If there was ever a minefield holiday, it's Valentine's Day. You start picking your way across it while still in elementary school. Who can ever forget the white paper lunch bags sitting like little sentinels on each desk. Right before recess, everyone was supposed to drop their valentine for each person in the class into each bag. The Valentine Day bags were decorated with crayons (1st, and 2nd grade), construction paper hearts (3rd and 4th grade), and then, beginning in the 5th grade, you had to decorate at home and bring it in. Boys reverted back to one hastily drawn crayon heart with their name under it while for girls, this was the first fashion statement. Those valentine bags were precursors to wearing the right or wrong outfit to the first day of junior high school.
If the teacher was unvigilant, the unpopular kids in class would find their bags woefully short of valentines, while the most popular girls started getting REAL valentine cards as early at the 4th grade. The rest of us had to content ourselves with punch-out valentines, 36 to a box. Those flimsy cards with images of Mighty Mouse, Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Sleeping Beauty, (the Disney cartoon princess of 1959), Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, or the Jetsons rested in an untidy heap in the bottom of each bag together with suckers, Smartees, Double Bubble, Tootsie Roll pops, or the ever popular miniature box of chalky, candy hearts stamped with shorthand love sentiments in red dye #7. Moms didn't care about sugar consumption at school. It was all about being able to fill each bag in the class with a cheap piece of candy. My most unexpected valentine bag item was in the 5th grade. I pulled out an actual piece of jewelry (pink rhinestone heart necklace) from Stanley somebody. That year was the ONLY year I ran with the popular girls. Why or how that happened is still a mystery to me.
In junior high, white bags vanished, teachers dropped out of the equation, and valentine cards were shoved into locker vents. OK, again, shoved into the POPULAR girls' lockers. Valentine popular seemed to equate to either breast development, or if you had a 'steady'. At Eli Whitney Junior High, a steady was a boy you held hands with when you walked in the hallways before school. At age 13, steadies could change daily. Some girls, like me, were still playing with Barbie dolls and paper dolls, albeit with the door closed, so no one would know. I sensed I shouldn't still be playing with dolls, but in the 7th grade I found them more fun than boys.
When high school rolled around, Valentine's Day became SERIOUS BUSINESS. If you had a boyfriend, he was expected to deliver the goods preferably at school in front of your friends. There were heart shaped boxes of candy, bouquets of flowers, large stuffed animals, bracelets, necklaces, and if you were a Senior, the possibility of a Valentine's Day engagement ring (seriously!). Good grief! What were we thinking.
Think being married gets you off the Valentine's Day hook? Hardly. The minefield explosions of Valentine's Day just get bigger. About the only difference between today and yesteryear is it's now a two way street. Men expect acknowledgements of love as well as women. While Drake doesn't care a whit about any holiday, much less one which he has dark suspicions the greeting card/floral companies dreamed up, woe be it to him if he 'forgets'. And in my holiday crazed brain, a card just doesn't cut it.
So.....Happy Valentine's Day. I just hope you make it through without blowing yourself up.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Friday, February 12, 2016
The Era of Discard
No, I don't mean discord, I mean DISCARD. Currently, we are being not so subtly encouraged by the car industry to discard our automobile. After all, it's 13 years old, and as everyone knows, you should have a newer car than that. If you don't believe me, try to buy parts for an older car. We need engine mounts. There are no Lincoln Aviator engine mounts to be had anywhere in this country, neither genuine parts, after market parts, or salvage parts. The Ford dealership just waved bye, bye to us, don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. A small business car mechanic is currently trying to jerry-rig a set from some almost one size fits all engine mounts. Jury is still out whether or not this will work.
It started me thinking about how many machines we currently discard because they need a bit of repair: Computers, televisions, clocks, watches, toasters, coffee makers, toaster ovens, curling irons, flat irons, hair dryers, irons, sewing machines, typewriters (obsolescence, there), mixers, along with one function appliances like juicers, bread makers, ricers, fry-daddies, mamas and babies, electric grills, waffle makers, electric fry pans, fondue pots, and a dozen others. Then, there are the big ticket items like: stoves, dishwashers, refrigerators, microwaves, and, of course, cars.
At least there's a salvage system for cars. I did a cursory internet search to see if there was a salvage system for small appliances. Nope. Not one that readily popped up. In Sun City we have a healthy re-sale market for small appliances that still WORK, but nothing for the coffee maker that doesn't heat anymore, or the iron whose only functional setting is linen. You can't take your hair dryer (or any other small appliance) to anyone and have it fixed. In the 1950's you could still get products repaired at your local repair shop which was sometimes a storefront in the local hardware store. There was a guy who worked on toasters and percolators and yes, hair dryers as well as any other small appliance. You brought it in, and he fixed it.
As cheap labor allowed cheap goods to flood the United States market beginning with 'Made in Japan' stamped on the bottom of thousands of products after WWII, we began to discard rather than repair because it was cheaper to simply 'buy a new one'. Manufacturing of actual goods now belongs to Chinese labor, and now the 'cheaper to buy a new one' is firmly ingrained in our psyche.
