Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category

“The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.”

November 17, 2011

That beautiful sun is on hiatus, and the last couple of days have been cloudy. Last night it rained. The oak tree by the driveway has only one branch left with any leaves. All the rest of the leaves have fallen and completely covered my driveway. The wind is blowing the bare branches and the day is completely uninviting. I have this vision of me in the living room on my chaise lounge listening to Hawaiian music and wearing something flowered while I drink out of a coconut with a small colorful umbrella and a cherry on a stick that looks like a little sword.

Why toast in the morning? I wondered that the other day when I had a couple of pieces. In the afternoon most of the bread for my sandwiches is seldom toasted. Club sandwiches, when I go out for lunch, usually are but the simple bologna sandwich almost never is. I suppose any sandwich bread can be toasted, but it just doesn’t seem to happen. Egg salad would seem a likely choice connected as the egg is with breakfast, but I never see a toasted egg salad sandwich.  Toast is something to ponder I suppose.

Pajamas also make me wonder. Who decided that we have to wear different clothes at night than in the daytime? I wear a t-shirt to bed all year round, but when I was a kid I wore pajamas, never a nightgown because nightgowns ride up and make uncomfortable lumps while you’re sleeping.

I  wish I knew why some things are called what they are. A mixer is an easy one because that’s what it does, but who named soap? I used to tell people that some old lady in Hoboken, New Jersey was the wordmaster for the US, sort of like a poet laureate for words. Anything new comes along, and she gets a call. “What’ll we name it?” She thinks about it a while weighing what the thing does then she triumphantly coins a new word like a sort of baptism. That’s it-print the dictionary.

Okay, today is a hodge-podge, a gallimaufry, a jumbled mixture of what sometimes runs through my head. At least it keeps me entertained.

November 13, 2011

Where Are the %$$^&* Songs

November 12, 2011

Sorry, but you’ll just have to come back. Yousendit won’t work for me anymore as they have changed and are not sending links I can give you. I have swtitched to Mediafire but the process is much longer so I don’t have the time right now to upload and post. I have a 1 o’clock appointment off cape, and I have to leave shortly. I’ll post when I get home. You’ll just have to practice patience.

November 12, 2011

” If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!”

November 12, 2011

The dampness has gone and so have warm days, but nicer weather will be back later in the week. This fall has been beautiful and really doesn’t deserve a complaint just because today is seasonably cool, but it seems weather is always worth a complaint or two and a piece of most conversations. It’s either too hot or too cold, too windy or too damp. Today is too overcast.

Yesterday I was rummaging around in the eaves and found a bag filled with Ghanaian cloth and a few smocks, called fugus, all of which I had brought back forty years ago. One piece of cloth reminded me of a few dresses I had had a seamstress make for me. In Ghana my style of clothing wasn’t in the sort of dress but in the patterns and colors. The cloth market was one of my favorite places. I’d roam through the lines of sellers looking for just the right piece of cloth for my next dress. The cloth was sold from carefully built piles composed of rolled cloth, each rolled piece usually being three yards and placed in the pile first in one direction then in the other. The colors were easy to see, and it was easy for the seller to retrieve a single roll.

I am not a seamstress yet I made curtains for my bedroom in Ghana. I figured out how many yards I needed and bought the cheapest cloth I could find. It was brown with patterns in beige, pretty enough for curtains but never for a dress. I cut the cloth to fit across the three windows about halfway up then turned over the edges and hand sewed them. I then threaded strong twine through the edges and tied the curtains to hooks on the windows. They looked far better from the outside than the inside.

I even made a lamp shade. The one light in my living room hung down on a long wire from the high ceiling. It looked pretty ugly so I went to the market and bought a basket. Similar baskets, called Bolga baskets, are now sold for big bucks in the US., but in Ghana they were and still are fairly inexpensive. I took off the handle and cut a hole in the bottom of the basket then used pieces of a metal hanger to make a holder for the lightbulb. It worked wonderfully except during the rainy season when it became a bug magnet. In the morning, below the lambshade in the same size circle as the bottom of the shade, was always a pile of dead bugs. No big deal in Ghana.

