration when the cover of this little book jumped out at me. It's the famous closeup photograph of the Afghan Girl, the one with the striking green eyes that was everywhere in the media a few years ago. On the back cover, there's a similarly posed photograph of the same person, a mother now, and seeing the change is quite moving.

We each gave the other Philip Roth's new book, Indignation. (Obviously, we don't coordinate.) I got Toni Morrison's A Mercy, along with the theory of light and matter, by Andrew Porter (an award-winning collection of short stories), Kathy Huber's book on Texas Flower Gardens, and a lovely book on home decor called Casa San Miguel.

I gave Hale John Le Carre's new one, A Most Wanted Man; also, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, the Untold History of English by John McWhorter and The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike.

None of these choices are shots in the dark, of course, but rather books chosen out of a thousand references to subjects of interest over the year. How could one ask for a more personal gift than that, or one that will give more lasting pleasure?

Now to find space in our bookshelves...

The Day Before Christmas

2008-12-24T12:16:00.006-06:00

(Please note that the day's installments are posted at the bottom of the earlier entry.)

Our day began with mud, glorious mud. We've been having rain showers. Rain at any time, even Christmas Eve, is so welcome, after the awful drought.

The homely Christmas tree is damp. The boughs for the wreath and garland are damp. So while I wait for them to dry a bit, I'm blogging. In installments. Blogging the day as the mess in our little house turns into Christmas, however small.

I hope.

It occurred to me to do this, since we're spending our first Christmas in the country, and it's just the two of us, my husband and I. Son and daughter-in-law are spending the holiday chained to the workplace in NYC, so I thought I'd give them a virtual day of Christmas prep down here. Just think of all they're missing!

So this is the first installment: the tree:

Installment #2, two p.m.

Presents are wrapped, and the wreath that goes on the fence by the gate is up. This is a storebought wreath with the only red ribbon they had left. It does not pay to decorate for Christmas this close to the day itself. The nursery in Brenham had discarded all their live trees and greenery on Monday. We arrived on Tuesday and got fakes. Real fakes, in any event. No pretense about that. (The yucca isn't fake, though.)

Now Installment #3, at four p.m.--the wreath, clearly handmade, including handmade bow. Once I took a test in which one of the components was a measurement of digital dexterity. Out of a possible 100, I scored seven, and they counselled me to avoid clothes with buttons. Also, not to expect much when making things like wreaths and bows.

Our final installment, at 8:30 p.m., is the little tree with little decorations, and not too many of them. Please note the necklace of cranberries! We are pooped, and so, a very Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night! (Did someone else say that somewhere? It sounds familiar...)

Hunker Down

2008-12-22T16:16:00.003-06:00

Perhaps because of the unusual cold lately in Texas, some of the resident animals have decided to lie down on the job.

December View:

Homemade Decorations

2008-12-21T19:57:00.001-06:00

I had the best intentions. Our homely cedar tree, cut from the bank of our own pond would wear popcorn chains and cranberry necklaces, in addition to the personal decorations we have grown to love.

So we got a bag of cranberries from the local store. And a bag of popping corn. I started with the berries, which I intended to string while Hale watched the Texans lose to the Raiders.

Fairly quickly, I learned two things: first, these cranberries had been around awhile. They were getting old and soft. Second, my needle was too big.

I had bought an assortment of needles, and some black thread, which I thought would be invisible on the tree. The large needle I began with, however, was so much wider than the thread that the holes leaked. Just a little, but still. You don’t want cranberry juice all over your tree, no matter how homely it may be.

I changed needles. I even managed to thread the tiny thing on the third try.

After an hour and a half of less than galvanizing football I had eighteen inches of strung berries, and I quit.

I hope to do better with the popcorn.

Bricks

2008-12-20T11:44:00.005-06:00

A workman is taking down a chimney on the house beneath us, brick by brick. He has set his lunch in a handy location, by the roof vent.

Doves

2008-12-18T21:52:00.004-06:00

I was filling my car today when I looked up and saw this December View.

This was on the corner of a busy intersection (Willowick and San Felipe) at a gas station where I've been trading since I was a small child. I have never seen either the doves or the oranges before.

Today's temp was 75, but freezing is predicted for the weekend. I wonder what it will do to the oranges...

Then the sun came out:

2008-12-17T21:48:00.005-06:00

We remain in Houston, where Kirby Drive has become a no-drive zone. Not that half the world isn't trying.