If you are a recycler, reuser, or part of the 'second hand market', well, more power to you. Even better if you are a repairer. Drake has saved many a cherished item around our household because he was willing to 'open it up'. In our remodel, we re-purposed and rehabbed one bathroom vanity, gave away one entire set of bathroom fixtures to a neighbor who is going to install our bathroom discards in her bathroom, and then donated the rest to a building materials recycle store front.
We kept one of our previous cars for seventeen years (yes, my faithful blue Volvo), and we're planning on keeping Goldie, the Aviator, for as long as we are towing the trailer around the country. So, get ready, car mechanics, because we are going to be calling on your ingenuity and repair skills to keep us running.
It started me thinking about how many machines we currently discard because they need a bit of repair: Computers, televisions, clocks, watches, toasters, coffee makers, toaster ovens, curling irons, flat irons, hair dryers, irons, sewing machines, typewriters (obsolescence, there), mixers, along with one function appliances like juicers, bread makers, ricers, fry-daddies, mamas and babies, electric grills, waffle makers, electric fry pans, fondue pots, and a dozen others. Then, there are the big ticket items like: stoves, dishwashers, refrigerators, microwaves, and, of course, cars.
At least there's a salvage system for cars. I did a cursory internet search to see if there was a salvage system for small appliances. Nope. Not one that readily popped up. In Sun City we have a healthy re-sale market for small appliances that still WORK, but nothing for the coffee maker that doesn't heat anymore, or the iron whose only functional setting is linen. You can't take your hair dryer (or any other small appliance) to anyone and have it fixed. In the 1950's you could still get products repaired at your local repair shop which was sometimes a storefront in the local hardware store. There was a guy who worked on toasters and percolators and yes, hair dryers as well as any other small appliance. You brought it in, and he fixed it.
As cheap labor allowed cheap goods to flood the United States market beginning with 'Made in Japan' stamped on the bottom of thousands of products after WWII, we began to discard rather than repair because it was cheaper to simply 'buy a new one'. Manufacturing of actual goods now belongs to Chinese labor, and now the 'cheaper to buy a new one' is firmly ingrained in our psyche.
If you are a recycler, reuser, or part of the 'second hand market', well, more power to you. Even better if you are a repairer. Drake has saved many a cherished item around our household because he was willing to 'open it up'. In our remodel, we re-purposed and rehabbed one bathroom vanity, gave away one entire set of bathroom fixtures to a neighbor who is going to install our bathroom discards in her bathroom, and then donated the rest to a building materials recycle store front.
We kept one of our previous cars for seventeen years (yes, my faithful blue Volvo), and we're planning on keeping Goldie, the Aviator, for as long as we are towing the trailer around the country. So, get ready, car mechanics, because we are going to be calling on your ingenuity and repair skills to keep us running.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Marvelous Magazines
In the 21st century we will be hearing the death knell of magazines as we've known them for the past 100 years. There's nothing like pages of text interspersed with pictures, and while an argument can be made this lay out is reproduced electronically, it's not really a magazine for me unless I have the tactile sensation of flipping the pages. Part of my dislike of Zinio, electronic magazine subscriptions, has to do with where I read magazines.
I know you can surmise this place. It's been called many things in the 19th and 20th centuries: It's 'the throne', (everyone is a king in his/her own castle), 'the crapper', (supposedly referring to the inventor), 'latrine' (oh, you're in the military), the 'pot' (shorthand for chamber pot), 'john', (inventor again) 'can' (who knows? - maybe the shape), 'potty' (toddler toilet training language), commode (the 19th century reference), and 'rest room' (the 20th century reference) Sometimes I think my entire digestive system is dependent on glossy pages.
Magazine reading took place everywhere in my 1100 square foot childhood house. Jack and Jill as well as Highlights were dentist office treats, but the early magazine staple in my house was the Reader's Digest. I started reading this publication when I was eight. The format of the RD was the same for my entire child and teen years. Thirty condensed articles (one for each day), drawn from other American magazines. Additionally, you could count on 'Humor in Uniform', 'Life in These United States', 'Amazing Anecdotes', and 'Personal Glimpses'. There was usually a condensed book as the largest and last article in the magazine. All of this was documented in the table of contents which was printed on the front cover. My very, very favorite monthly article was "Word Power". (A one page vocabulary test. Pick the multiple choice answer of word definitions on one side of the page, with the correct answer choices on the back of the page.) I LOVED WORD POWER! I credit that one monthly page as the nascence of my love of language.
Not only the outside table of contents, but also size of the magazine set the Reader's Digest apart from other publications. It was founded by a husband and wife team and has been published since 1922. I'm in good reading company: It's been consistently the most read magazine in America for more than 100 years, and although it's been jazzed up and graphically enhanced (more pix and more electronic references), it's still instantly recognizable. It's printed in Braille as well as in multiple countries in multiple languages. There's an electronic version. You can also get this magazine in large print. FYI, I read my first large print RD, and I hated it - the format and size suck.
The Reader's Digest condensed book in the back of every issue were my first grown up books. About age ten I was easily reading these, so I just naturally graduated out of the kid's books - remember, young adult lit hadn't been invented yet - into adult fiction at the public library branch I patronized each week. In my late elementary school and junior high school days, I read Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Four or five of the most popular fiction and non-fiction books were abridged and published together in one book four times a year.
