We're Gonna Rock Down To Egyptian Avenue

Egyptian Avenue, Highgate Cemetery

I just finished reading Necropolis: London and Its Dead, by Catharine Arnold. It covers burial practices in London from tribes through the Romans and the Plague. Ornate Victoriana and into the present. The premise (in a nutshell) is that London sits on centuries of its dead...and here's how they did it. 

Years ago, longer than I care to remember, I used to live for long stretches in London. I knew it like a native; sometimes better than a native. There is an old early 19th century cemetery in the northern part of London called Highgate (for the community where it is located.) Karl Marx is buried there. Charles Dickens' wife. Many notables. The cemetery had to be closed to the public in the 1970's when neglect was rampant and grave robbing was occurring (mainly from a local warlock in the neighborhood.) In 1975 an organization called "Friends of the Highgate Cemetery" was formed, and I contributed and participated for many years. In the autumn I would be there with my trowel or clippers, taking away ivy (but leaving it in more artistic array,) and general overall care giving to the acreage.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Now you can visit the cemetery yourself, although the West side is still tour only. They even have events there. Much changed over time, and more open: http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/index.php/home

One unique feature, among many, about the cemetery, and Highgate in general, is that it sits at the top of London and in certain spots you have an overview of the city, looking down. It's rather unique and very lovely.

At the end of Necropolis, the author quotes from Ford Madox Ford's The Soul of London.  When I read the passage, it reminded me of that view:

 "For all of us it must be again London from a distance, whether it be a distance of six feet underground, or whether we go to rest somewhere on the other side of the hills that ring in this great river basin. For us, at least, London, its problems, its past, its future, will be at rest. At nights the great blaze will shine up at the clouds; on the sky there will still be that brooding and enigmatic glow, as if London with a great ambition strove to grasp at Heaven with arms that are shafts of light. That is London writing its name upon the clouds. And in the hearts of its children it will still be something like a cloud--a cloud of little experiences, of little personal impressions, of small, futile things that, seen in moments of stress and anguish, have significance so tremendous and meanings so poignant. A cloud--as it were of the dust of men's lives."

Time Is Money If You Know What Time It Is

There is one bank I use where I almost always go through their drive-through bay. Over time, I've gotten to know the three men who are usually in the booth. An older gentleman, (who is a native Washingtonian,) and I have discussions about "the old D.C." When people slept in parks to escape the heat, or the trolley cars, trying to make a comeback as part of the 11th Street bridge project. There is a young man in dreads with the name of a major character from the tv series, "The Wire." He shares the name, but lacks the violence, being very sweet-natured, and then there's a young man from Africa who upon meeting me for the first time swore I would never remember his name, and the next time I saw him did remember, and he said, "I was sure you wouldn't."


During this past year I've noted that the clock in their booth doesn't work. At first I jokingly said I was going to buy batteries for it, but over time they told me they had fiddled with it, and it wasn't a question of batteries but "just not working." Two weeks ago, I said to the man from Africa, "Doesn't it drive you nuts that you look at the wall and it's always 7 o'clock?" He said, "That clock has it's uses. I can use it's reflection to see who's behind you, and if someone is trying to walk up to the booth." I asserted, "I am buying you a clock!" He laughed and said, "Do it and we'll hang it with gratitude!"


This weekend, instead of going to the bank first, I drove to a Target and bought a clock with big black numbers (easy to read.) The clock was only $10.00-- but the batteries were $8.00. Once I got out to my car, I had to use a key to unscrew these Phillips head screws securing the clock to the cardboard packaging and me cursing the Chinese. The new Chinese water torture. Merchandising torture. Chairman Mao proclaiming against the weak Imperialist paper tigers.


While I was waiting in line at the bank, I took a picture of the car in front of me with it's back window loaded with clouds. I felt like it was my blogging friend Reya saying, "Nothing to worry about. Waiting is good!" (She's know for her cloud photographs.) When I finally got to the window, the money drawer slid out, and I put in the clock and my check. Mr. Nigeria was at the window. He started laughing and said, "Is this for real?" I told him, "Ab-so-lutely," and he replied, "...but I was joking!" I said, "I wasn't. I've talked to all three of you and want you to have a clock while you work in that booth."


He was waving his hands around at this point, not quite knowing what to say, but very formally did say "I do not know how the ___Bank can ever repay you for this kindness." I wanted to say, "With large unmarked bills," or "...add some more zeros to that check."

I shook my head and said, "No need. This is to make your work day easier. In the end...

... The Clock Always Wins"

(Keep On) Truckin' On Tite Street

....get me The Royal College of Heraldry....STAT

Many of you who read my blog know that I sell things online through eBay and Amazon. This past week, I finally had my first royal sale. I sold a cd of the Grateful Dead to a Marquis in London, and "yes," he's the real deal. I googled him.

I always knew there might come the day, when I would be selling a beanie baby to Brad Pitt, or a Hound Dog Taylor cd to Margaret Thatcher, but I never quite pictured a hereditary royal scanning for sales.

The cd was mailed off to his London home on Tite Street, an infamous street in Chelsea that previous housed, among others, Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent. I show Sargent's studio in a picture below. My Marquis bought his own home from a Rothschild in the 1990's.

