Monday, February 29, 2016

Freezing!

Do you ever have days of being totally unfocused?  That's where I'm at today.  Below zero temps have frozen my storefront door shut.  Who's coming out today anyway?  At least one person is out and about.  I watched her read the sign explaining about the frozen door and requesting that customers round the corner and use the 17th street entrance.  For some reason, she chose not to do that; hopped back in her car and headed off.  

With the potential of few (or no) customers, I made up my "To Be Do" list which included some new and some long neglected tasks.  Nothing, repeating...nothing has been accomplished.  Oh, I got some Heart-A-Rama emails sent, but that's about it.  This lack of focus comes on the heels of a disturbing weekend epiphany.  I've been thinking it's time to cut back on theatre for a lot of reasons I won't go into.  I was happily calculating all the free time I will have when it hit me - I don't sing in a church choir, or any choir for that matter; no one would want me.  I don't play bridge, poker or bowl.  Knitting and crocheting - nope. Rope jumping or anything of that ilk - no thank you.   I whittled the list of things I don't do all the way down to stamp collecting - which I might be capable of, but have no interest in.  So, if I cut back on theatre, what will I do?  How will I get a creative fix?  People close to me know that I am basically a crank, but when the right side of my brain is not getting a workout...well, then "cranky" doesn't begin to cover it.

Reading is always a fine option.  My year of murder and mayhem continues with this novel set in Victorian London.  In 1840, London is experiencing a recession and nineteen year-old Catherine Sorgeriul pretty much stays locked away in her room.  Catherine's the nervous type, and the pervasive feeling of desolation and fear throughout London prevents her from feeling secure - that and a series of murders of young women.  

The graphic details of the crimes are hard to read; Catherine uses the details provided in newspaper accounts and begins writing stories about the victims.  She also writes about the perpetrator and then the trouble begins for her.  

Fast paced and gritty.  Great book for a snowy day or a below zero self-imposed hibernation.

It's Me! I'm Back!


SHHH!  You-Know-Who has been quiet for a few hours now, reading something called Jubilee.  Now's my chance to catch you up on what I've been reading, and believe me, I have read so much since I last commandeered the keyboard - two whole books in less than six month.  I'd call that a triumph.


YKW left this one laying around which I believe was a subtle hint that I should read more.  This author thinks so, too.  He talks all about how sometimes simple things like books with pages and words and pictures are so much better than things with buttons and sliders and beepers.  Maybe I do spend too much time scheming about how to get my paws on YKW's gadgets. The pictures and the little hidden messages made me want to keep looking and looking and then look some more.  It also made me want to meet  up with a couple others from my nation and stroll around and look.  I bet I have been missing a lot and now with spring about to pop, well, I'll do just that.  Looking, smelling, discovering, wondering and then some sleeping to recover from all that thinking and imagining.


This next book was a doozie - I laughed, I cried - there was all sorts of drama.  This book  gets four tail wags and a snausage.   Now, don't judge me because this book was about a bear and some geese.  I know that I usually pick books about my kind, but people, you have to read outside your comfort zone once in a while.
 Bruce the bear loves eggs.  He doesn't like them raw so he looks ups up recipes on the Internet.  He buys organic and shops locally.  Gotta love that bear.  The trouble starts when his goose eggs hatch and those silly babies imprint on him.  Bruce tries to send them on their way, but they love him too much to leave.  He wants to hibernate, but how can he when he has gosling to tend?

 Poor Bruce.  I feel his pain.  I feel his pain every Sunday when YKW isn't at work where she belongs.  9 a.m. is my time to lounge under the dining room table where the sun from the deck doors seeps in and covers my corner of the world with happiness.  What does she do?  She sits down a couple feet away and starts pounding on the piano.  Not a pretty sound.  Sometimes even she hears how ugly it sounds and that's when I learn a few new words. When the sun moves, so do I.  YKW talks to me.  She shoos me around as she creates Sunday chaos.  I place my doo-dads exactly where I want them throughout the week and by the end of Sunday, I have to start all over because she has collected them.  Yes, I know how Bruce feels having his day disrupted and his freedom curtailed.

Today, I will hold a leap day celebration.  I already stopped to visit a neighbor and return some mis-delivered mail.  They had treats!  What a day!  Heading off to the dining room.....

Lots of licks to ya....
GB, the Dog Blogger

Monday, February 22, 2016

Let's Got Cookin'

Last weekend, Christopher Kimball, host of Cooks' Country on PBS talked briefly about cookbooks not so cleverly disguised as product promos.  I knew that somewhere in the basement pile-o-stuff, I would find a few of these - and I did.  The unsophisticated artwork, most done in primary colors, accompany pages of recipes for product related enticements, most of which have gone the way of the dinosaur.