The literary minded despised those offerings, but they were immensely popular being published from 1950 until 1997. Those abridged books certainly increased my reading speed and comprehension. It was a great day in my young life whenever I scored unread volumes at garage sales. My other monthly magazine came to me via my Grandmother Sartor. She subscribed to two magazines: The Farm Journal and McCall's. I had zero interest in farming, but I was entranced each month by Betsy McCall, the monthly paper doll.
As I matured, so did my magazine choices. I graduated to Time when I was in my teens. As soon as we had a permanent address, Drake and I began adding magazines to our household. My mother gave us Sports Illustrated and Time Magazine as our Christmas gifts from 1974 until her death in 2007. My first response to our move to Texas was to subscribe to Texas Monthly followed by Texas Highways. After our visit to Washington D.C. and the Smithsonian complex of museums in 1977, we added Smithsonian to our house magazine rack. Our old friend, Reader's Digest, rejoined our household during Sarah's growing up years together with ZooBooks and Highlights. At the zenith of our home ownership, we added Consumer Reports.
One of the few things I dislike about our current nomadic existence is our inability to subscribe to magazines. Today, I buy only one magazine each month: Real Simple which is the modernized 21st century home making magazine for today's working woman. (While I don't work for pay anymore, I appreciate the 'Zen' quality of this magazine.) When in Arizona, I fill my periodical addiction with pre-read mags which I buy for about $.25 each.
Sometimes, I find really old magazines which today seem archaic in their attitudes toward women. Sarah and I read a 1961 version of 'Good Housekeeping' over Christmas. Jackie Kennedy was prominently featured as well as Velveeta cheese recipes, and my favorite, the Letter to the Editor from the tobacco industry defending their product and asserting there was no link between cancer and cigarettes. Just an aside, in December of 1952, Reader's Digest published "Cancer by the Carton" the first widely disseminated anti-tobacco information to the public.
My magazines have migrated to the throne room because even as much as I love them, they have been squeezed out of the living area by my electronics. Since the remodel has started, we've been reduced to one bathroom, and I can tell my tendency to 'camp out' in the throne room with my magazines is one of the many things sitting on Drake's very last nerve. It's my fervent hope magazines survive in print. If they don't, I may have to dedicate a tablet to the bathroom magazine rack even if it will be a poor substitute. Perhaps holographic technology could sway me away from ink and paper. Until then, I'm going to cling to my 20th century magazine vibes.
I know you can surmise this place. It's been called many things in the 19th and 20th centuries: It's 'the throne', (everyone is a king in his/her own castle), 'the crapper', (supposedly referring to the inventor), 'latrine' (oh, you're in the military), the 'pot' (shorthand for chamber pot), 'john', (inventor again) 'can' (who knows? - maybe the shape), 'potty' (toddler toilet training language), commode (the 19th century reference), and 'rest room' (the 20th century reference) Sometimes I think my entire digestive system is dependent on glossy pages.
Magazine reading took place everywhere in my 1100 square foot childhood house. Jack and Jill as well as Highlights were dentist office treats, but the early magazine staple in my house was the Reader's Digest. I started reading this publication when I was eight. The format of the RD was the same for my entire child and teen years. Thirty condensed articles (one for each day), drawn from other American magazines. Additionally, you could count on 'Humor in Uniform', 'Life in These United States', 'Amazing Anecdotes', and 'Personal Glimpses'. There was usually a condensed book as the largest and last article in the magazine. All of this was documented in the table of contents which was printed on the front cover. My very, very favorite monthly article was "Word Power". (A one page vocabulary test. Pick the multiple choice answer of word definitions on one side of the page, with the correct answer choices on the back of the page.) I LOVED WORD POWER! I credit that one monthly page as the nascence of my love of language.
Not only the outside table of contents, but also size of the magazine set the Reader's Digest apart from other publications. It was founded by a husband and wife team and has been published since 1922. I'm in good reading company: It's been consistently the most read magazine in America for more than 100 years, and although it's been jazzed up and graphically enhanced (more pix and more electronic references), it's still instantly recognizable. It's printed in Braille as well as in multiple countries in multiple languages. There's an electronic version. You can also get this magazine in large print. FYI, I read my first large print RD, and I hated it - the format and size suck.
The Reader's Digest condensed book in the back of every issue were my first grown up books. About age ten I was easily reading these, so I just naturally graduated out of the kid's books - remember, young adult lit hadn't been invented yet - into adult fiction at the public library branch I patronized each week. In my late elementary school and junior high school days, I read Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Four or five of the most popular fiction and non-fiction books were abridged and published together in one book four times a year.
The literary minded despised those offerings, but they were immensely popular being published from 1950 until 1997. Those abridged books certainly increased my reading speed and comprehension. It was a great day in my young life whenever I scored unread volumes at garage sales. My other monthly magazine came to me via my Grandmother Sartor. She subscribed to two magazines: The Farm Journal and McCall's. I had zero interest in farming, but I was entranced each month by Betsy McCall, the monthly paper doll.