He also inherited the family castle in the Northern part of England. I was telling Reya of http://thegoldpuppy.blogspot.com/ about this sale, and how I had a hard time reconciling this man listening to the Dead in his castle. She wrote back, with a *snap*, "Looks like the perfect place to crank up the Dead, if you ask me."

Pumping Mud

I just finished reading a novel called Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes. Given the subject matter, Present Imperfect or Future Imperfect might be more apt.

Fellowes' previous novel, Snobs, was equally good. True to it's name, it was about social classes in Britain, and where you might think Past Imperfect is about social class distinctions, since the bulk of the characters are of the upper class in Great Britain, in truth it's about youthful dreams and time and and what time does to our lives...and our hopes. So many of Fellowes' characters wind up with flawed lives and crushed promise. That won't lure you in?

There are so many changes in social mores that he nails. Ascot. Debutante balls. Toeing parental lines. The death knell pain of being at a party with a controlling personality. In one passage, at a debutante ball Fellowes, like a social anthropologist reporting on tribal mating patterns, describes the pain of trying to engage someone in polite conversation where there is a complete lack of interest, no matter what topic is touched on. He says a friend always said of this type of social interchange, that it was like "pumping mud." Far more vivid than the proverbial "like pulling hen's teeth."

The book opens with a scene that was very painful to me, because it strikes at my heart at this moment. The protagonist is reflecting on the London of his boyhood, versus his middle age, and he says, "London is a haunted city for me now and I am the ghost that haunts it. As I go about my business, every street or square or avenue seems to whisper of an earlier, different era in my history. The shortest trip round Chelsea takes me by some door where once I was welcome but where today I am a stranger. I see myself issue forth, young again, and as I watch beside that wraith of a younger me walk the shades of departed, parents, uncles, aunts and grandmothers, great-uncles and cousins, friends and girlfriends, gone now from this world entirely, or at least from what is left of my own life. They say one sign of growing old is that the past becomes more real than the present, and already I can feel the fingers of those lost decades closing their grip round my imagination, making more recent memory seem somehow greyer and less bright." Washington holds many such losses and ghosts for me.

I remember my father telling me that if you live long enough, you see your friends go away, or even more so, die off, until there is so little left of what was your life. Making new acquaintances is not that easy with the passing of decades, and if it's hard in youth, even more so for the isolated elderly. I can remember in the later years of my father's life, I drove him to a funeral viewing of a man that he had known for decades, that he rode to work with for decades, and when we arrived, and he had paid his respects, he said to me, "Get me out of here. I cannot take it anymore." This from a man always present and accounted for to honor his peers. But he had finally hit the wall. No more. And that...was that.

The next piece I write is going to be about one of my own personal walls, and my ghosts, and how going through something like that can now haunt me, and level me.

Virginia Is For Lovers...Maybe

...Thanks, Drew.

Duly Noted And Marked

I've been busy trying to clean a house out before settlement that is part of an estate. Did I get the price I wanted? No. Far less. Am I glad it is almost out of my hair? Yes. I want my life back. In the meantime, I've been contending with collapsed garden sheds (snow,) and shoveling snow (snow,) and making alien snow people (snow,) and oh yeah...I fell...a bad one. Nothing broken, but I was limping for a few days at a time when I need all of my wits about me. I'll be back over at house central this week hauling out an 1890's treadle sewing machine that has to be shipped to Oregon and crawling in decades old filth in an attic and other fun things.

Right in front of me is a pile of things "to blog" about. I gave up on the subject of desire. See above. Wait a minute. I would still like to write about desire someday. The strange paths it can take and who is to say what driving passion fuels you is wrong. Did you know that rubber fetishes have diminished as an aging population are the only ones who remember childhood rubber pants? It's true. I have charts. I have tables. And, I would add, just in time to get back into them. Full circle, as it were.

But still, I want to write, but between answering emails and doing sales on Amazon and eBay and writing Phil of The Playaz (God love you Phil for checking on me,) it's been unholy. Yesterday I went to a Starbucks to hook up with a former neighbor who moved way out to Eldersburg, and I caught her at the end of her work day at her chosen destination point before she headed to the netherlands. I am so Starbucks naive, I had to look on line to see what I would order and how to order it. I got a Tazo Shaken Iced Passion Tea Tall. OH...sweetened. What a litany. I feel like I need to go into more coffee shops just to learn the language of latte. Did I mention I'm fussy about coffee and think Starbucks is crap? No? Well. I do.

While I was out, I ran by my local library to pick up some books, but also to return those due and see if I could nab them another round, which I did. When I got home, I don't know what triggered this, but I decided to make bookmarks for them on photo paper, and using craft scissors I deckled the edges to make them look like old-timey photographs. The idea being, when I return the books, I will leave the bookmarks in as a surprise for the next reader.

The first bookmark I made was for a book called L.A. Noir by John Buntin. I thought, without checking, that it was part of a noir series I had been reading that features major cities, then has crime-mystery writers from those cities and their short stories. D.C. Noir has George Pelecanos, of course. There is a Baltimore Noir, a New York Noir, even a Dublin Noir. This book, however, is about mob activity in Los Angeles in the 30's-50's and the city's police captain and his involvement with Jack Webb who based the television show Dragnet on real police work.

I also learned that Jack Webb's overvoice "This is the city. Los Angeles" was a direct rip from a movie where he played a forensic specialist (Lee) called He Walked By Night (1948.) He also ripped off his "ching ching" hammer music from the same film. So I found a noir shot of Los Angeles. I also discovered while google goofing that there's a software game called L.A. Noir. Why that could be right up my... ALLEY.

