Keep the Coffee Comimg

Today is a day to be outside to take in the best of days. I was on the deck to watch the birds while my coffee was brewing. The nuthatches come in waves. The chickadees are quick to arrive, grab a seed and leave. Yesterday I saw a couple of crows and the cardinal pair. I’m glad I bought more seed.

This is a quiet week for me. The only scheduled event is my uke lesson. I won’t know what to do with all the time. I guess I could clean. Better yet, I could read, take a few naps or sit on the deck.

Saturdays have always been sacrosanct to me. When I was a kid, the whole day was mine. In the winter I’d go to the matinee or ice skate or go sledding if we had snow. In the summer, I’d sometimes ride my trusty steed, my bike, and wander the town. I seldom had a destination. Other days I’d walk all over. Sometimes I’d walk the tracks. Trains still came back then. I’d stand close to the tracks, close enough to feel the wind from the train as it raced by me. I’d put a penny on the track hoping the train would smush it. I’d walk the track which ended at the station. Across the street from the station was the turnout where the trains changed direction and headed back. Sometimes I’d head back like the train. I never found the end of those tracks. I remember the station master’s house. His job was to lower the gate and activate the red lights. The train always blasted its horn before the crossing. The house is still there, but now it is just an odd shaped regular house on the side of the tracks.

I love trains. I loved the subway when I was a kid. I’d kneel on the seat and look out the window. Once I took the train to Washington D.C. Ghana, when I lived there, had trains. I used to take the train from Accra to Kumasi. I always went first class which wasn’t expensive. I’d board the first class car and find a compartment. There were four big, comfy chairs in each compartment. Sliding doors closed off the compartments. I always felt a bit like Miss Marple. Those trains are gone now, but Ghana is hoping to bring them back. I wish we would do the same.

Today, in my Africa video, I saw two white men and a Ghanaian wearing a Lakers shirt.

The lovely weather continues. The days are warm and sunny while the nights are cool. Last night I even shut windows and put on a sweatshirt.

When the dogs go out during the late night, they are usually out and back inside quickly. Last night Henry came back inside looking for his treat but not Nala. I waited a while. It is seldom a good thing when Nala stays out. I called and called, no Nala. I figured she had caught something, and I was right. I grabbed my flashlight and went searching. She appeared and had what looked like a possum in her mouth. I had learned not to chase her so I went inside and shut the door. I knew she’d whack the door when she wanted inside the house, and over an hour later, she did. In the past, she has just dropped the possum and left it in the yard, and that’s what she did. This morning it was gone. The possum had played dead.

When I was a kid, I was always excited for school to start. I’d organize my new school supplies. I remember opening my pencil case and checking out everything inside it. I’d sharpen my pencil. I’d get my school bag ready and practice carrying it. We had to take a bath the night before school started. It was my only Monday night bath.

My mother made the best brownies. She used a square pan. I loved the crisp edges. She always frosted her brownies with chocolate frosting and put jimmies on top, sprinkles to those of you not from Massachusetts. It was the most amazing chocolate overload.

On school mornings, my mother usually made us a hot breakfast. First she’d make the tea and the cocoa. My brother was a tea drinker. I drank the cocoa. There was always toast. She’d make soft boiled eggs served in egg cups. On cold mornings, she often made oatmeal. I remember it was sometimes lumpy. We’d put sugar and milk on the oatmeal. The milk used to ring the bowl and submerge the oatmeal.

I need to do errands today. My larder is empty. I don’t even have bread. The dogs, Jack and the birds all need food. My car needs gas.

Tonight is the last play of the season, The 39 Steps. I have no more outside concerts. Summer is having its last hurrah.

The morning is beautiful with a deep blue sky and a bright sun, but it is a bit cool. I had to shut the window behind me. Tonight will get down to the high 50’s. The weather for the weekend will have warm, even hot, days and cool nights, perfect for sleeping. Summer still holds sway.

The last scheduled event on my dance card is today. I have my third uke concert of the week. Earlier in the week, I had my usual practice and my lesson. The music for this week’s concerts is from a book of favorites. A couple are Creedence and another few are the Eagles. I’m enjoying this book.

I need to wear mittens when I walk round the house. Spiders’ webs are everywhere. I can see them highlighted by the sun on plants and in crevices and corners. I like spiders, not their webs.

My memories of Ghana are still vibrant, even the ones from when I first arrived there so many years ago. I remember the palm trees by the airport. Palm trees had always seemed exotic to me, and I had only seen them in pictures. I grew up with oaks and maples and pine trees. Kiosks lined the roads. Women wore dresses made from bright, beautiful cloth. They carried bundles and baskets on their heads. Babies were wrapped in cloth and carried on their mothers’ backs. My head swiveled from side to side on the bus ride to our first training site but then I fell asleep having not slept at all on the plane ride from Philadelphia to Accra.