As I matured, so did my magazine choices. I graduated to Time when I was in my teens. As soon as we had a permanent address, Drake and I began adding magazines to our household. My mother gave us Sports Illustrated and Time Magazine as our Christmas gifts from 1974 until her death in 2007. My first response to our move to Texas was to subscribe to Texas Monthly followed by Texas Highways. After our visit to Washington D.C. and the Smithsonian complex of museums in 1977, we added Smithsonian to our house magazine rack. Our old friend, Reader's Digest, rejoined our household during Sarah's growing up years together with ZooBooks and Highlights. At the zenith of our home ownership, we added Consumer Reports.
One of the few things I dislike about our current nomadic existence is our inability to subscribe to magazines. Today, I buy only one magazine each month: Real Simple which is the modernized 21st century home making magazine for today's working woman. (While I don't work for pay anymore, I appreciate the 'Zen' quality of this magazine.) When in Arizona, I fill my periodical addiction with pre-read mags which I buy for about $.25 each.
Sometimes, I find really old magazines which today seem archaic in their attitudes toward women. Sarah and I read a 1961 version of 'Good Housekeeping' over Christmas. Jackie Kennedy was prominently featured as well as Velveeta cheese recipes, and my favorite, the Letter to the Editor from the tobacco industry defending their product and asserting there was no link between cancer and cigarettes. Just an aside, in December of 1952, Reader's Digest published "Cancer by the Carton" the first widely disseminated anti-tobacco information to the public.
My magazines have migrated to the throne room because even as much as I love them, they have been squeezed out of the living area by my electronics. Since the remodel has started, we've been reduced to one bathroom, and I can tell my tendency to 'camp out' in the throne room with my magazines is one of the many things sitting on Drake's very last nerve. It's my fervent hope magazines survive in print. If they don't, I may have to dedicate a tablet to the bathroom magazine rack even if it will be a poor substitute. Perhaps holographic technology could sway me away from ink and paper. Until then, I'm going to cling to my 20th century magazine vibes.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Memories
Cicero said, "The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living." I've been thinking about the role memories play in our lives for several days now. This contemplation is all about turning 65 in September as well as my aunt dying this week. Patricia Ann Myers Nichols was my mother's youngest sister and the last person of that family. Her life, my mother's life, my other aunt's life as well as their parents' lives are now in my memory as well as the memories of my two cousins. Additionally, for the past year, I've been functioning as my 88 year old mother-in-law's editor. She's writing her memoirs, and she's written more than thirty of memories about her life.
My mother used to try and tell me as I aged family would become more important. Truthfully, I just just nodded and said, "Yeah, sure." At the time, I was racing headlong into my own life. In my 20's and early 30's I worked incredibly long hours. In an average week I clocked more than 60 hours at work. Weeks where there was some 'fire' to put out, the hours stretched even longer. When I wasn't working, there was fun, friends, traveling, and fooling around with personal real estate. We moved every few years into another house during our time in Houston. We didn't know what we were doing was called 'flipping' back then. I didn't have any time to devote to or any real interest in my mother's generation or my grandmother's generation.
It wasn't until our own 'next generation' arrived in my mid 30's that I began to have a glimmer of what my mother was trying to express. She was talking about memories. We create memories, and we pass on the ones created previously within our circle of family and friends. It's why the study of personal genealogy has become such a big business. When you trace your family tree, you don't focus on dates of birth and death so much as trying to glean facts which can bring a person two or three generations back from yourself to life. Did they fight in a war? What kind of job did they do? Where did they come from?
I joke about my own Cherokee heritage. "We were here to greet you when you white people arrived." The ultimate irony is my grandmother was ashamed of being a Cherokee while my Swiss-American grandfather reveled in everything about American Indians. My middle aunt, Ahnawake, (yes, the one sister in the family who didn't have coal black hair and eyes, had the Indian name) became the most educated person in the family. As she took American history classes at the university, it startled her when she realized her own elementary school educated, laborer father knew more about the history of American Indians than the professors of her classes. That's another personal family story; what memories are really composed of. Is it true or not? It really doesn't matter. The point of the memory tale is my grandfather was self-educated and smart.
As an entire generation dies out either physically or mentally, the only thing left of them are the memories they have passed on. Sure, there's furniture and trinkets, but those are not the essence of the person. I cherish my mother and mother-in-law's furniture and possessions in my house but less for the items than for the stories they represent. For example, the rocking chair in my bedroom was a gift from my daughter's great grandparents to her grandmother commemorating my birth. Families don't have to be either rich or important to have stories attached to possessions. The quilt hanging on the quilt rack was made by Drake's great-grandmother during the Great Depression from the scraps she saved after making the choir robes for the First Methodist Church choir of Vienna, West Virginia.
In the program, 'Roots', family stories are often garbled or not quite factually true. Sergeants become Colonels, rascals are sanitized, or even deleted in family memories. Family tensions and estrangements kill the memory trail. A constant theme in the African American family genealogy is the complete vaporization of family. One legacy of slavery is it killed generations of family memories. The real lesson is you are a very lucky person if you have memories to pass along. If you don't share them, you lose them, and when your family stories are lost, you lose not only the people in the stories but you also lose irreplaceable parts of yourself.