I've been trying to finish up Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence. If you've never heard of him, he's a Nobel Prize writer. He's Turkish. He's political and he's pissed off. I still love his writing. His sentences could be filagree in the Hagia Sophia. Much like travel writer Paul Theroux, Pamuk just put himself into his own latest novel: his family attending a wedding reception. Nice way to control getting the waiter over to your table with the tiny kebap.



Yeah...he looks pissed off here, too. He's one of those guys you can jokingly let loose a "trigger" word and watch him blast off. When he goes out in public, citizens of Turkey are either cheering him and treating him like a rock star-guru, or they are hanging him in effigy. Guess it depends on which side of the Bosporus your freak flag flies.

Another book (in a stack) I picked up is a new release called Baby Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him by Alanna Nash. It's already deep into good and white trashy, and I haven't even gotten his mother married yet. I know this one is going to be a pissah. I was flipping through, looking for a bookmark image and bingo. One I've never seen before. I couldn't even believe it was Elvis, but 'tis and just months before he died:



The girl on the back is a dancer named Mary Kathleen Selph. She died in a car accident a month after this picture was taken. I showed this photograph to a friend today, and they said, "THAT is NOT Elvis...that is some ole black woman pretending to be Elvis." He immediately amended himself after looking again and said, "Actually, I think Elvis is trying to look like his mother, Gladys. " I agree. Also, if you can see? The little boy in the car next to him has his mouth open, and it almost seems like he's screaming "ELVIS!"

Can you imagine the things that are going to come out in this book? The author interviewed a lot of his former loves, going all the way back to childhood. I mean, I knew about the white cotton panty fetish. (Note to Self: Add that to desire article and fetishes.) This same friend and I were discussing how a certain level of talent walks off the planet, and it's never seen again.

I got into a weird frame of mind (as if I ever leave it,) the other day, and I started You Tubing Andy Williams and Sammy Davis, Jr. and these variety shows. What really triggered this was me wanting to see and hear Jobim and Elis Regina singing Águas de Março (Waters of March) cause well...it was the first of March, only March in Brazil comes after summer (go figure,) but still...great song.

The next thing you know I'm watching Jobim singing Girl From Ipanema with Andy Williams which led to Tony Bennett singing with Andy and people You commenting "Why don't they have shows like this on t.v. anymore? Such talent!" and me thinking Yah! Why not? Somehow that led me to Michael Jackson singing at Sammy's 60th birthday celebration and Sammy doing "Bad."

Don't even ask me about Billy Wilder and Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) and that wild You Tube ride I took on Sunday. (Note to Self: Write about the German Film School, Berlin 1930, the onset of Nazism and this new Nazi zombie film with Norwegians called...uh... DEAD SNOW!!!) More snow!!! Full circle. I'll stop. Cyndy? Watch and enjoy.



I'm riffing! Patrick. Do you miss me? :)

Fettuccine With Braised Fennel, Walnuts, Saffron and Cream

2 medium fennel bulbs (or one large)
1/4 cup minced scallion (white and green)
1/2 cup walnuts
1/8 teaspoon loosely packed saffron thread (about 15 threads)
1 pound fresh fettuccine
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup minced parsley
Grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread walnuts on a baking sheet or pie pan and toast until fragrant and lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Cool, then chop fine and set aside.

Cut off the stalks of the fennel bulb(s),if attached. Finely mince and set aside. Try to include some of the feathery leaves.

Dice the scallions.

Melt the butter in a skillet overly moderately low heat. Add the diced fennel and scallions and season with salt and pepper. Toss to coat with the seasonings.

Add the chicken stock and saffron threads, bring to a simmer and cover. Adjust the heat to maintain a simmer and cook until tender and much of the liquid has evaporated, about ten minutes.

Stir in the cream. Bring back to a simmer and cook briefly to incorporate. Take care not to reduce the sauce too much as fresh pasta absorbs a lot of the sauce.

Taste and adjust the seasoning. Keep warm over low heat.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling, salted water until al dente. Drain. Transfer the pasta to a large bowl. Add contents of the skillet and mix. Serve immediate on warm dishes, topping each with a reserve of a few chopped fennel leaves, if available.

Serves 4.

NOTES: * This recipe comes from a book called Pasta Harvest by Janet Fletcher. The book is all vegetable pasta dishes, with the dishes listed alphabetically by vegetable, starting with artichokes and ending with tomatoes. There are separate sections on pasta shapes, how to make pasta and creating sauces.

* I only eat this dish in the winter. Why? I dunno. I guess I think of fennel and heavy pastas as "winter."

* I know I should photograph food in natural light, but I didn't want to wait until tomorrow and wade out through snow to get to my garden table. I also forgot to mix the sauce with the pasta so it's sitting there like vom on top of the pasta. But it was good tasting vom.

* I went to reach for my saffron threads and "oops." I didn't have any. I did have a package of Spanish yellow rice, so I tapped into that to get some saffron flavoring. It really needs the saffron, though. Guess what got added to my "to buy" list?

* I usually cut this recipe in half. I could even see eating it over rice.

* I don't go to the trouble to roast the walnuts in the oven. At best, I may toss them around in a smaller fry pan for a few minutes.