I’m watching another YouTube African Walk video. They are mostly walks around Accra. I seldom recognize any place, but the Ghanaians are familiar. Along the sides of the roads are kiosks where women sell oranges or tomatoes or yams and so much more. In one part of the market are piles of clothes, all waiting to be sold. The clothes are called obroni wawu, dead white man’s clothes. Most originated as donations which were then shipped to Africa. Every week millions of pounds of those donated clothes arrive in Accra. In Accra’s markets, you can buy just about anything.

Today will be sunny and warm, fall warm in the high 70’s. Tonight will be in the 60’s, another fine night for sleeping. The morning is lovely. Everything is glistening in the sun. The birds are busy at the feeders. Nala is out. Henry has picked the best spot on the couch for his nap. Everything is right with our little world.

I miss the sounds of my childhood. The milkman used to carry his bottles of milk in a wire holder. The glass bottles clinked when he walked. I liked the clicking of the rotary phone when you dialed numbers. I miss the voice of the real operator, “Directory assistance. How may I help you?” I worked in Woolworth’s for a small while at a cash register. Every number I pressed made a sound, and the money drawer had a bell. I remember the sound of snow when the TV stations ended their broadcasts for the night. The rag man and the knife sharpening man called out from the street. When I was really young, the rag man had a horse and wagon. The horse’s hooves clopped on the street. The sounds of screen doors slamming came from almost every house on the block usually prefaced by a warning, “Don’t slam the door.” I used a film projector when I was first teaching. At the end of the film was the slapping sound from the end of the reel. The different coins had their own sounds when you fed them into the phones in booths. That was how the operator knew you were paying for the call. One of my favorite and most missed sounds was when my mother would call out from the back door, “Supper’s ready. Come in.”

The summer is fleeting. It seems to come and go now at breakneck speeds. Our last Monday ukulele concert on the Hyannis green was last night. We had played a summer full of music. The tourists are still here but in fewer numbers. The weekends will be full, the weekdays not is full. Soon enough, we will get back our Cape Cod back, primed and ready for my favorite season here, fall.

The day has yet to decide. Rain? Sun? When I woke up, it was sunny. Right now it is cloudy and humid. This is the last week of meteorological summer. Labor Day is next week, an early Labor Day heralding the arrival of fall.

I remember how excited I was to vote for the first time. Back then you had to be 21 to vote. My first vote in a presidential race went to Hubert Humphrey. He lost to Richard Nixon. My second presidential vote went to George McGovern. Massachusetts was the only state he carried, but we felt vindicated when Nixon resigned because of Watergate. I remember a bumper sticker from back then which gave me a chuckle, “Nixon has a staff infection,” and another one which said, “Don’t blame me. I’m from Massachusetts.” I voted when I was in Ghana, an absentee ballot, but it didn’t come by air so it arrived a long time after the election. I sent it back anyway, airmail. I always vote. I believe it is a privilege.

In my mind, one of the most disgusting dishes is refried beans. I don’t even like beans let alone refried beans. They remind me of the results of a baby’s biological function, unnamed, but I suspect you can imagine.

My brother once ate some berries we found in the woods and had to have his stomach pumped. I wonder how many people ate foods they found growing and picked the wrong ones to try. Who opened a durian, smelled that awful smell and decided to eat it anyway? It even looks alien. Hummus resembles an odd color of wallpaper paste. The horned melon reminds me of the head of an alien I saw in a Star Trek episode. Even a pomegranate is a little weird looking.

Before Ghana, the only pineapple I had ever eaten was from a can, and I had never eaten or even seen a pawpaw, aka a papaya, or a mango. Every day my lunch in Ghana was a bowl of cut fruit, pineapples, oranges, bananas and pawpaw and sometimes mango. Lunch was always a delight.

Right now it is thundering, and it has started to rain, a small rain, a gentle rain.

The rainstorm is now a beaut. The thunder is loud and overhead. The lightning has started, the wind is blowing the trees left and right, the lights have flickered and gone out a couple of times and the rain is tremendous. The dogs don’t usually mind thunder, but this storm is too much for them. Both are shaking and clinging to me. I have an arm round each of them. I feel so bad for my babies!!

The morning is hot, in the high 70’s, and sunny. It is a quiet morning as are most Sunday mornings. The air is still. The dogs are napping. I’ve read the paper, had my coffee and even had some toast so I am ready to meet the day.