My mother used to try and tell me as I aged family would become more important. Truthfully, I just just nodded and said, "Yeah, sure." At the time, I was racing headlong into my own life. In my 20's and early 30's I worked incredibly long hours. In an average week I clocked more than 60 hours at work. Weeks where there was some 'fire' to put out, the hours stretched even longer. When I wasn't working, there was fun, friends, traveling, and fooling around with personal real estate. We moved every few years into another house during our time in Houston. We didn't know what we were doing was called 'flipping' back then. I didn't have any time to devote to or any real interest in my mother's generation or my grandmother's generation.
It wasn't until our own 'next generation' arrived in my mid 30's that I began to have a glimmer of what my mother was trying to express. She was talking about memories. We create memories, and we pass on the ones created previously within our circle of family and friends. It's why the study of personal genealogy has become such a big business. When you trace your family tree, you don't focus on dates of birth and death so much as trying to glean facts which can bring a person two or three generations back from yourself to life. Did they fight in a war? What kind of job did they do? Where did they come from?
I joke about my own Cherokee heritage. "We were here to greet you when you white people arrived." The ultimate irony is my grandmother was ashamed of being a Cherokee while my Swiss-American grandfather reveled in everything about American Indians. My middle aunt, Ahnawake, (yes, the one sister in the family who didn't have coal black hair and eyes, had the Indian name) became the most educated person in the family. As she took American history classes at the university, it startled her when she realized her own elementary school educated, laborer father knew more about the history of American Indians than the professors of her classes. That's another personal family story; what memories are really composed of. Is it true or not? It really doesn't matter. The point of the memory tale is my grandfather was self-educated and smart.
As an entire generation dies out either physically or mentally, the only thing left of them are the memories they have passed on. Sure, there's furniture and trinkets, but those are not the essence of the person. I cherish my mother and mother-in-law's furniture and possessions in my house but less for the items than for the stories they represent. For example, the rocking chair in my bedroom was a gift from my daughter's great grandparents to her grandmother commemorating my birth. Families don't have to be either rich or important to have stories attached to possessions. The quilt hanging on the quilt rack was made by Drake's great-grandmother during the Great Depression from the scraps she saved after making the choir robes for the First Methodist Church choir of Vienna, West Virginia.
In the program, 'Roots', family stories are often garbled or not quite factually true. Sergeants become Colonels, rascals are sanitized, or even deleted in family memories. Family tensions and estrangements kill the memory trail. A constant theme in the African American family genealogy is the complete vaporization of family. One legacy of slavery is it killed generations of family memories. The real lesson is you are a very lucky person if you have memories to pass along. If you don't share them, you lose them, and when your family stories are lost, you lose not only the people in the stories but you also lose irreplaceable parts of yourself.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
What's my Super Power? SUPERTASTER!
We celebrated our fifth, sixth or seventh Austin Christmas with the Wilson's (our son-in-law's parents). I've lost track. We all decided when Jay and Sarah got together that, as parents, we didn't want them to have to choose which side of the family to spend Christmas with. Slowly, we've built extended family traditions over the years.
We just completed this year's Christmas holiday during which we celebrated two birthdays (Jeff and Kit), enjoyed our Christmas surprises, saw the new Star War's movie - didn't that sucker seem REALLY familiar? - as well as ate our way through several of Austin's really great restaurants. (Can anyone say, 'Tacodeli'?) We shopped, drank wine, watched football, and we played our traditional table game, Scatagories, as well as we learned a new one called Hanabi, which is a Japanese game based on cooperation. Sarah faithfully did her yoga routines - she and Jay begin every work day with a yoga routine. The rest of us just admired her dedication while we drank another cup of coffee. Poor Jay was slammed with Austin allergies which really caught him off guard; he's had zero symptoms in NYC. His suffering was the only downer of the holiday.
Kit, Sarah, and I are each responsible for one meal over the holiday, and I think Sarah, and her sou chef, Jay, won this year hands down: Home made spicy Italian sausage lasagna, Caesar salad with home made Caesar dressing and hot fresh bread. Kit was the runner-up with this wonderful salmon she baked. I came in a distant third, as expected. I threatened beans and cornbread for my meal this year, and everyone (except Drake) thought I should have just plugged in my crock pot and gone to bean town. Instead I made turkey, gravy, and a bunch of sides with yeast rolls. Next year, folks, no matter what Drake thinks, I'm making 15 beans and all the cornbread you can eat.
So, we were sitting around one evening after dinner chit chatting when Kit announced she was a supertaster. We were all intrigued. Apparently, she and Jeff attended a dinner party during which the 'party' game was laying a slip of paper on your tongue. If you are a supertaster, the strip will taste incredibly bitter. Naturally, all of us were bouncing up and down on our chairs totally ready to taste our paper slip.
Kit handed them out, and everyone was like, "So, what's the deal, this tastes like a piece of typing paper." Except for me: I was making faces and saying, "Gag me, yuck. You can't taste this? It's so totally bitter. Water, water, I need water!" Yep, I'M A SUPERTASTER!
This actually started me understanding why I find most red wines bitter as well as certain coffee brands. I can tell instantly if Drake is palming Safeway brand coffee off on me because to me it has this perfectly bitter finish. Sarah postulated the reason I never met a sweet I didn't like is because the sugar in desserts leaveneds bitterness in the other ingredients. I think it's also why I drink my coffee with both sugar and cream.