* You can vary that butter-oil ratio. The recipe does need butter. It does not need oil. I only used butter tonight.

* I use a bit more of the feathery leaves than the recipe calls for, simply because I like the look of them.

* I never use heavy cream. You can use half and half, probably even whole milk. I would not make it using skim milk.

Happy Valentine's Day

Angels Wear Red Shoes

Miep Gies died yesterday. Miep was the young secretary who with four others aided the Anne Frank family during their annexed hiding in Amsterdam during WWII. She died at age 100. A piece of history goes with her. Of that dangerous time she said, ““I am not a hero. I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more – much more - during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.”

I learned something about Miep today when I went to her web page. She once brought Anne red shoes to the hideaway, sensing the girl’s sensitivity to having to wear clothes that didn’t fit her growing body and shoes that no longer fit her feet.


The back of the Frank House showing the upper windows



I took the following directly from her web page:

“Over the course of the period in hiding, everyone's clothes gradually became a bit tattered and shabby. Anne moreover physically grew out of her clothes, everything became too short and too tight, and her shoes no longer fit her feet. This was, at the same time, the period in which girls become very concerned over their appearance and wish to look pretty and adult. I sympathized with her situation and went in search of something that would make Anne feel particularly attractive. Of course, in the midst of war it was next to impossible to find a beautiful piece of clothing that was also affordable, but during one of my quests I came upon a handsome pair of shoes. “

Miep was often sympathetic to Anne's plight. For all the occupants, being in hiding was incredibly difficult and taxing, but especially for Anne, in the midst of her pubescent period, it must often have been awful. She loved the film stars in the weekly magazine Cinema & Theater, and she will certainly have imagined, from time to time, how glamorous she herself could look. But the reality of the situation was that her clothes not only started wearing thin, but also and especially started becoming too small.

Miep at sixteen...



Anne had grown out of everything she had, which brought Miep to the resolution:

"I became determined to find something grown-up and pretty for Anne in the course of my searches. One day I stumbled onto just the right thing. I had found a pair of high-heeled red leather pumps. They were secondhand, but in good condition. I hesitated about the size: how awful if they didn’t fit her. But then I thought, Buy! Take a chance. I brought them up to the hiding place behind my back. I went to Anne and stuck them in front of her. Never have I seen anyone so happy as Anne was that day. And quick, on went the shoes, and they fitted just right.

She got very quiet then: she had never felt herself on high heels before. She wobbled slightly, but with determination, chewing on her upper lip, she walked across the room, and back, and then did it again. Just walking back and forth, up and back, more and more steadily each time."

Miep during the war...



In her diary entry of August 10, 1943, Anne writes of her immense happiness with the red high heel shoes that Miep managed to acquire for her. Every week, Anne would devour the weekly magazine Cinema & Theater, which Victor Kugler always brought for her. She knew every film star and pored over their beautiful dresses and glamorous hairdos. Wearing her new shoes, she must also momentarily have felt like a star.




From the diary:

"Everywhere I go, upstairs or down, they all cast admiring glances at my feet, which are adorned by a pair of exceptionally beautiful (for times like these!) shoes. Miep managed to snap them up for 27.50 guilders. Burgundy-colored suede and leather with medium-sized high heels. I feel as if I were on stilts, and look even taller than I already am."



The diary, given to Anne on her thirteenth birthday. One month later, she went into hiding.

God bless you, Miep Gies.

“'I am one hundred years old now. That is an admirable age, and I have even reached it in fairly good health. So then it's fair to say you've been fortunate, and being fortunate seems to be the red thread running through my life.” ~~ Miep Gies

January 1, 2010 - The Blue Moon New Year

Makemake* - Greetings From Traffic Island

*Makemake is the Creator God of the Polynesian People, or "How I Spent Christmas Day."

Well....As Hamlet Would Say... "What Is This Quintessence Of Dust?"

I’ve been writing about an older woman I knew who died last September at age 96. I’ve been dealing with her estate, and all of her personal effects, for the past year. Let me tell you another story about this woman.



Her parents were from Russia, and they came to this area at a time of great turmoil in their country. Her teenaged mother had fled their burning village during the Russian Revolution with only a copper pot and pillow. She was smuggled out and never to see her family again. I knew her mother, as well. When "Granny" was in her last week of life (and she lived to be a grand old age,) she reverted back to speaking only Russian, and she kept talking to her mother (whom she hadn’t seen since she was seventeen) up high in the corner of the hospital room. She had once told me when I was a young girl that she loved her mother so much, she would put two chairs together to sleep next to her. I found the copper pot in the basement about a month or two ago.



I had heard about this pot for quite some time. You can't imagine how I felt when I found it. Realizing that this teenage girl ran from her village during a revolution. Never saw her family again. And she entered this country with only a pillow and this pot. To paraprhase Nabokov, "Speak, History."

They ran a little Mom and Pop store named after their daughter over on A Street on Capitol Hill. When they died, they were buried in this really old cemetery over off Benning Road which is a part of D.C. you don’t want to linger in, not even the residents, not even during the day. Things were so bad, they had to keep the cemetery gates locked, so to visit you would have to call the caretaker and meet him there so he could let you in…and wait to let you out. And yes, I've heard of muggings and murders in graveyards. We aren't even safe with the dead.

