May 2024 Musings

A friend recommended I read The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult, who has to date, written twenty-eight novels, many attaining Number One on the New York Times Best Seller list. This one is historical fiction, quite long, and recounts the most horrifying episode in modern history – the Holocaust. My friend lent me her copy which she needed back by December. I thanked her, thinking I probably would not read five-hundred pages of pure revulsion even with six months to do it. I finished the book in two days.

From an interview with the author:

“The more I began to play around with the concept (of good and evil), the more I was convinced that this was the right book for me to write.” The theme of baking runs through the book: the chemistry of baking, how the most ordinary ingredients can turn into something extra ordinary when combined with heat and pressure. It embodies wholesomeness and survival.

In the author’s words, “The Holocaust is not a Jewish issue.It’s a human rights issue and everyone has a stake in making sure history doesn’t repeat itself.”        

April 2024 Musings

Everyone knows that April 1st is April Fool’s Day but did you know that April has other celebrations on the calendar? An important observance is that the entire month of April is National Poetry Month.

Some of the declared formalities are pretty obscure but certainly fun to contemplate. For example, April 7th is not only National No Housework Day, but also National Beer Day......I guess if you vigorously celebrate National Beer Day, it stands to reason that it might lead to observing No Housework Day. By the way, it’s also National Coffee Cake Day if you prefer a non-alcohol celebration.

If you want to postpone the celebration, wait until April 12th and celebrate National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, or if on a diet, wait until the week of April 19 — 28, National Dance Week, and dance off the pounds.

Who makes up this stuff anyway?

March 2024 Musings

I can’t believe it is March. February, with its reduced amount of days (yes, even with this year’s extra “leap day”) goes by extra fast. But daylight saving time will try to trick us into believing there is more time in our days. 

I’ve been working on several projects at one time and to use the old cliché, there are just not enough hours in the day. I’m putting two new books together, one is a collection of memoirs, the other is a chapbook of poems based on food and drink. Then there’s ordinary life  ...ah, yes, the older you get, the faster you better move. Time runs out....,

February 2024 Musings

February 14th has long been celebrated as a day of chocolates and flowers, special dinners, and lacey cards – all in the name of romance and some guy named Valentine, an early Christian saint. There are three different St. Valentines: all beheaded martyrs, all mentioned in Christian catalogues of martyrs and saints, all listed under the date of February 14th. One is described as a Roman priest, another as a bishop, both from the third century. The third Valentine was martyred in Africa – nothing further known about him. Early accounts of the first two Valentines are typical martyrdom stories, stressing the saints’ miracles and gruesome deaths – but not a word about romance.

Valentine’s Day contains both Christian and Roman traditions. One legend tells that Valentine was a third century Roman priest during the reign of Emperor Claudius II. Claudius reasoned that single men made better soldiers than those with families, so he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine defied the emperor and performed secret marriages. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, he was put to death.

Some believe that Valentine’s Day was celebrated in February to “Christianize” Lupercalia, a pagan fertility festival celebrated on February 15th. According to the ancient writer Plutarch, priests would sacrifice a goat and a dog, then slice the goat hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood. Several nearly naked young men would then slap both women and crops with the goat hide. The ritual was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. According to another legend, young women placed their names in a large urn. The city’s bachelors drew a name, random couples pairing up for the year, often ending in marriage. Lupercalia, outlawed at the end of the 5th century, was deemed “un-Christian.”  

Valentine’s Day became associated with love in the late Middle Ages, thanks to the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. By the 1400s, nobles inspired by Chaucer began writing poems known as “valentines” to their love interests.

Then there was February 14, 1929, in Chicago when seven members of “Bugs” Moran's gang were lined up against a wall and shot dead. Al Capone's gang was widely suspected of ordering the hit, but no one was ever prosecuted. The event was called the Valentine's Day Massacre – doesn’t sound very romantic.

January 2024 Musings

Greetings to all in this New Year of 2024

It’s typical for columnists to talk about New Year’s resolutions in January. I decided to ignore  those pesky little pledges, forgotten the day after they are made, and talk about ice skating instead...not that I actually know much about ice skating...but when I was six or seven years old, I did go to a Blackhawks hockey game.  