Between Richmond and Westheimer, parts of the street have been ripped away. There are concrete barriers reducing the lanes on each side to two. A very tall condo nears completion on the east side. A large mixed use complex proceeds on the west side. Trucks protrude partway into the traffic. Cranes swing overhead. Side streets are closed for re-paving and businesses have gone bust or moved. It is, to put it mildly, a mess. And it won't be much better when those large structures begin disgorging their residents.

Extricating myself from the snaggle, however, I saw a fine picture. Don't you hate that? A fine picture and no camera on the seat beside you?

A young boy waited for a bus in front of a large bed of roses in the yard that once belonged to former mayor Bob Lanier. He was leaning against the brick wall talking in a pleasantly absorbed way into his cell phone, while tangerine roses fanned out behind his head. Nice.

Instead of that scene, however, here is my December View for today. Another lingering remnant of Hurricane Ike, taken yesterday:

Cling, clang

2008-12-15T19:22:00.004-06:00

I was trudging into the Walgreen's pharmacy this afternoon when I spotted the guy, a tall African-American man of middle age, with a cheerful face. He was positioned next to his Salvation Army stand immediately beside the entrance. Ringing his bell, he greeted customers with a resonant "Merry Christmas!"

This year Houston has been hard hit, with Ike, followed by the downturn everyone is experiencing, so I reached into my purse and grabbed a bill. A woman overtook me and pushed her donation into the can, and I followed suit.

As she passed through the door, the Santa reached over and hugged me. "If you'll take me home with you on Dec 24, I'll cook your Christmas dinner," he declared, laughing.

"You don't know what you'd be letting yourself in for," I rejoined.

"I make a great pecan pie!" he said.

"Oh, lord, don't say that!" I said and the door closed behind me.

This was definitely my strangest Christmas moment of the year.

December View for today is the twin towers of Greenway Plaze and the tallest pine tree inside the Loop to survive hurricane Ike.

Small, good things

2008-12-14T13:14:00.007-06:00

I woke up this morning thinking about “things” and Christmas. We’ve been trying to enjoy a small Christmas for several years now. Not having young children or grandchildren around, there’s no need for the pile of gifts under the tree that used to seem so important. (There’s no need for the tree, either, but you have to draw the line somewhere.)

That brought me to consider what gives me the Christmas feeling, other than carols, of course. Ornaments, for example. During our travels over the past decade, we would carry special ones with us to produce a feeling of home years and miles away from the real thing.

Many of these Christmas essentials are handmade, or look that way. There are personalized metal angels, wooden pigs, gingerbread men made out of clay, and the little card that was attached to a long-forgotten present that bears my mother’s shaky handwriting as she expressed her love to her grandson. She died the following spring.

My favorites for looks, however, are two glass circles that I hang on the tree with lights behind them so they glow.

And one hand-painted one by a well-known Houston artist that was given to me in 1977 by Karl Kilian. I've always thought it was Charles Schorre, but the signature on the back looks more like Earl Staley. In either case, well loved.

They’re my December View for today.

Absent

2008-12-13T04:40:00.006-06:00

There's a new chapter of Absent, my novel, posted on my other blog this morning. The chapter is set in Santa Fe.

In looking through photographs of Santa Fe, where we had a condo for several years, I was reminded of a great poem, by Elizabeth Bishop:

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster

Oxen

2008-12-12T12:12:00.005-06:00

It seems to be human nature to protect one’s own ox, while ignoring the effect that might have on the neighbor’s. I’ve seen two examples of this already this morning.

The first has to do with the smoke in our apartment.

On account of Christmas prep, we’re back in the Houston flat for a while, where we experience the sun-struck day outside through a filter of UV film. I can only vaguely hear the squawk of a blue jay through the glass.

The smoke I refer to above is coming through the AC vents and it’s stronger today than usual. Much of the time recently it has been minimal or absent, but that was in mild weather. Today it is cold outside (by our standards) and so all the smokers in the building are indulging their addiction (feeding their ox) inside. One of the worst offenders is down the hall, a renter in the unit right next to the elevator. Our building has the units under negative pressure, so all the odors from the units flow out into the corridor, which has no air circulation. Nice, huh? As a result, when you wait for the elevator, you get a nice bath of cigarette smoke.

Moreover, a quirk in our ventilation system allows her and others’ smoke to enter our flat, where we don’t smoke and where I happen to be allergic, thanks to growing up in my mother’s house.

Pardon me while I cough...