Several times I was asked to go with the lady so I could re-landscape the gravesite. It was a very dark, dank, dismal place to be. High iron gates, a lot of overgrown vegetation. Leaning markers. Very little sunlight (so shade plants) and always the danger some “youth” would come through the back way and attack you. I was never comfortable there. The place reeked of neglect and being forgotten and lost in this changed world where it was plopped down under lock and key. Everything said “stay away.”

All of this upset the lady greatly. She wanted to be able to visit her parents in peace. She decided she would unplant them and move them to a cemetery not far from where she lived. Her family was there, all in a row: her sister, her brother-in-law and her niece. She approached her spiritual leader about how to go about this, and he forbade it; saying it was against religious law…which was hogwash on toast.

What was odd, (to me,) was that she had worked for Congress in the 1930’s…up through the 1970’s. She never married, was a career woman and very opinionated and strong minded; i.e. not a woman to hold her tongue, but just lay it right out there. She had subscribed to The Village Voice since it’s inception. The same for Rolling Stone. Very attuned to her culture. I have to admit it's interesting to know that you can yell at Bush on the television when you're ninety. She was highly political, and even in the last weeks of her life, loathing Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to the end. She desperately wanted to be well enough to vote in the last Presidential election and she missed the opportunity by weeks. I thought about her a lot on that day.

Her parents had been Orthodox, but she never really pursued religion until after her mother died. This adherence and obedience to a controlling bully, I could never understand. There are so many stories I could tell against this man, but won’t. While I never called him a self absorbed, lazy creep to her face, I did tell her to go ahead and move her parents, because it was so important to her. She never did, and she carried that upset with her to the end.

In the last year of her life, she lost her teeth, and we went through hell with that. It took a good nine months to replace them (a lot of trips to the dentist on day’s off,) as she was so frail and it was hard to get accurate measurements. It was also an out of pocket expense, so a lot of sacrifice on the part of everyone to get this done. And when the teeth were done? She wouldn’t wear them.



A few weeks ago, I was in her basement: bad lighting, overheated and tossing, tossing, storing, and I found a pair of teeth. I had to wonder. “Are these hers?” I showed them to her nephew, and he held them up to the light, much as Hamlet hoisted that skull, and he said, “No. This is my grandmother.”

Later that night, the nephew said, “I think we should go to the cemetery where she is buried, and bury Granny’s teeth there.” You have to understand. I’ve been doing quirky things like this my entire life, so I was game. Soooo…this past weekend I said to the nephew, “Let’s go bury the teeth” because it was the week of her birthday.



As bizarre as this seems, I hope I am doing things like this when I’m eighty, because it sure keeps life interesting. I’ve dug graves in my past, I’ve landscaped them, and now I’m doing burials. So yeah…..we didn’t get Granny replanted next to her daughters….but on the other hand….we did.

Postscript: I went to see my dentist this morning. He's originally from India and into high tech interactive server everything. Huge enthusiasm about you name it. I got a tour of his new offices, very modern, very elegant, and we talked about all that he had done. He just kills me. He has got "a guy" for everything: "You like that tile? I got that from a guy in Philadelphia who knows a guy in Italy. You need a plumber? Call my guy. Computer tech? Carpenter? Jewels? I've got a guy in Jaipur." His wife is a pip, too.

I was telling him the story above, and he listened and nodded--he got it, then he told me his story. In moving his offices, he was getting rid of some things, including plaster molds of teeth. One set belonged to a young man of eighteen that had died not long ago. He was driving on River Road in Potomac at 3 a.m. and hit a tree. The car burst into flames and he died trapped inside. My doctor had kept the mold because it was an interesting dental correction, and in the end, the parents sent the police to him to identify the young man's remains through his dental records. He had just completed this sad task, so it was still fresh in his mind. He hated to toss the molds, but it was obviously a very sensitive thing to ask the parents about; i.e. "Do you want your son's dental molds?" He approached them with delicacy, and in the end they did want them.

He understood my story completely. I told him, "I have my own plaster molds, and my mother's molds, on a shelf on one of my bookcases." They make an interesting conversation piece." Then we stood and both of us took pictures with my camera of the beautiful vista out his office windows. "Look at that sky," he said. "I need that sky."

She's A Brainiac, Altair

Last week, my friend Reya over at Blog Gold Puppy was talking about the luxury of time, and how she often tries to slow things down to enjoy them more. I wrote back, telling her how I try to stay in a "patience" zone and absorb the moment when I am doing those things she described. I always felt my late father was rushing through his life, with each event being hurried along. The first to arrive at a party, (and positively antsy to get there,) then once there, he couldn't wait for it to end.

I told Reya that I listen and watch a lot to what is going on around me, trying to understand what it means and stay sensitive to it; seeing the big picture, as it were. A few years back, I read an article about animal's "rhythms" and how their heartbeats were slower than humans, so it helped to move more slowly around them in every way. I tested it out and I found dogs, cats, horses and squirrels very responsive to it. It even worked on crows who are incredibly wary around humans. They tend to scatter when you are near, and for a few years I was able to study crow behavior--and, I would add, they are highly socialized, community driven birds.

Older people respond to slowness, as well. The only contrary thing I would add is that you have to speak louder, but still slowly. Slow and loud. I've been caregiver to some seniors, and I've been working on the estate of one who died last year. Once again into the fray of emptying out a house and handling once loved possessions, not without it's own sadnesses. I'll be writing an oddball story about one such moment later this week.