Most of my vast store of skating knowledge concerns one special occasion when I was about eight. My parents celebrated their anniversary at a famous dinner spot in Chicago: the Boulevard Room in the Conrad Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue. I was also along and even had a new dress. The Boulevard Room featured lavish, up-close ice shows on a rink situated in the center of the dining room. It was almost as if you were on the ice with the skaters ,in the middle of things, so to speak, while you ate dinner.

When we moved to a new house, I was excited to find that our next-door neighbor had been a professional ice show performer. Her property was slightly lower than the surrounding lots, which caused melting snow from the adjoining properties to drain into her yard. Every winter it flooded and became a skating pond. She taught me how to skate backwards and perform some figures (I also roller-rink skated but was a watcher rather than a skating performer on both counts).

The Boulevard Room show has faded into history.....although it can’t be replaced, there are other ice shows around the country – Disney on Ice, Dancing on Ice, Stars on Ice, Holiday on Ice, cruise ship and theme park ice shows – all places where you can see former Olympians doing their thing.

December 2023 Musings

A Christmas Remembered

My mother and her siblings took turns hosting the family’s Christmas dinner. The gathering I most vividly remember occurred at my Uncle Ray and Aunt Kate’s house when my cousins, Kathleen and Ron and I were about seven or eight years old. We were eagerly waiting for the gifts to be passed out when the doorbell rang ... and there stood Santa Claus. We were dumbfounded – for the most part, no longer believers – and didn’t know what to make of this visitor. He came into the living room with a “ho, ho, ho” ... and we laughed and shouted, convinced it was Uncle Bill – “you’re not Santa Claus, you’re Uncle Bill with a white beard and a red suit.” We kept insisting he was Uncle Bill.

Santa handed out the gifts and he and Uncle Ray went into the kitchen for “milk and cookies” or to get “reindeer food” or some other fiction. We were engrossed in opening our gifts when Santa and Uncle Ray AND Uncle Bill came back to the living room TOGETHER. There they stood, like the Three Wise Men. Young jaws dropped, speechless. Santa gave a few more “ho-hos,” and waved as he left through the front door.

Then there’s the rest of the story.

A neighbor was passing by when he saw “Santa” through the front window. He came around to the back door, caught Uncle Ray’s attention and asked if he could borrow the outfit. It was one of those quirky, fortuitous, unplanned happenings. Uncle Ray saw it as an opportunity to pull a fast-one on three young smart-alecks who thought they knew it all.

November 2023 Musings

It’s November and Thanksgiving is around the corner. Aside from the prime reason for the  holiday – to be thankful – we think of foods that are part of the celebration. I’m writing my fourth book, a collection of incidents, many humorous, some serious, all reflective. One of the topics is about food and being a “picky eater” – a skinny kid wearing a martyred expression, limp blond hair adding to the pitiful picture.

My mother tried to force me to eat, but I developed the skill of sitting for long periods of time, pushing cold food around my plate until she gave up. I also didn’t like milk.

My maternal grandmother died long before I was born, so Mother looked to her aunts, Antonia and Albina, for advice. These tall, graying sisters, blessed with generous corporal dimensions, had no trouble eating anything in front of them. They loved the “business end” of poultry and, as kids, fought about who would get “the last thing over the fence” from the Thanksgiving turkey ...ugh...I’d give thanks if I didn’t have to eat it.

The cause of my thinness and pickiness, they hypothesized, was either intestinal parasites or pure stubbornness. “Give her hot milk with garlic,” they advised, “it’ll flush out any worms” – if there were no worms, “it won’t hurt her; our mother gave it to us like a tonic and we loved it.” The thought of mashed garlic mixed in hot milk made me gag...double ugh... and I was tempted to say, “Bring on the fried liver.”