My house resembles Miss Havisham’s house. Spider webs are everywhere, even in the smallest places. Wherever I walk, I clear webs. Even my plants have webs from one frond to the other. This happens every late August, and it is annoying every late August. Baby spiders abound. I am part of the plot of Charlotte’s web. Perhaps I should watch Tarantula or Earth vs. The Spider.

Today is the only day this week with nothing scheduled. My sloth days have been few. I long for those days of doing nothing, not even getting dressed. Today I do have to clean a bit and pick up Nala’s trash in the yard. I saw a couple of dog food cans she stole from the bag of trash in the kitchen and some wrappers from snack size Snickers. I’ll grab my prisoner’s stick and a bag and hit the yard.

When I was in the eighth grade, I got interested in politics. John F. Kennedy, my senator, was running for president. Uptown was a storefront headquarters for Kennedy. I went and got buttons to wear to show my support. I watched the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. I remember how bad Nixon looked and that he seemed to need a shave. Kennedy looked perfect. The only memory I have of the actual debate is the controversy about Quemoy and Matsu. I remember a map with the islands circled. I still have my Kennedy pins.

When I was a kid, we often had barbecues on Saturday nights. I was a fan of hot dogs and cheeseburgers. The cheese was always yellow American cheese. The mustard for the hot dogs matched. My mother sometimes made potato salad and peppers and eggs. I always chose the peppers and eggs, but my mother did make a great potato salad. Watermelon was the best dessert.

Today is sunny, a lovely day. It will stay in the 70’s. I need to refill the bird feeders. The spawn of Satan eats out of and empties one of them so I’m going to cayenne the seeds in that feeder. Take that, you spawn!!

When I was teaching, I traveled every year during the summer, usually for at least a month. I was a backpacker. One of my favorite trips was Finland to Russia to Denmark then finishing in London. Today I’m taking you to Finland. Enjoy your trip!

In Helsinki, we stayed in a hostel and in a university dorm, both were close to the city square. Helsinki is beautiful. One of the trams is also a tourist guide of sorts. As you ride, a voice tells you in a couple of languages what you’re seeing. I shopped at Market Hall, a farmers’ market. Stalls were lined along the square and boats were moored and filled with produce. From Helsinki I took an overnight train to Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland. I bought the cheap ticket for a sort of bunk room, a couchette with three bunks on each side. The friend I was traveling with and a Finnish lady were the only ones in my room. She didn’t speak English so we passed the language book back and forth to have a conversation. Next we took a bus to Lake Inari, north of the Arctic Circle. It was the time of the Midnight Sun. Reindeer guided by a herder were along the roads. We stayed in a summer hotel which was surrounded by huge pine trees. We also had dinner there. I had reindeer. The next day we explored. It is an incredible place.

We returned to Helsinki and booked a train ride to what was then Leningrad. There were three of us in the car. A bulky woman would come down the aisle and just say, “Tea? I always said yes. The tea was Russian and came in glass cups with long sugar cubes. I had several cups. When we got to the border, my train car was detached from the Finnish train and attached to a Russian train. Soldiers came on and checked my passport and visa. We then continued to Leningrad. Our arrival in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, ends today’s travelogue.

My dance card has a few entries. Today is a luncheon at a restaurant in Hyannis with the president of The National Peace Corps Association. Monday is the last summer concert in Hyannis with a celebratory pizza party after we play. I have the usual uke practice and lesson and two more concerts later in the week. This will be a busy week.

The morning is so very pretty. The sun is brilliant. Only the leaves on the tallest trees are moving. A bit of last night’s chill is still in the air. The birds are in and out at the feeders. I stood at the deck rail, and the nuthatches flew right beside me to the big feeder. The dogs roamed the backyard but came back inside with me. It is their morning nap time.

During the summer, when I was a kid, the rules were few. I could stay out late, even when it started to get dark. Breakfast and lunch were catch as catch can. Supper was the only meal we all ate together. I was usually gone all day, but my mother never worried. Nobody worried back then. If she asked where I was going, I’d just say out as I seldom had a destination. I went everywhere on my bike. I watched the trains come and go the next town over. I biked to the zoo. At Weiss farm, I’d check out the cows. They used to walk the same way every time from the barn to the field. Their route was muddy and filled with hoof prints. They walked slowly. I’d either ride through the square or walk my bike on the sidewalk. The square always had shoppers. It was usually late afternoon before I’d get home. I was always tired.