The other day I was doing a drop at the library book depository. Recently, they had added medium sized rocks between the curb and the sidewalk, and I had made a note to myself what a treacherous bit of land this had become; especially involving feet, ankles and knees. I had twisted my right ankle the other day (thinking with relief when I did so, "Whew...that was a close one,") only I must have sprained it, because it remains weakened, and I am still wary of it, not giving it full weight, so I was carrying around my own slowness.

There was a minivan parked in front of me with it's side door opened, and I thought "Soccer Mom," only a little old lady was inside, removing her books to return. She was dressed rather nattily in black Bermuda shorts and a pressed cotton top, but her legs were skeletal; that cliché of skin and bone. I watched her cross the rocks and saw how her feet tilted unsteadily, so as she made her way back to her car (and I practiced "stillness" in standing, waiting--wishing not to startle,) I said to her, "These rocks are highly impractical in terms of crossing them to get to the sidewalk."

She looked into my eyes for the longest time. Then she said, "Would you mind repeating what you just said to me?" So I did. Another pause. Another long stare. At this point I had the sense I was gazing into the innards of a dated computer: watching synapses firing, seeing lights bounce. Point A to Point B to Point....then she said, in a very formalized, very slow voice, (but well ennunciated) "I concur with your assessment."




I had to stare back, thinking, "There is your future." I held back while she returned to her car, wondering how she even maneuvered such a heavy vehicle. While I waited, I took out my camera and shot a picture of the shrub next to the book depository. For some reason, it struck me as "brain like" in it's appearance. I shot a close-up of the brain shrub, as well. After all, I was in slow mode and waiting my time through this event. I don't know why, but those branches were like a symbol of what I had just experienced.

A few days ago, once again at the book drop, I got out of the car and saw this:

Aloe Vera Juice DrinkHold The Pickle

Two or three years ago, my friend Laura went to California with her mother and her Aunt Edie to stay at a desert spa and basically high colonic their way to health. This wasn't one of those "now we march through the mountains" retreats, but more, "let's rest your system by the pool waiting for the next enema assault." I'm not sure if Laura picked up the recipe for this drink at the spa, or later in persuing "health is our only real wealth" mindset, but she got me on the kick, and I stuck with it for a good while. I do remember one plus is that's it's suppose to keep your metabolism at a healthy level.

I still had the ingredients floating around, so I decided to start doing it again. Simple really. Aloe vera juice (not the gel,) organic apple cider vinegar (both of which I got at Whole Foods,) and fruit juice.

The portions are as follows:

1/4 to 1/2 cup Aloe Vera juice (I usually go with 1/4 cup)
1-2 Tablespoons of Apple Cider vinegar (I usually do two)
Remainder of glass with grape or apple juice.

I've varied the juices. Since it's not necessarily something that's in the "sip and enjoy" category, but rather "get it down," I think you have to play around with the "juice" part. I tried cranberry, but that didn't really work. Now I do grape juice, but I could see orange juice working. Just something with more substance to override the vinegar.

I'm putting this on my blog, because I think Laura has given up on me in keeping my own copy safeguarded somewhere. Now I know where to look when I can't remember my portions.

I photographed this with an antique glass from Posin's. Do you remember Posin's? It was a Jewish market founded by Abraham Posin. His family had come to the United States from Russia around 1910. Young Abraham visited an uncle living in Washington, where he met and married Gertrude Rose, another Russian émigré.

The couple opened a store in Foggy Bottom, later moving to the Arcade Market in Columbia Heights and then in 1947 they moved to 5756 Georgia Avenue. Abe’s sons, (World War II veterans Max and Hyman,) eventually took over the store. Although most of his Jewish customers moved on in the 1950's, Max stayed to serve the African-American and Caribbean immigrants who took their places. He died in 1995, and his son Randy closed the store three years later. If you say to me "Posin's," I say "pickle barrel." Something that has disappeared from Washington in just the past few years. Even Giant, another store founded by Jewish immigrants, had pickle barrels in every store, next to the deli section.

A friend of mine remembers his aunt and grandmother going to Posin's every week. They would buy smoked whitefish (with the eye,) lox, bagels, challah, pickles, brisket (which Posin's was famous for,) and other Eastern European delicacies. I like shopping at stores with that Mom and Pop vibe, but they are harder and harder to find. Easier in the Asian community, and there are still some remnants of Italian stores floating around, over by Catholic University which at one time had a large Italian-American community. The passing of the pickle barrel. Sigh. (My friend said, "Bad little boys used to piss in them." Thank you for sharing that fact, Friendo.)

Founder Abraham Posin at the meat counter, with his son's Hy and Max.

The Shooting Of The Hip Yoga Death Goddess*

Woody Harrelson just shot me in yoga class. I was dreaming I had returned to my yoga class. The studio was dark and people were in class in the shadows working through a series of movements. I told myself I was only returning to retrieve purple pillowcases from my locker. I was wearing the wrong clothes. I walked into the studio and fell in line doing the poses. I was thinking, "I can't do this. I am wearing the wrong clothes." Yet I could.

My yoga instructor left the room and Woody Harrelson walked in, (as the teacher,) and he seemed normal at first, but then he shifted into political tirades a la Oliver Stone, just talking madness. I tried to speak to him rationally. He kept babbling insanity.