A physician checked me over; his vague diagnosis was that I had a “food intolerance” for which I was given some chalky pink medicine. He advised no more force-feeding, no more milk. Since I liked cheese, my calcium needs were met. The physician understood, I thought, because he was probably a picky eater who didn’t like milk and was probably just as stubborn as I was.

October 2023 Musings

Hard to believe that another month has gone by and taken summer away with it.  Yes, seasonably cold or unseasonably warm, it’s now officially Autumn. The last day of October is one kids really look forward to – Halloween. Costumes, make-up, trick-or-treat, all that good-for-nothing, cavity-creating candy.

As a kid, I always had great costumes. My mother sewed and we’d begin working out the design details around the beginning of October. None of those store-bought, dime-store costumes that all looked much the same – mine were originals. The one I most vividly recall was a “Colonial Lady.” Mother bought yards of cheap fabric and created a hoop from wire coat hangers. The Colonial Lady was topped off with a fabulous, feathered hat – a remodeled discard with tall pink plumes from her cousin Adeline’s wardrobe. The design’s historical authenticity was doubtful, but the effect was stunning.

I continued the costume-making tradition with my three boys and over the years, whipped up quite a few elves, vampires, space creatures, devils, and wild animals. I look back with an out-sized dose of nostalgia, and can’t help thinking of the poem I wrote a few years ago.

Click here to read the poem Ahead of Schedule

September 2023 Musings

When the calendar tells us the date is September 23rd,

it’s goodbye to summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

Fall is here. Red leaves are just over the hill.

Shakespeare also reminds us:

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”

"If it could only be like this....the fruit always ripe." — Evelyn Waugh

...the best of the summer gone...

the new fall not yet born.

The odd uneven time.” — Sylvia Plath

As philosopher Lao Tzu said,

“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”

The word “autumn” dates to the late 1300s when it became an alternative to the word “harvest” which is technically the earliest name for this season. It’s believed that he word “fall” stems from “the fall of the leaves” or “falling of leaves” shortened to “fall” in the 1600s.

August 2023 Musings

Last month I mentioned summer cook-outs and memories of long past hamburgers. August signals the start of preparations for back-to-school. We hear about shopping for new shoes, shirts, school supplies – seeing friends again, wondering about our new teachers (will we like them?). Of course, how we approach back-to-school depends on how old we are and what type of school we attended.

I always loved clothes, wanted to be a fashion designer as a kid, and still remember the color and design of many items in my early wardrobe. I didn’t have a large selection– my choices were limited because I attended a parochial school where uniforms were required. I hated them. Mothers loved them – no hassles about what to wear, no begging for what Susie or Mary had. Uniforms were supposed to create an atmosphere of social equality.

At St. Frances School, boys in all grades wore dark pants, a white shirt and a dark tie. Girls in grades one and two wore an ugly navy-blue dress, styled like a potato sack with long sleeves, trimmed with a white collar and cuffs. The finishing touch was a narrow, flat, white grosgrain bow with long streamers that trailed down from the collar. We were permitted to have a red bow for the Christmas season, a nod to holiday fashion.

If you managed to survive to third grade, you moved on to a navy-blue, wide-pleated skirt with shoulder straps, a plain white cotton blouse, navy-blue cardigan sweater, the whole topped off with a navy-blue beanie decorated with the school crest. Uniforms for girls in seventh and eighth grade were almost the same except their skirts had no suspender straps. I guess the thinking was that by this age, girls had developed enough hip to hold up a regular skirt.

My family moved to a new house in a different suburb when I was in seventh grade. Though I  still attended a parochial school, there were no uniforms and a more relaxed and sophisticated atmosphere pervaded the school. It was the late 1950s – there was jitterbug to learn, Elvis to listen to.

July 2023 Musings

We see the cookout season moving along as Summer days continue. And cookouts mean burgers. I’m not a fan of them, but the idea of a burger brings thoughts of my early years and White Castle ‘sliders’, a name that still makes my mouth water.