My house needs cleaning, especially my kitchen floor. Also, as always, Henry’s hair is in dustballs which take to flight when I walk by them. My bed needs changing. The tables need to be polished; however, there is a problem with this list. I just don’t want to clean. I want those shoemaker’s elves to surprise me and clean while I’m sleeping.

My larder is near empty. I have some eggs, half a cucumber and some chicken in the freezer. I need a quick grocery store stop. If nothing else, I’ll buy bread, cream and some treats for Jack.

I have a concert today. We are playing songs from the 70’s. This week has been a busy uke week: concert on Sunday, practice on Tuesday, lesson and concert on Wednesday and today’s concert. Next week will also be busy and will include Monday’s concert in Hyannis, the last Monday concert of the season. The summer is almost wound down.

The weather is perfect. The daytime high will be 74° while the nighttime will get down to the high 50’s. Such a day as today screams fall though I know summer is still hanging in the wings.

My friends have taken care of me. Elaine gave me individual creamers. I enjoyed my coffee this morning and so did the dogs. Henry did not turn his nose up and, instead, lapped up his treat. Jan gave me Snickers. I can’t keep my hands off them.

When I let the dogs out, yes, I was the one, a chipmunk scurried cross the deck by the back door and sort of hopped down the stairs. The dogs hadn’t been on the deck so he was anticipating. It is the first chipmunk I’ve seen, but there are holes in the front lawn.

When I was a kid, I loved seeing animals sort of in the wild. That included the spawns of Satan. Chipmunks were a bit of a rarity. I always thought they were cute. Once in a while, while we were taking a Sunday drive, a family adventure when I was growing up, we’d see deer in a field. We’d all scream for my father to stop so we could watch them. We were always excited to see deer. My father used to take his time. Sunday drives were not meant for speed. We’d ride on backroads going and usually the highway riding back. Sometimes we’d stop for ice cream cones. I was a fan of sugar cones with two scoops of different ice creams.

We used to go to East Boston to visit my grandparents, part of the ride was on Route 1 through Saugus. I loved that ride. The sides of the highway were filled with stores like Zayre’s and Child World. There were restaurants like Adventure Car Hop. I loved the orange dinosaur by the miniature golf course. One of the places which always caught my eye was Kiddie Ranch, a small amusement park off the road behind a store. I could see some of the rides. I always begged my father to stop. He never did. Once, we were going for a ride on Route 1. My brother and I had words so my father said that was enough, and he turned around at the rotary and headed home. We begged him to keep going and vowed we’d be good, but my father didn’t change his mind. All of a sudden he got off the highway, went behind the store and stopped at Kiddie Ranch. He had had to turn around to get there. That was one of the biggest surprises in my life back then.

The morning is a bit chilly. It is also windy and overcast. The high will be 72°. The low will be in the 50’s. Today feels like fall.

When I was growing up, we had traditions for every season and every holiday. Each fall we collected leaves which had turned color. I loved the yellows and the reds. We’d use wax paper to preserve the leaves. I’d take a piece of wax paper and artistically, at least to me, arrange the leaves on the paper. The last step was to iron the paper. The leaves became encased in the wax, their colors still bright. We saved them.

I remember walking to school on rainy fall days on sidewalks covered with wet leaves clinging to the pavement. Most of them were yellow leaves. They were slippery.

On some damp mornings, I can smell the ocean. I don’t live close to the ocean, but the dampness holds and carries the ocean smell. In the evenings I can smell wood burning. I have a chiminea and piñon wood. I’m looking forward to my first fire on the deck on a cool evening.

My clothes were divided into school clothes and play clothes. As soon as I got home from school, I’d change into my play clothes. They were usually girl jeans, a blouse, socks and sneakers, low rider sneakers. I’d add a sweater or sweatshirt on cool days. Even when I was older, adult old, I always changed out of my school clothes. Old habits don’t die.

I used to love to lie in bed on a cool or rainy afternoon and read. My room was quiet. The noise was downstairs, people talking, the TV blaring. I always had books to read. Some were mine while others came from the library. In all these years, little has changed. I still love to read in bed, and I always have books. Sometimes I even have my upstairs book and my downstairs book. When I used to travel to Boston and knew I’d be stuck in traffic, I also had my car book.

My dogs are spoiled though I doubt that is much of a surprise. Every morning I save a little bit of coffee for each of the two dogs. Henry stares at my cup as I drink hoping that I will make me finish faster. Yesterday I had no light cream. I tried the coffee black. I am not a fan, but I did drink most of it. When I was finished, I headed to the kitchen. Henry followed. I put some in his bowl. He looked at the black coffee then looked at me in what I figure is dog horror. He walked away in disgust.