Take this Chiquita Banana recipe booklet for starters.  A fun little rebus opens the book, telling me how to determine if my banana is ripe or overripe.  Throughout, an adorable banana girl dressed as Carmen Miranda points out items of interest on each page. Maybe we could all try ham and banana rolls in  a sharp cheese sauce. Pan fried bananas with hamburger patties and whole carrots, anyone? One yummy recipe follows another, filling all 23 pages.  Page twenty-four warns "DON'T SKIP THESE HOW-TO-DO-ITS".  Here I learned how to buy a banana, ripen it, flatten, slice mash and generally pulverize the fruit.  I also discovered why doctors, children, teens, athletes, slender women and old folks all love bananas.  Thank you to the Home Economics Department of  the United Fruit Company of New York.


Not much can top a banana, salmon, celery and mayo salad, unless it is something you prepare in your new waterless cookware while wearing an evening gown.  Stylish like the model pictured here, this must-have addition  to your cookware collection has a low, sleek profile and the phenolic handles and knobs complement the glowing stainless steel finish.  It seems a lot can go wrong when cooking in a waterless gadget since the trouble shooting section is longer than the suggested recipes.  


These pamphlets will keep you laughing and give you insight into simpler times.  One cook writes to Glabber Girl - the Healthy BakingPowder - saying "At first, I was frightened of Glabber Girl but now that I am used to using it, my husband says he likes my biscuits better each day."  Hmmmmm

Then there's the 10 Cakes Husbands Like Best cookbook courtesy of Spry shortening.  You can bake a Chocolate Rapture Cake or a Hawaiian Lei cake - pun intended I assume.  And what loving wife would not want to spend time with her husband after feeding him spicy prune whip cake moistened  with 1/2 cup prune juice, packed with chopped prunes and glued together with prune frosting?

My favorite is a collection of postcard size recipes, tied together at the top with yarn.  They appear to be Pennsylvania Dutch recipes with hand-written notes alongside most.  Schnitz un knepp is some sort of ham, boiled with apples and smothered in dumplings.  The sidenote says "When it gives schnitz unknepp we eat and eat till it gets all."  At the bottom someone has written "A short prayer and a big sausage" and "Even a bird knows enough to rest after dinner."  

What treasures.  I wonder what other treasures will be unearthed as I continue my basement rejuvenation project.

Thanks for stopping by.

Monday, February 15, 2016

Thinking About Alligators

If you're up on current, local news, you know all about the alligator drug bust.  If you don't, here's the scoop - in the process of locating a parole violator, police went to a home and were greeted with a strong pot smell wafting through the air. Upon searching the premises, a hug amount of marijuana was found, along with an alligator!  An alligator, right here in Manitowoc.  It seems the little guy was pretty sick - dehydrated (or high) and was quickly taken to a rehab center.  Makes sense, I guess. After all, anyone dumb enough to be growing, or storing or whatever ...several pounds of pot you surly needs to protect it with a guard alligator.  

Personally, I am not a fan of the alligator or the crocodile for that matter.  Years ago, while prepping a show I was directing at a local high school. I dreamed of going into the costume dungeon.  I'm not kidding when I say dungeon.  The door was hidden behind the trophy case, held shut with a rusty padlock that sometimes worked.  Down eight or nine steps in the pitch darkness before coming to a light switch that sometimes turned on the single bulb dangling from the ceiling.  Down three more steps, sharp turn to the left and then another door. This place was never intended to be storage.  I think it was actually an access passage to something mechanical which the custodians just hoped they would never have to access. Anyway, the black hole of costumes was occupied by a colony of crocs.  Play prep always haunts my dreams with the intensity in direct proportion to the difficulty of the show.  

Ironically, one of my favorite new kids' books is the one pictured above.  Magnolia's teacher tells the class to brings something from nature for show and tell.  You can see what Magnolia brings!  She's a spirited little kid, and the alligator matches her move for move.  He chews gum. laughs behind the teacher's back, and tries to eat a kid.

The fun isn't limited to the story, though.  The illustrations tell their own stories.  You have to watch for the paper airplane flying from page to page.  Clever names decorate lockers and the blackboard is filled with questionable facts.

Alligator allegory?  Yup, read Lisa Moore's Alligator to see how ruthlessly reptilian some folks can be. And don't forget Bringing Albert Home, a memoir I wrote about earlier.  The author's mother had a pet alligator but her soon to be husband gave her a "him or me" ultimatum.  Mom decided to return the beast, cross county via car, to Florida.  Guess what?  She meets Hemingway in the process.  