I didn’t like the thick, juicy ,home-made hamburgers my mother made but wasn’t picky when it came to White Castle hamburgers. I loved them. Midwesterners and Mid-Atlantic dwellers know White Castle – first fast-food chain in the world and still operating. Legend has it that one of the founders of White Castle, Walter A. Anderson, invented the hamburger patty when he flattened a meatball on his grill in 1921. He’s also credited with adding a bun to the smashed concoction and with inventing assembly-line cooking.

The unique smell, flavor and unmatched appearance of their burgers, called sliders, remains vivid in my memory, although I haven’t had one for at least fifty years: a 2 1/2 x2 1/2 inch, three to four bite, thin as a slice of salami, grayish-brown color, square beef patty pierced with five large round holes. The patty was not grilled or fried but steamed on a bed of onions, a pickle slice and pocket-sized bun rode on top. The entire sandwich absorbed the grilled onion flavor and produced a tempting aroma that rose through the holes in the meat. This steam method sped up the cooking process and eliminated any need to flip the patties. I’ve confirmed the validity of the above description with friends – all hardy souls who have eaten White Castle sliders and lived to tell about the experience.

Americans hesitated to eat ground meat after author Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle” in 1906,  a novel that publicized poor sanitation practices in the meat packing industry. The Wichita, Kansas, founders of White Castle attempted, in 1921, to dispel this impression. They modeled the architecture of their restaurants on the old Chicago water tower, which suggested a fairy tale castle: octagonal buttresses, crenelated towers, a parapet wall. To suppress claims that their food was unhealthy, White Castle funded multiple tests. In one, a University of Minnesota medical student ate nothing but sliders for 13 weeks. He suffered no adverse health effects. Clever marketing evoked feelings of cleanliness – prefabricated, steel buildings enameled in white, stainless steel interiors, employees clad in spotless white uniforms, each burger housed in a white cardboard box printed with a castle and placed in a white paper sack. The small scale of the sandwiches appealed to children who loved to play with the empty boxes – stacked them like blocks and made castles.

In the late 1950s, a sale coupon could buy a bag of a dozen for a dollar –at the non-sale price of ten cents a piece, still a bargain. A teen-aged boy could eat an entire sackful, a whole dozen (I have witnessed this more than once). There is also a startling report of a competitive eater who once ate 103 sliders in eight minutes – pass the Pepto-Bismol, please. It was not unusual for a carload of high-schoolers to drive to White Castle on a Saturday night and fill-up before heading to the Drive-in Movie (when I say “carload” I’m including the guy in the trunk).

The original slider is now available online from “our Castle to your freezer. It’s what you crave!” or in the frozen food aisle of grocery and dollar stores, in package sizes from 4 to 24 tiny sandwiches. “If you have a microwave, you have a White Castle.” But somehow it’s just not the same – you don’t see the assembly line processing the sliders or smell that all-enveloping onion perfume and you get no little white boxes for castle building.

There’s a postscript to this story. I confess that yesterday, like a good little researcher,  I bought a box of frozen sliders, half expecting they would end up in the cat’s bowl. Pleasantly surprised to find I enjoyed them, I ate several. Not exactly the old days, but enough to bring back memories.

June 2023 Musings

Most poets begin their craft at an early age – I began writing poetry and other forms of creative writing after retiring from a 32-year teaching career in Art and Design.

Retirement didn’t mean doing nothing. It was not a time to settle into old age, as poet Dylan Thomas said, “not time to go gently, but a time to rage.”

For me, to rage meant to challenge, to take on something new.

May 2023 Musings

“I feel that art, design, music and the literary arts are natural partners – all creatively examine life and living. Poetry is a search for the universal in the personal.

Each of us reads a poem through our own life filter and each takes away a different understanding or experience. Poems, like life, are  subject to revision.

April 2023 Musings

One of the things I came to understand about poetry and creative writing was how much it has in common with the pictorial arts and music. All draw on similar design principles.

Although not necessarily using every principle in one piece, composing poems, paintings, music and photographs requires using contrast, balance, focal point, repetition, rhythm, unity and variety.

Poetry is painting with words, painting is visual poetry. Music is listening to words, words bring music to the ear. All elicit emotional responses.