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“Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life.”
April 8, 2012I always think Easter Sunday should be sunny and even warm, all the better to show off all those new clothes. It’s cloudy right now, but I think the sun is struggling to break through the grayness. Gracie and I had an adventure earlier this morning. We sneaked down to my friends’ house and decorated the tree near their deck. We do it every year. This year was a streamer of eggs from branch to branch, some wooden rabbits doing gardening hanging off the small branches and decorative eggs on sticks stuck into their pansies right by the door. They haven’t seen them as their backdoor is still closed so they’re not awake yet. This is the only time of year I can see all the way down to the end of the street.
When I was little, Easter morning never had the same degree of excitement as Christmas morning, but we’d still run to find our baskets. We’d munch on jelly beans as we checked out everything one at a time. The chocolate rabbit was always the most prominent standing tall as it did in the basket. There were coloring books and crayons or small toys and always a stuffed animal, usually a rabbit or even a duck, wearing a hat and sometimes a colored vest. We’d play and munch until my mother dragged us away to get ready for mass.
Easter was always a big day in church. The haphazard members of the congregation only went on Christmas and Easter so the pews were filled. I remember the church looked festive on Easter Sunday as lent was finally over. Tall white lilies in pots were on the steps to the altar and by the rail in the front. The statues were uncovered, and the priest wore white. The rest of us wore mostly pastels and hats were a necessary accessory. Men had fedoras and women had hats with veils. Boys had none, but we girls wore hats with flowers or ribbons. The church was awash with colors in every pew.
Some Easter Sundays we’d go to visit my grandparents. The house was filled with my aunts, uncles and cousins. My grandmother always had chocolate for us, usually a small rabbit, as an Easter gift. We’d run up and down the two sets of stairs chasing each other while the adults stayed in the kitchen on the bottom floor. My grandfather always hid in his room away from the tumult.
My father usually hustled us out the door in the early evening and we’d fall asleep on the way home, exhausted by the festivities of the day and all those stairs.
“Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate.”
April 6, 2012My casual morning has made me a bit tardy in writing today. I was up quite late last night and slept in this morning. It was Gracie who decided it was time to get up and out. It was probably a good thing as I have to hit the aisles and grocery shop. I don’t even have the bare essentials: coffee and toilet paper. I finished the last of the coffee this morning and the toilet paper roll looks a bit skimpy.
The Red Sox lost their opener yesterday. They tied it up only to lose in the bottom of the ninth. Oh, the dismay!
My neighbors have returned from Florida so that’s another sign of spring. Today, though, is still in the 40’s which I think is chilly. The sun is shining and the sky is blue but they are merely for effect. They look best from inside the house through the window.
We always had today off from school when I was a kid. We were supposed to go to church in the afternoon during the vigil, but we seldom did. Once I went and brought a book which I hid inside the hymnal and read while I was sitting in the pew. I looked pious with my head down as if deep in prayer. Even when I was working in the public school, it was a day off. One year the school committee decided that because Good Friday was connected to religion it was going to be a school day, but people could take it off for religious reasons. The number of teachers who called in floored me especially as some of them hadn’t seen the inside of a church since their baptisms. We had no substitutes and had to have kids in the auditorium for large-scale study halls. That was the one and only time we had school on Good Friday.
We never had a countdown to Easter the way we did to Christmas. We knew our baskets would have candy, a stuffed animal when we were younger, probably a coloring book and crayons, maybe a kite and a few other small toys. We could always count on a chocolate rabbit and jelly beans. The rest was usually a surprise. I saw the best chocolate rabbit for sale in a catalog. It came with extra ears as the ears were always the first to go.
When we were younger, my mother bought inexpensive chocolate as we didn’t know the difference, but when we got older, she shopped at a candy store because we could taste the difference. I still shop at a candy store to make up baskets for my two friends. I buy little treasures to add to the candy and wrap all of them so the baskets are more fun. Today I have to candy shop. That makes going to the grocery store a bit more palatable.
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
April 5, 2012I’m thinking it must really be spring. The nights are cold but the days are sunny and mostly in the 50’s. Yesterday the plants I had ordered on-line were placed in the garden. I got excited at the idea that soon enough I can fill my wagon at the garden store, and my front garden will be a blaze of color. Spring makes me smile.
The Red Sox open today in Detroit. My expectations are lower than they have been in years because of last September and their spectacular fall from grace, but this is a familiar place. Until the Sox won the World Series in 20o4, we Sox fans always had hope but never too much hope. The let down was less painful that way.
I read in the paper this morning that the New York City Department of Education has sent a list of fifty banned words to textbook publishers. No, they aren’t composed of four letters, and no, they are never beeped on TV. Here’s some of the list: dinosaur, birthday, pepperoni, dancing, home computers, Halloween, space aliens, divorce, slavery, terrorism and disease. The school department wants these words eliminated because banning them “allows our students to complete practice exams without distraction.” With tongue in cheek, I wonder about pizza without pepperoni, and I’ll have to start singing Happy (hum here) to you, Happy (hum here) to you and T-Rex was just a big animal. I’m not sure how I’ll get around dancing. Gyrations could be the substitute but that seems suggestive. ET is just a visitor from another place. History is going to take a big hit if we eliminate discussions of slavery. As for the others, how can the school department eliminate the word terrorism? What caused that big hole in the ground?