Next, I wondered if there was any science behind this supertaster business. According to Scientific American, supertasters actually have more taste buds and experience flavors more intensely. We live in a 'neon tasting world' while for the rest of you, taste is pastel. Approximately 15% of Americans are supertasters. The Wall Street Journal interviewed a psychology professor, Linda Bartoshuk, at the University of Florida who has pioneered studies in smell and taste. In her experiments, she discovered a group of people who could perceive bitterness others couldn't. The professor named these people 'supertasters'. She also found more women than men, more Asian-Americans and African-Americans than Caucasians are supertasters. It's sort of a no-brainer a big percentage of professional chefs are supertasters.
On the downside, supertasters have a higher risk of colon cancer because those green, leafy veggies which fight off that disease are often our last food choice. We also tend to eat too much salt which blocks bitterness. I'm just glad I still find dark chocolate (up to a point) palatable. Many supertasters dislike it along with hard liquor, and citrus (too sour). Never hand me a Starbucks coffee because it's always bitter to me. On the other hand, Dunkin Donuts or Tim Horton coffee each have a smooth finish on my palate.
You too can take a supertaster test. The hard way is to dye your tongue blue with food coloring. Then, lay one of those paper reinforcement rings on it and count the 'pink' bumps - each of those bumps contain hundreds of actual tastebuds. Ordinary people have around 15 or so 'bumps' inside the ring. Supertasters have over 30. Less than 15? You're the polar opposite of a supertaster - most food is very bland and unexciting to you. The easy test involves sending off for taster strips you lay on your tongue. Fortunately, Kit had tester strips, so we didn't have to break out the blue food coloring.
There's some interesting scientific studies happening which seem to indicate that supertasters are able to ward off upper respiratory infections, like sinus infections, more readily. Another theory is some humans developed this high sensitivity to bitterness as a check against consuming poisonous plants which are often bitter. I'll bet those pre-historic nomadic tribes which roamed around gathering edible plants all had a supertaster who helped sort out what was safe to eat, and what was not.
With Kit and I both being supertasters, our family is way above average in supertaster numbers. The jury is still out as to whether of not supertasting is genetic. However, neither of our children are supertasters, but then, neither are their fathers. Who knows? Nobody, apparently. On the upside, we supertasters don't just perceive bitterness in foods, but we also have a heightened appreciation of the 'good' tastes too. Armed with my new self knowledge, it explains my love affair with food, and why I like to try new foods.
Finally, Sarah turned to me at the conclusion of our supertaster test and said, "You're going to be insufferable about this, aren't you?" I just smiled and said, "You bet. I'm a supertaster, and you're not!"
We just completed this year's Christmas holiday during which we celebrated two birthdays (Jeff and Kit), enjoyed our Christmas surprises, saw the new Star War's movie - didn't that sucker seem REALLY familiar? - as well as ate our way through several of Austin's really great restaurants. (Can anyone say, 'Tacodeli'?) We shopped, drank wine, watched football, and we played our traditional table game, Scatagories, as well as we learned a new one called Hanabi, which is a Japanese game based on cooperation. Sarah faithfully did her yoga routines - she and Jay begin every work day with a yoga routine. The rest of us just admired her dedication while we drank another cup of coffee. Poor Jay was slammed with Austin allergies which really caught him off guard; he's had zero symptoms in NYC. His suffering was the only downer of the holiday.
Kit, Sarah, and I are each responsible for one meal over the holiday, and I think Sarah, and her sou chef, Jay, won this year hands down: Home made spicy Italian sausage lasagna, Caesar salad with home made Caesar dressing and hot fresh bread. Kit was the runner-up with this wonderful salmon she baked. I came in a distant third, as expected. I threatened beans and cornbread for my meal this year, and everyone (except Drake) thought I should have just plugged in my crock pot and gone to bean town. Instead I made turkey, gravy, and a bunch of sides with yeast rolls. Next year, folks, no matter what Drake thinks, I'm making 15 beans and all the cornbread you can eat.
So, we were sitting around one evening after dinner chit chatting when Kit announced she was a supertaster. We were all intrigued. Apparently, she and Jeff attended a dinner party during which the 'party' game was laying a slip of paper on your tongue. If you are a supertaster, the strip will taste incredibly bitter. Naturally, all of us were bouncing up and down on our chairs totally ready to taste our paper slip.
Kit handed them out, and everyone was like, "So, what's the deal, this tastes like a piece of typing paper." Except for me: I was making faces and saying, "Gag me, yuck. You can't taste this? It's so totally bitter. Water, water, I need water!" Yep, I'M A SUPERTASTER!
This actually started me understanding why I find most red wines bitter as well as certain coffee brands. I can tell instantly if Drake is palming Safeway brand coffee off on me because to me it has this perfectly bitter finish. Sarah postulated the reason I never met a sweet I didn't like is because the sugar in desserts leaveneds bitterness in the other ingredients. I think it's also why I drink my coffee with both sugar and cream.