Kipling wrote about an alligator in his Just So Stories, but my all time favorite alligator line was spoken by Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals by Sheridan.  I loved all those comedy of manners playwrights - Goldsmith, Congreve, Wilde.  But Sheridan gave me Mrs. Malaprop, a character who spoke in a confident voice while butchering the English language.  Speaking of a sweet young thing named Lydia, Mrs. Malaprop says she's "as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile."  Malaprop says much more, but that's the only quote that fits here!

I'm still working on and thoroughly enjoying West with the Wind.

Thanks for stopping by.

Monday, February 8, 2016

Two Book (well...1 !/2 really) Weekend

Fans of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry or anyone who likes books about books may want to check this one out.  A pen pal relationship brings Sara from Sweden all the way to Broken Wheel, a dying town in the middle of nowhere with less than nothing to offer.  And, Broken Wheel isn't the only death in question.  Sara arrives just in time to attend the funeral of her pen pal, Amy.  For years, Amy and Sara shared thoughts about their favorite books, relating characters and plots to their own lives.  In that respect the book reminded me of 84 Charing Cross Road, a book that consistently makes my top 10 list of books to read and re-read.  Broken Wheel is a book about stories - reading them, telling them and being in them.  Predictable - yes, but still fun.

The real winner of the weekend turned out to be our book discussion selection for February and believe me, I was dreading this one. Something about the airplane on the cover suggested this would be a war story of sorts. Wrong.  Apparently I should have known who Beryl Markham was but that's one more piece of cultural literacy that has eluded me.  First surprise - Africa.  Oh, how I love books and movies set in Africa.  Second surprise - this isn't a chronological biography but more of an episodic memoir, almost stream of consciousness at times.  Surprise number three - beautiful prose...and number four...this book garnered high praise from Ernest Hemingway.  

Markham' storytelling skill drew me from page one and every couple paragraphs I find myself muttering "My life is so boring!"   Then again, would I really want to be flying a prop plane in the dead of night with no visual guidance, or stalked daily by an obsessive zebra?  Probably not. Vicarious living...not such a bad thing.

 Beryl Markham is  self-deprecating, funny, bold and poetic.  I am reading slowly to make the book last longer.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Ove


Before I get going on Ove...a short PSA

Due to the predicted snowstorm, Heart-A-Rama auditions scheduled for Tuesday, February 2 have been rescheduled for 7:00, Monday, February 8th at the Capitol Civic Centre.  Those unable to attend the audition can contact Bev Denor by Friday, February 5 at bdenor@lsol.net or call her at LaDeDa Books & Beans (682.7040) during regular business hours to schedule an alternative audition time. 


Book trends.   For a while, we were all reading teens in trouble books - Defending Jacob, We Need to Talk About Kevin. Generally, there's a rich kid, a doctor or lawyer parent, and some unspeakable crime that everyone tries to cover up as the world twists around them.  Sometime a surprise ending sneaks up on us as it did in the horrific final scenes of Defending Jacob.  As horrible as the ending was, it left no room for discussion.  The author led us to the exact conclusion she wanted, summing it up in one simple action taken by a desperate parent at the 11th hour.

Before that litany of titles, we had adults behaving badly in Fifty Shades of Gray and all the spin-offs. Written at an embarrassingly junior high level, these tawdry tales spawned far too many offspring for my taste.  There are just not enough synonyms for "throbbing" to keep things interesting.

After that we moved on to the red-herring, missing and or crazy wife stories.  Gone Girl begot The Farm which begot The Good Girl and then The Girl on the Train.  It appears we have grown tired of all  the begettin'   - now we wait for all the movie versions.

Someone stole my baby.  My daughter has been kidnapped/murdered/sold.  Children and the holocaust. they all had their day.  What's trending now?

Cantankerous old men.  A Man Called Ove lit up the European bestseller lists before word of mouth brought it the same notoriety in the U.S.  Written by a Swedish author, the story, the characters and the tone just scream SCANDINAVIAN.  Everything is tidy and functional.  The language is simple,unadorned yet effective.  Some might say the style is bland - others would call it elegantly understated.  Current publisher catalogues burst with the "next best seller" title about and old, cranky man."  Publicists promise we will laugh, cry, be amazed, and fall in love with the old fellows.

I'm not far enough into Ove to say if any that is true, but the number of customers requesting the title because of friend recommendations tells me this could be a satisfying read.  I have been enjoying all the pronunciations of the title character's name.  OOOOve.  Ohvie. Ave.  And my personal favorite -Oivey.  Of couse I looked up the correct pronunciation, but I'm not telling.  

I'll cut this short so you can get to the store and pick up your bad weather gear and soup makin' ingredients.

Thanks for stopping.
LaDeDa Bev