This is taking political correctness to a terrifying height. The reasons for banning these words all hinge on so called cultural sensitivity. Talk of dinosaurs may offend people who don’t believe in evolution though that has nothing to do with dinosaurs. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays so no one else should either. Pepperoni is junk food, and not everyone can afford a home computer. Rock and Roll music is on the list. Maybe we need a new Alan Freed to rise in defense. I am speechless which is probably good as I wouldn’t want to offend!
List of banned words: Political Correctness.
“Clothes are inevitable. They are nothing less than the furniture of the mind made visible.”
April 3, 2012Today is a perfect spring day on Cape Cod: a bright sun, a deep blue sky and a bit of a chill in the air. My grass is turning green. The forsythia has yellow flowers as bright as the sun. The springs bulbs have all bloomed, and the green tips of flowers are appearing in the front garden. The male goldfinches are almost brilliant yellow. All of the signs say spring.
Even when I was a kid, I didn’t love pouffy dresses for Easter. I remember one year I had my mother buy me a Lois Lane sort of suit. At my grandmother’s I overheard my mother tell my aunt that’s what I wanted when my aunt questioned my choice of an Easter outfit. My sisters and my cousins were bright in pastels with pouff, and I guess I seemed out-of-place.
When I worked, I wore dresses and skirts every day. One time at lunch in the cafeteria, a student came up to me and said she wanted to wear clothes like mine when she grew up. I was thrilled by her compliment. Most of my clothes back then came from small shops which sold dresses from Mexico and India and countries with similar styles. Afer I retired, I seldom visited those shops as I didn’t often have an occasion to wear a dress, but I did buy a new one for a wedding last October. The dress had the same look as back when especially when I added Ghanaian beads and matching earrings.
The clothes I wore in Ghana, always dresses, were mostly made in Ghana. The cloth was beautiful and the colors amazing. I’d sometimes have a dress made with elaborate stitching around the neck called jeremy in those days. Tie-dye was another one of my favorite cloths for a dress. The patterns were intricate with stripes or squares or dots and back then the die was natural. I also had dresses made from batik., and I still have batik I brought back forty years ago.
For Easter this year, I’m wearing the dress I bought for the wedding. It’s a green color which reminds me of spring. I’ll wear the necklace and earrings. I think together, the dress and jewelry, are smashing!
I Wanna Hot Dog for My Roll: Butterbeans & Susie
March 27, 2012“Jodie “Butterbeans” Edwards and Susie Hawthorne were, from the early ’20s through the ’50s, one of the top comedic music acts on the black vaudeville circuit, from New York to Chicago to Detroit. Working as Butterbeans & Susie, they were masters of comic timing and the double-entendre in their interaction. In her stage and recorded persona, Hawthorne was the model for dozens of other dominant but frustrated wives throughout the history of stage and recorded entertainment in the 20th century, while Jodie Edwards made the role of the inadequate husband sing with laughter. The comic setup was a common one in entertainment, in the white as well as the black community, but they were considered too raunchy for white audiences.” From AllMusic
“The noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.”
March 27, 2012No lingering today to take in the morning: it was too cold. I hurried inside with my two papers in hand and found the house warm and filled with the smell of freshly brewed coffee. I sighed.
True to my word, I stayed home yesterday. I did laundry but I didn’t even make my bed. The two cats were lolled on the comforter when I went upstairs, and I didn’t have the heart to roust them. After all, Maddie has been doing a bang-up job dispatching mice so I figured this was a small reward. Right now they are sleeping in the sun from the front door.
The sun is bright and the sky blue, but they’re deceiving. It’s looks like a lovely day, a day to enjoy the sun, but it’s still cold at 33°. The male cardinal came back and found the feeder I had filled with a special seed cardinals like. He’s hanging around perched on branches near the feeders so I guess he’s happy with my offering. The feeders hanging on tree limbs are swaying back and forth in the wind. The birds don’t seem to mind. They just sit and eat and sway.
When I was young, I wanted snow but not rain. I wanted to ride my bike as soon as the weather allowed. I ate vegetables but those I didn’t eat far out-numbered those I did. I loved to make a mound of my mashed potatoes and would put an indentation in the middle. That was for the gravy, and I used to try my best not to let the gravy overflow the mound. I only used ketchup on my French fries, never my eggs and never on hot dogs. I loved Rice Krispies but not Cheerios. I always put sugar on my cereal. The best part was lifting the bowl and drinking the sugary milk left when all the cereal had been eaten. I could never cut the bologna off the roll thin enough. My sandwiches all looked deformed. My mother always bought French’s yellow mustard in the small glass jar and Cains mayonnaise which is locally made. I always put mustard on my bologna. My mother put small slits down hot dogs then she’d fry them until they were browned. My mother was a believer in butter, never margarine. I preferred soft-boiled eggs when I was young because it was fun to dip the toast in the yolk. The game was to try not to get any yolk down the egg cup. I usually lost.
Now, I prefer rain over snow. I eat more kinds of vegetables than I don’t. I buy my bologna sliced, thinly. I never buy yellow mustard. I love all sorts of mustards and always three or four different kinds are in the fridge. I seldom eat cereal, but if I do, I don’t add sugar. Once in a while I have a soft-boiled egg but I don’t put it in an egg cup. It goes in a bowl, and I use crumbled crackers instead of toast. My mother used to do that, and now I do. I love hot dogs on the grill, and I always put slits down the length. I can’t imagine eating them in other way.
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