Next, I wondered if there was any science behind this supertaster business. According to Scientific American, supertasters actually have more taste buds and experience flavors more intensely. We live in a 'neon tasting world' while for the rest of you, taste is pastel. Approximately 15% of Americans are supertasters. The Wall Street Journal interviewed a psychology professor, Linda Bartoshuk, at the University of Florida who has pioneered studies in smell and taste. In her experiments, she discovered a group of people who could perceive bitterness others couldn't. The professor named these people 'supertasters'. She also found more women than men, more Asian-Americans and African-Americans than Caucasians are supertasters. It's sort of a no-brainer a big percentage of professional chefs are supertasters.
On the downside, supertasters have a higher risk of colon cancer because those green, leafy veggies which fight off that disease are often our last food choice. We also tend to eat too much salt which blocks bitterness. I'm just glad I still find dark chocolate (up to a point) palatable. Many supertasters dislike it along with hard liquor, and citrus (too sour). Never hand me a Starbucks coffee because it's always bitter to me. On the other hand, Dunkin Donuts or Tim Horton coffee each have a smooth finish on my palate.
You too can take a supertaster test. The hard way is to dye your tongue blue with food coloring. Then, lay one of those paper reinforcement rings on it and count the 'pink' bumps - each of those bumps contain hundreds of actual tastebuds. Ordinary people have around 15 or so 'bumps' inside the ring. Supertasters have over 30. Less than 15? You're the polar opposite of a supertaster - most food is very bland and unexciting to you. The easy test involves sending off for taster strips you lay on your tongue. Fortunately, Kit had tester strips, so we didn't have to break out the blue food coloring.There's some interesting scientific studies happening which seem to indicate that supertasters are able to ward off upper respiratory infections, like sinus infections, more readily. Another theory is some humans developed this high sensitivity to bitterness as a check against consuming poisonous plants which are often bitter. I'll bet those pre-historic nomadic tribes which roamed around gathering edible plants all had a supertaster who helped sort out what was safe to eat, and what was not.
With Kit and I both being supertasters, our family is way above average in supertaster numbers. The jury is still out as to whether of not supertasting is genetic. However, neither of our children are supertasters, but then, neither are their fathers. Who knows? Nobody, apparently. On the upside, we supertasters don't just perceive bitterness in foods, but we also have a heightened appreciation of the 'good' tastes too. Armed with my new self knowledge, it explains my love affair with food, and why I like to try new foods.
Finally, Sarah turned to me at the conclusion of our supertaster test and said, "You're going to be insufferable about this, aren't you?" I just smiled and said, "You bet. I'm a supertaster, and you're not!"
Sunday, December 27, 2015
It's Play-Off Time
We are headed into peak football time in America. A smooth spot of living in Arizona during this time of the year is the timing of the games. I feel like Goldilocks: Football on the East coast starts too late, and football on the West coast starts too early. However, football in Mountain Time Standard is just perfect. The first pro game starts at 11 am, and you can even watch a college game during the season starting at 9 am! Coffee and football; that combo is very satisfying.
I love football. I've thought about that. On the obvious level, it baffles me. First, it's really a simplistic game, and I'm many things but simple isn't one of them. Yes, I can hear all you football aficionados screaming at me, but what I mean is the basic RULES are pretty easily understood, and HOW the game's objective is accomplished is a no-brainer. (Move the ball down the field by running or throwing it at least 10 yards in four tries until the ball reaches the end area.)
My Dad taught me the game. When I was thirteen, he insisted I join him for some of those early TV games. He infected me with his enthusiasm for both college and pro football. I learned when it was appropriate to talk and to not talk. I picked up the lingo, so I could talk about the game before, during and after the contest. Watching football was one of the few ways I had to spend one on one time with my father. Role models were like straight jackets when I was growing up. Everyone insisted 'girls' could only be interested in certain things and 'boys' in their prescribed set of interests. Girls really didn't even watch sports back in 1963, so my Dad was going against all the rules.
He thought Bud Wilkinson, the Oklahoma University coach hung the world, so becoming a Sooner fan was automatic. His admiration of Wilkinson has a lot to do with college football still being of more interest to me than pro football. The University of Oklahoma football was and still is the state's 'team'. Yes, I'm sure the O-state Cowboy fans will be howling, but truthfully, you all haven't produced. Sit down and shut up until you do. OU football began in 1895, and the program has 850+ wins, 154 All-Americans, 5 Heisman Trophy winners, and 45 conference championships. The 'records' just go on and on. We are really ready for our NEXT national championship. I will admit to a wee bit of prejudice since I'm a grad. Being able to participate as a fan at a big time college football school is quintessential college for me.
I love football. I've thought about that. On the obvious level, it baffles me. First, it's really a simplistic game, and I'm many things but simple isn't one of them. Yes, I can hear all you football aficionados screaming at me, but what I mean is the basic RULES are pretty easily understood, and HOW the game's objective is accomplished is a no-brainer. (Move the ball down the field by running or throwing it at least 10 yards in four tries until the ball reaches the end area.)
My Dad taught me the game. When I was thirteen, he insisted I join him for some of those early TV games. He infected me with his enthusiasm for both college and pro football. I learned when it was appropriate to talk and to not talk. I picked up the lingo, so I could talk about the game before, during and after the contest. Watching football was one of the few ways I had to spend one on one time with my father. Role models were like straight jackets when I was growing up. Everyone insisted 'girls' could only be interested in certain things and 'boys' in their prescribed set of interests. Girls really didn't even watch sports back in 1963, so my Dad was going against all the rules.