I learned so much when I was in Ghana but I don’t count home decorating as one of them.

“Lord, bid war’s trumpet cease; Fold the whole earth in peace.”

November 11, 2011

Today being Veteran’s Day I won’t write my usual blatterings; instead, I’m posting a bit about the day.

Veterans Day was originally called Armistice Day, and today’s date was chosen for its symbolic significance. November 11 observed the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, which marked the armistice of World War I. The first Armistice Day in the U.S. occurred on November 11, 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson declared that “to us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with lots of pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory. … ”

Armistice Day was declared a legal holiday by Congress nearly 20 years later. In 1954 the name was changed to Veterans Day, following a national campaign to have the day honor all veterans, not just those who served in World War I.

EULOGY FOR A VETERAN

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glint of snow

I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain

When you awaken in the mornings hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I DID NOT DIE

Author Unknown

“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”

November 10, 2011

Yesterday was what I always think of as a Cape morning in the fall, foggy and warm. Today is also warm but overcast. It must have rained during the night as the streets are still wet along the edges. Gracie has barely been in the house the last couple of days except she does take a break for her morning nap. That’s a dog after my own heart.

Gracie and I have a few errands this morning, and all of them are practical, but I think I need a bit of whimsy. Maybe I’ll stop in one of those wonderful small shops tucked away on Route 6A and maybe I’ll find a treasure. One must always be on the lookout for a treasure.

My elementary school turns 100 next year. I’m hoping I get to visit. I have wonderful memories of that school, of the smell of the wood, of the cloakrooms, the tall windows and the niches in the walls along the staircase where a few statues of saints held sway. By the time I got there, the wood had darkened over the years and taken on the character which comes with age. The stairs and the old wooden floors in the classrooms creaked. The wooden desks were the sort with a space below the top where you kept your books, and you had to bend over, look and take out a book or two before you found the one you wanted. The top of the desk had a hole for an inkwell and indentation all the way across the top where you put your pencils. I suspect those desks are long gone and have been replaced with the sort where the top comes up so it’s easy to find what you want. I’m sorry for that, but I know time takes its toll on all the places held suspended in our memories.

“When the bold branches Bid farewell to rainbow leaves – Welcome wool sweaters.”

November 8, 2011

Glorious comes to mind in describing today. It is warm and beautiful. Earlier, at 9, I had a library board meeting then came home and went to the deck and filled the bird feeders. I then stayed outside a while in the sunshine and watched Gracie in the yard. She is enjoying the day as much as I am.

Lately I have had the urge to bake and have been going through cookbooks. I always used to bake, more during the holidays of course, but I would also spend a Saturday in the kitchen making my favorite chocolate cake, the family’s whoopie pie recipe or some cookies I might have been waiting to try. I think I’m going to bake this week. I want the house to fill with all those wonderful aromas wafting from the oven. Maybe I’ll give pumpkin whoopie pies a try. I’ll let you know.

The older I get, the more the cold and heat bother me. I think I am becoming a spring and fall person, especially a fall person. My sister chuckled that in all my pictures from Ghana, my head was soaked from sweat. She was absolutely right. This time of year I never used to wear a sweatshirt around the house or socks on my feet, but now I wear them all the time. Oddly enough, though, I don’t wear a winter coat. My sweatshirt seems to suffice, and besides, I am seldom out long enough to feel the cold. It’s a run from the house to the car or the store to a car.

At night, in winter, the animals and a quilt keep me more than warm enough. I wear a t-shirt to bed and though the temperature is set at 62° I am never cold.

My heat is programmed so when I get up the house is warm, but I still put on my flannel pants, my sweatshirt and my socks and slippers., and now I’m beginning to think I might have to add mittens to my winter ensemble.

November 5, 2011

November 4, 2011