The second example of oxen I have in mind has to do with the auto bailout. Non-bailout, as of right now. Eight Republican Senators, voting with the majority of their party, provided the margin that killed the bill.

There is logic to their position, even if it lacks heart. Narrowly viewed, if the auto industries went bankrupt, they’d be rid of the union contracts that pay American workers more than workers in American-based auto plants owned by foreign companies. Everything would have to be renegotiated—if the bankrupt industries even survived. This has the virtue for those Senators of being consistent with Republican free market principles. (Remember what Wilde said about that: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But he was British and he’s dead, so what did he know?)

Their position seems somewhat less pure, however, when you factor in the presence of foreign auto plants in their states. The Republicans voting for the bailout included those from states where the American auto industry and its suppliers are located. That’s part of the rust in Rust Belt. Republicans voting against it included those from states where companies like Toyoto have built their U.S. infrastructure.

Everyone, it appears, is looking after his own ox. Who’s looking after ours? That’s what I’d like to know. There should be someone out there in a position of leadership who understands the big picture, whatever it may be. Or is that too much to ask?

December View for today is the last farm scene for a while. This is a collection of buildings along Winedale Rd. I missed yesterday and will double up when I have some new ones, maybe tomorrow. City scenes...

It's Cold

2008-12-10T11:03:00.005-06:00

For anyone who's interested, I've posted the Prologue from my novel on my other blog. Comments are welcome.

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

What’s that weird white stuff under the oak tree out back? Wait, look at the mulch pile! It looks like a heap of...

Snow!

Excitement in the vicinity of snow will seem strange to anyone from the north, but for native Houstonians it's a common reaction. Even though we lived in Santa Fe one winter, I’ve never had enough of it.

Up there at 7000+ feet, you get lovely dry snow in thick layers like meringue. And when the weather warms, it doesn’t melt; it shrinks. You can see the retreat by the damp places it leaves temporarily behind, like wet shadows. The only dirty part is if they’ve sprinkled reddish...something…sand?... on the streets, and then followed with a snowplow to produce pink snow banks, which sound more attractive than they are.

This morning, however, is typical of winter in central or southeast Texas: A balmy seventy-five yesterday afternoon, then a forty-degree nosedive overnight, plus a 20 mph wind. Break out the parka, the gloves, long handles for, say, five days—at the end of which the temperature will have climbed to seventy-eight again (actually predicted for next week).

I’m not complaining, although I remember that cozy winter in Santa Fe: Pinon fires in the kiva fireplace; the soporific effect of nightfall when the snow that iced adobe walls would pass through white to blue and seem to glow from within; long walks with the dog while snow fell in the gathering dusk. Born in Colorado, Bronte loves cold weather and would take off down the slopes of unblemished meringue in pursuit of rabbits, real and imaginary.

But I also remember the ice. White ice, black ice. Our driveway sloped up to the garage, presenting a daily challenge. If you tried to walk down it, you’d suddenly be airborne. The only way LH could reach the paper in the mornings was to edge around the slope in the snowy verge, where his boots could sink in a couple of inches for traction. We definitely don’t miss that. (He especially doesn’t.)

It’s mid-morning now and the snow has melted. The fencetops have been dusted with birdseed, and a large woodpecker shares the largesse with one redbird and a very plump squirrel. Life returns to normal.

December View for today is from the warm part of yesterday, Bob Mann from Austin telling a story to LH on our front porch.

Scribblers

2008-12-09T14:02:00.004-06:00

LH has gone to lunch with two writers from Houston and one from Austin, meeting at Klump’s on the square in Round Top. These guys are professionals who make a living from writing sentences and/or teaching others how to do it.

I’m sitting here wondering how much longer they will have those jobs, in print media, at least.

And it's got me thinking about reading words on a paper page. Reading fiction, in fact. Why should reading novels endure? What exactly is it we get from a good piece of fiction that we can't get from a movie? They’re both telling stories, after all.

In my view, it comes to this: Fine fiction takes you out of yourself for the duration of the story; and yet it brings you back to a fuller understanding of yourself when you are done.

Film can do the first, but the images are so intense, and fall so rapidly upon one another, that you have no opportunity for reflection about what you’re seeing. You can’t put a film down after a particularly moving scene while you consider its meaning. (Well, you can put it on pause, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it? In fact, the stilled image sits right there on the screen and reproaches you for stopping it.)

Also, books last longer. They are portable. Even e-readers are portable. Film is now portable, too, but enjoying a movie on the go requires the presence of earphones and the right kind of computer. A book just requires it own small self, and you.