I was holding an art book, and in the back was this folded diagram in green and white expounding and building out as a "tree" chart on some art movements. Woody ripped it out of the book, claiming it was a book he had written, and he taped the diagram on the wall, still ranting and pointing at the paper and talking political conspiracy.

Savasana Corpse Pose

He came over to me while babbling at the others. He grabbed me and produced a gun and pressed it into my flesh. I kept talking to him as if he were normal, knowing he wasn't. When I realized his intent: to kill me, I started wrestling with him for the gun, but he was stronger than I was, and he shot me in the side. People pulled him off of me, and I sat trying to stay very still to assess how damaging the shot was. It took a long time for the EMT's to arrive. I thought, "If I am conscious this long, I won't die from this."

When we arrived at the hospital and they had me in the emergency room, I asked the doctor who was prepping me for surgery if I should say my final goodbyes to the world, meaning I wouldn't make it through the surgery. He had a funny look in his eye.

I awoke with a start. Now I'm sitting here with a pain in my ribs where the phantom bullet went in. I guess I should go back to sleep and see what happens next.

*The title refers to an Ultimate Spinach song entitled, "Ballad of the Hip Death Goddess." It's on YouTube. I tried embedding it, (with my phantom bullet pain still hurting,) and it kept failing, so foo, yanno? Go look it up.

Weddings? Who Knew? You Get Presents!

I thought I was done with wedding and baby gifts, but this summer I was invited to another wedding; a young woman that works the reception desk where I get my manicures. Close? Sort of. She took to me right away--the kind of girl who is just very optimistic and bubbly and happy and comes from a loving, stable family (and "yes," over time I've met her Mom and Dad, too.) She always gives the biggest hugs, is spontaneous and laughs more than anyone I know.

I wanted to get her something nice for her marriage, and I needed to get the gift to her today, as she is getting married this weekend. I am putting this up because: 1) I do keep a photographic record of cards I create and packages I wrap and 2) this shows me (at least) how I can have a solid idea in my head of how I want something to look, have to amend it, then have to amend it again. It pays to stay flexible.

I'm not that thrilled with this wrap job. It wasn't my first vision, but I just couldn't find the right paper, so I shifted to a traditional wedding paper in pale pearlized champagne with white flock fleur-des-lis. I used a champagne tulle ribbon FROM HELL. It was just murder working with it, so lesson learned there. "Never again."

Once I had the paper set, then I had to go looking at flowers, and it took forever. Back when we had MJ Design around this area, I could walk in and always find quality products. The closest I can come to that now is an American Florist out on River Road (and that's an iffy source off season,) and Homestead Gardens, but that means driving to Davidsonville. A.C. Moore's is crap. Sorry. It is cheap crap. I settled for Michael's, but that's a lot of picking and chosing, because they aren't top of the line, either.

By the time I put the flowers together, it would have been double in cost in what you see in hydrangeas and snapdragons and some tiny pink roses with strands of pearls on tiny plastic threads dangling down, but I had to cut the big flowers in half, ditch the roses and pearls and use a vine of pale variegated ivy. To create what I wanted would have been over fifty dollars. The downside of this is I know what's in my head, and this wasn't it, but it was going to have to do.

After all that last night: running for supplies, wrapping an oversized box, (and it did take every bit of the paper,) then fighting the ribbon, it was just icing to have to fight the flowers as well. I finally shoved it all off center angular and said, "Good enough."

I hear so many troubled stories these days from friends. So many bad stories. My own life hasn't been going smoothly. Deep in problems. I wanted to sign her card "Have you really thought about this? Seriously?" But. She's in love. She's young, she's level headed, she comes from a really good, stable family. I adore her Mama. I pray she stays as happy as she has been this past year.

She's in her love bubble. Floating. Let's leave her there and wish her the best.

What's The Secret, Colonel Sanders?

The "Tijuana Bucket." The Chicken Has Tails.

Back when Oprah had her hysteria driven "free anything" audience bombard KFC, my manicurist got online and secured about 20 print out coupons (2-piece grilled chicken, two sides and a medium drink.) Within days of that, she passed on two of the coupons to me, and off I went, in line with others waving their paper, only to be told, "You'll have to take a rain check," (which struck me as odd since others around me were buying grilled chicken.) That night on late night television, the CEO of KFC (an Australian) apologized to the viewers that KFC had underestimated the response from the Oprah offer. I don't buy that. Oprah says shit pearls, and we're all wearing six-strand Mikimotos.

I had to go to a KFC, get a special form, fill it out and attach my original coupon, mail it, then wait. The coupons finally arrived, and I picked up my freebie for lunch today. I did not announce in advance I was paying with the coupon. The sides were sides. They were fine. Pepsi fine. What floored me was the chicken. Since I don't know KFC etiquette, I was told by the cashier I had to chose "a wing and a breast," or "a leg and a thigh." I went with leg/thigh. I have never seen such greasy grilled chicken in my life, number one, and where did they get these impossibly tiny mutant chickens? I could have been eating a rat leg.

Do you think the Colonel is telling Michael Jackson the secret spices recipe? Is he saying, "I know your Daddy?"

"Fust, you git the oil really hot."

Berry Berry Good Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins

Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins

2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream at room temperature
1 large egg, beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups blueberries
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
Demerara Sugar for topping (optional)

Directions: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare 12 muffin cups with paper fillers.