Obviously, however, the gap between books and film is narrowing.

That leaves us with the one big difference. That is, books require a deeper engagement of your imagination. You are peopling the story, putting faces on the characters, creating the sound of their voices. You are the set designer, too.

In the case of fiction, less remains actually more.

For now.

December View for today is the remnant of the farmhouse where Mr. and Mrs. Muske spent their lives:

To Do

2008-12-08T14:05:00.005-06:00

The shed is nearly finished, except for paint. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow, so it’s a fine line, I’m told. Every day for weeks has been rainless, many of them sunny, but right when we need to paint, rain is on the horizon, so to speak. 30% chance. If we paint, that will immediately rise to 85% probability.

I am relinquishing all fantasies of control.

Ahhhhhhh…Yes, that feels better.

We’ve been talking about the next project. Our yard gate barely latches any more. The reason for this is the enormous Lady Banks rose that arches above it. Even the rose wouldn’t have caused a problem, though, if one of the landscape people hadn’t tried to force a machine that was too big though the gate’s opening, breaking off one of the support posts at the ground. Now the post is held in place by the fencing wire, and the rose itself.

We are hoping to jack up the rose, remove the broken post and replace with another post. Since the broken post is set in concrete, however, this will not be easy. That’s why talking is all we’re doing, so far.

After that, there’s the vegetable garden gate…presently a piece of scenic chicken wire.

We never run out of projects, it seems. You will note that none of the above has anything to do with Christmas. I'm ostriching Christmas prep, it appears.

December Views for today are photos from Saturday’s holiday celebration in Round Top. There was a parade, then brass band music, German Christmas carols by the Winedale singers, and Santa:

Oso Blanco

2008-12-07T15:20:00.003-06:00

The white bear was lying on our doorstep when LH got up this morning. He’s not a really a bear, of course, but a large white Lab who belongs to our neighbors down the road. He’d been here last night, too, the first time ever in the dark. Before that, we hadn’t seen him for several weeks, maybe more than a month.

He’s become a well-known wanderer in our rural neighborhood since the day in late August when the people on the corner of our road brought him house to house in their truck, trying to find his owner. At first I thought he was a great Pyrenees. He has the wide forehead characteristic of those giants. Upon closer examination, however, it was obvious he was a Lab.

After I’d talked to the good Samaritans for a while, I had a thought. LH had been at the neighbors’ a few weeks before and had commented to me on the particularly fine pair of yellow Labs who lived there. Very pale ones. I put two and two together, and I was correct. He was their dog.

A few days after that, he appeared at our yard fence one morning, a silent, alert visitor. (I’ve never heard him bark.) He has a little scar on his right cheek, so I was certain it was the same dog. I let him into the yard and he and Bronte had a lovely time, playing. After a time, I noticed he limped. Badly. Was it a paw? No. It was worse than that. If you have Labs, by now you have guessed: dysplasia. The curse of inbreeding in the species.

But he’s an easy-going fellow, quite happy here today—right now asleep at my feet. He seems lonesome, though, and I do know that he frequently visits the people who live at the corner of our road. They have a chocolate Lab and a dog door, an apparently inviting combination, as the white bear sometimes appears without notice in their kitchen.

The trick with having him here, is Bronte’s green eyes. She loves playing with him, but the more he follows me around, the more she notices. The principal trigger of her notice was my fault, however. I tried to situate them in the living room, so all three of us could be in one room together, and I could write this blog entry while they slept.

We have an ancient tweedy sofa, more than thirty years old, that has comforted three generations of Labradors. Now it is hers. She knows it and we know it. She will not lie on a dog bed. She has never even acknowledged that a dog bed is intended for dogs, namely her, to lie upon.

Earlier, I had brought out the spurned dog bed for Bear and placed it on the porch. He plopped right down. Great, I thought. Maybe she will learn by example. Look, here's a dog,lying on this plush piece of foam rubber. See? I think that was when she sat down in the grass and scratched her ear.

Now, I carried the dog bed into the living room and set it at the foot of the sofa, expecting him to flop again. I told her to hop to her accustomed place. He heard me, though, and beat her to it, settling right down in the center of the sofa. “There’s room for you, too,” I told Bronte. And she jumped up into the corner space, but she did not seem happy.

So there they were. After a little while I noticed that she was sending me a message. Her look said: Okay. Now what are you going to do about this? It was as clear as speech.

I got up. I summoned the Bear off the sofa and instructed him to lie on the dog bed,which he did. I told her to hop on the sofa, and she complied. Peace.

About two minutes later, I noticed he was back on the sofa, curled up on the far end. “Plenty of room for the two of you,” I told her.

She was not mollified.

So, while he's here--before his owners come for him--we will shower her with attention. It’s only for the day, right? Hale has taken her for her walk, while the Bear sleeps at my feet.

Oh, wait. He’s getting up. He’s walking slowly, limping, into the living room. He's jumping on the sofa, and curling up in the left corner. It really is so much more comfortable there.

December Morning

2008-12-06T11:05:00.005-06:00

A beautiful morning, quite cold for our area. There was a thin layer of ice on the decking in the back yard. Inside the house, the new heating system still mystifies me with its quirks. A room that was warm last year with the old system is now chilly. And the reverse. Why? Part of our small house is old, mid-nineteenth century when they thought air space between layers of imperfect siding was plenty insulation. It isn’t, of course, so the old rooms are much colder than the newer ones.

I don’t particularly mind the cold, though. Up here in my attic office, it’s much warmer. The narrow, steep staircase acts like a chimney drawing the heat up. We have vents up here, but generally I keep them closed in winter. The stairs provide more than enough warmth.

The main reason I don’t mind the cold, however, is that out here in the country, there is a picture to look at through every window, and that more than compensates for physical discomforts. I am talking about the simplest things—light on a fence post, morning light falling across an old chair, a rose bush. The day is still, and cardinals fly tandem raids upon the sunflower seeds that LH sets every morning atop the fence posts.

One might almost say on such a day that one is happy.

December View for the day is an abandoned barn on the old Muske farm. Mr. and Mrs. Muske lived on this small acreage into their nineties. Every summer he planted a wonderful vegetable garden, and I'd see Mrs. Muske tending her flowers in one of the old sunbonnets people used to wear.

Pix

2008-12-05T22:04:00.004-06:00

Today has been topsy-turvy, so all I have is pictures of two trees who have seen better, in the sense of healthier, days. December View from within a mile of our little house. I tried to bring them over from my flickr site but I couldn't get it to work, so the image quality isn't very good.

Inspiration

2008-12-04T14:15:00.005-06:00

(December View image for today follows. Please see end of post for what it is, if you don’t already know.)

Don’t know about you, but we keep old New Yorkers around for dipping into during dull moments. There’s not really a place to sit in our house where you won’t find a New Yorker within reach. Every few months, we have to go around and collect their tattered selves, and send them on their way to the landfill.

Last night therefore, while waiting for sleep to fall upon me, I opened the Oct 20, 08 issue and my eye fell upon “Late Bloomers”, an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers.

As it happens, this was a big mistake. The trick to bedtime reading is that you should look for intrinsically uninteresting material. Also it should be material written in a voice you don’t mind hearing replayed in your head for the next few hours. I had no trouble with the voice, but the subject was far too riveting for my own good.

Gladwell begins with the story of Ben Fountain, whom we know as the author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, one of the hot story collections of 2006. He sets us up with how Fountain quit his law firm job to write fiction, with no more track record than a couple of college creative writing courses. Had some early luck with two stories, then nothing until he got a story published in Harper’s, after which le deluge of success.

Same old, same old, right? Well, not exactly. Because the fateful day he quit the law firm was in 1986, twenty years of publishing not one word before taking the literary world by storm at the age of forty-eight.

I found this enormously encouraging, since my first two published stories hit print right around that time and I’ve been laboring in the vineyards pretty much ever since.

Even more interesting, though, is the analysis of what makes a late bloomer. “Genius, in the popular conception ,” Gladwell says, “is inextricably tied up with precocity.” Think Mozart or Picasso. A researcher from Chicago named David Galenson, however, decided to find out if this myth was true. It was not.
I don’t want to recapitulate the whole article here, but it’s worth reading. Late bloomers, apparently, are the marathon runners of the artistic world. We’re the ones who have to explore, and try, and fail, and try again, and just keep on hanging in—indulging in a continually experimental process of attempting to realize our fuzzy goals.

Late bloomers get better as they get older.

I’ve been a little downhearted lately over how many years (about the same as Fountain’s) I’ve spent working on a story about post-partum depression, a continually evolving novel that by now probably amounts to three separate novels, with only an element or two in common. Just knowing that this might yet prove not to have been a complete waste of time is quite consoling.

(The image is the surface of Winedale Road, a material we call "blacktop.")