In a large bowl stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In another bowl stir together butter, sour cream, egg and vanilla until blended.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet. Stir until just mixed (batter will be very thick,) then fold in the blueberries. Spoon the batter into tins and sprinkle with Demerara sugar.

Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove to rack and let cool at least two minutes before serving.

NOTES:

*Makes twelve muffins

* The batter is incredibly thick. Like bread dough. You'll think you did something wrong. You didn't.

* Normally I would spoon dough into muffin tins only 3/4 full. With this recipe you can heap it up. Mine didn't spill over.

*My oven runs hot, so I thought my cooking time would be 15 minutes. It took the full 20.

---------------

As a child, I would pick berries on my grandmother's farm. The blueberries ran along side the road going into the property, the blackberries and raspberries were further away from the house into the woods, and yes, my cousins and I actually carried pails. Those berries are dicier to pick because they are on thorned shrubs, so it took patience with tiny fingers. I picked strawberries in sandy patches at my other grandmother's garden, and when I was small, my mother had a strawberry mound in the corner of our yard, again, with the sandy soil strawberries love. I liked picking berries. It's meditative and slow.

When I worked on Capitol Hill, they allowed for all sorts of things that I am sure have been nipped in the bud, including certain vendors wandering the hallways selling produce. There was a man who appeared every spring named Ike, and he would bring carts full of strawberry flats for sale. We would all buy up volumes of just picked berries. I ran into him a few years back, selling at one of the Farmer's Markets around town. I wonder if he's still out there?

Two people I went to high school with who are out in another country growing organic blueberries. I think they are really growing marijuana as their cash crop. I knew them both well enough to know the wife is working her ass off, and he's sitting around doing nothing. Your dream is realized, Homecoming Queen.

She did something incredibly stupid once involving nature. A group of us drove way out into Maryland , beyond Frederick I think, to visit some friends who had moved to a farm. Miss Paw Paw Patch wandered off to do her sufi dancing with nature. The kind of girl who would name her child "Sunflower" or some name after a pop group song. I had grown up a city girl, but with a farm girl mother, so I knew my plants and birds and the basic rules of safety around animals, like..."don't go near the bull," or "there are snakes in the hay."

At the end of the afternoon, Paw Paw came back waving a leafy branch, with purple stain all over her forehead. That's the communing part. I said, "Paw Paw? What do you have on your forehead?" and she waved her branch with purple berries at me. I said, "Paw Paw. That is sumac and it's berry is poisonous. You have to go wash that off of your forehead. It can be absorbed into your skin." She looked at me like "Cube...you don't know shit." So I shrugged and let her be. And now I'm sure she's out doing nature dancing around her berry bushes. I only hope she's learned a bit more since that day she was busy smearing poison around.

If you make the muffins? Eat them. If they stain your mouth berry purple? You'll be fine. If you are pregnant? Do not name your child "Blueberry."

I'm A Vampire! That's Nice Dear

I'm still working my way through the four vampire books of Stephenie Meyer. Having just finished New Moon, I'm wondering if I'll make it. In this second volume, our heroine Bella continues to trip, fall and smash her way in pursuit of wild vampire love with her paramour, Edward. I wish I had kept count of the ripped flesh releasing blood lusts, concussions, and comas. And yet this clumsy high school girl from a small town in the Pacific Northwest is supposed to be an intellectual lure to the Volturi, the royalty of vampires: alive for over 3,000 years, living in the realm of the Vatican (the poor Vatican gets blamed for a lot lately.) Bella hits their radar and they think she'd be suitable to join them. And oh yes, her friend, the Indian Jacob, now running with a pack of teenage werewolves.

What we have are a group of people disaffected with their self image. Bella wants to be a vampire, the Volturi want Bella to be some kind of vampire princess, Jacob wants to be a werewolf, Bella doesn't want to get old. It's like some perversion on America's Top Model. Make me a star! Forever! Chastity Bono is in the news this week. She's undergoing sex change therapies to turn herself into a man. All news sources are calling her "him" now, and she wants to change her name to "Chaz." Somewhere in Cher's secret soul, she has to be asking herself, "Is this because I named my daughter after one of my movies?"

Then there is the return to Bella's life of Edward and how at the end of the book, Edward's little family is voting whether or not to honor Bella's wish to make her a vampire so she won't grow older than her love, and she will be bound in eternity with him and his family. I started thinking about this as I put the volume down the other morning. "Yes," Bella is in the full flush of teen love and thinks all of the passion she feels will remain forever. But I'm sure after a few hundred years, things have got to taper off a bit.

I'm not sure she's thought it out, in her posthaste to become living dead. I could just envision conversations like, "You never take me anywhere. We never go anywhere during the day," or Edward bringing home a vampire's version of fast food, some wino, and then who's turn is it to take out the leftovers to the trash. "I did it last time." Or "all you do is sleep," or having to hear his stories about how he died in the 1918 influenza epidemic at 18, for the 5,000th time. I mean "Flu schmoo. Get over it." One day, she'll be snapping out at Edward "I could have been something special....I could have been a Volturi!" Somehow, I don't think vampires escape the banality in eternity. Just remember. You once loved "My Little Pony" and lived in pink and purple. Life could be very long, Bella. Everyone wants a bite of you. Do you want to be a perpetual caregiver to bloodlusters? They'll suck the life right out of you.