He thought Bud Wilkinson, the Oklahoma University coach hung the world, so becoming a Sooner fan was automatic. His admiration of Wilkinson has a lot to do with college football still being of more interest to me than pro football. The University of Oklahoma football was and still is the state's 'team'. Yes, I'm sure the O-state Cowboy fans will be howling, but truthfully, you all haven't produced. Sit down and shut up until you do. OU football began in 1895, and the program has 850+ wins, 154 All-Americans, 5 Heisman Trophy winners, and 45 conference championships. The 'records' just go on and on. We are really ready for our NEXT national championship. I will admit to a wee bit of prejudice since I'm a grad. Being able to participate as a fan at a big time college football school is quintessential college for me.
So, we Sooners are all atwitter because we are in our rightful place this year. We are one of the four best teams in the nation and are in the nascent college football play-offs. Yes, we fully expect to kick Clemson butt on New Year's Eve. Then, hopefully, we'll get to humiliate the Crimson Tide in the 'big game'. If we have our druthers, that's exactly how it will go.
I do know all the play-off games will be a fun since college football is always zany. Unlike the pro version of the game, you never know what might happen. Now is the time to have fun. Very important not to jinx the team - don't wear any of that Tiger orange this week. Time to complete the 'revenge' games sequence by flaming out that Clemson team who made the mistake of humiliating us in last year's bowl game. Time for our quarterback to make his lack of Heisman invitation embarrassing for that committee. Time for our backs to run and run and run, and time for our defense to have the Clemson quarterback hearing footsteps.
There will be no tears shed, or stuff thrown around in our household whether we win or lose because ultimately, this is only a game. There will be a re-set, and the games will start again next year when it will be thrilling all over again. This year, however, we're in the play-offs! Look for the sea of Crimson in the stadium because Oklahoma fans 'travel' to see their team. There will also be an army of us in front of the TV sets of America wearing their Sooner gear. I, in fact, have a new Oklahoma shirt just for this occasion.
So, as a lifelong Sooner, I have only one thing left to say...
Monday, December 21, 2015
More Than You EVER Wanted to Know about the Remodel!
The
biggest happening of this week is my granite got installed. I looked and looked for the right
granite. We visited many, many, many granite yards
and walked up and down aisle after aisle of granite slabs. Naturally, all the yards are all the way across town. And Phoenix definitely believes in sprawl, so it was usually anywhere from a 30 minute to one hour trip between our house and a granite yard.
Actually, it was very helpful I had granite
installed in one of my Texas
So, I tentatively picked out a few slabs
which were ‘OK’. I was able to eliminate 90% of what I’d saw because
the slabs were too dark, or the wrong color palette. What I mean is I didn’t want white/gray
granite because I have caramel colored cabinets. Keep in mind, all granite slabs are stored in giant warehouses on concrete floors. Oh, how tired my feet were at the end of a 'granite' day.
Then, late in the game, we decided to add
one more stricture: Our granite slab
needed to be three centimeters in width instead of two centimeters. With a three centimeter piece of granite, you
don’t have to glue (the fabricators call it laminate) an edge to the final
counter top, you can just work the stone itself into whatever edge you
want. Well, as you can imagine, there’s
slab after slab of two centimeter granite, but very few three centimeter
slabs. It’s all about cost. Two centimeter granite slabs cost less than three
centimeter slabs.
Back we go to places we’ve already been
to check out any three centimeter slabs we might have missed. Finally, almost on a whim, we went to one
last granite yard which our fabricators recommended, and naturally, my granite
slab was there just waiting for me. I
knew it was the one at once.
It’s got a cream background with veins of
caramel just the color of my cabinets with blotches of black, tying in my black
appliances, as well as blotches of gray quartz tying in my new stainless steel sink. An added bonus is at night when the light
shines on some parts of the granite, there are some iridescent gold blotches at
certain angles. I love that the most –
so unexpected, and subtle enough to be just a wonderful surprise.
 |
| Here is my granite in the warehouse |
Another thing I learned from my Texas
If you pick someone who can really work stone, then once you get the slab to the fabricator, you're home free. My fabricator even made me a 12” x 12”
cutting board out of the cut out piece the sink drops into. Fortunately he carved handles because it weighs about 20 pounds.
Occasionally, there are accidents at
granite yards. Slabs are moved using a forklift equipped with what I think of as a fishing pole. The chain dangling off the end of the pole has a rubber squeezer on the end, and slabs are fit into the squeezer and lifted dangling. Then the fork lift moves the slab to wherever it's wanted. It's how clients seen different slabs when they are stacked on top of one another. Sometimes when moving slabs, they are dropped! And when they are dropped, they break.
Sometimes, fabricators sell back client leftovers
to the granite yards, single slabs left over from a sold bundle, called
orphans, wind up in the remnant section of a yard as well as the broken pieces from dropped slabs. When I was looking for my granite, I ran
across this fabulous slab which had green, navy blue and pink in it. It was beautiful, but it was only two
centimeters and, I thought pink and chartreuse green were not really my kitchen
colors. I
did stop and admire this slab because it was really striking. The young woman who was helping us mentioned
she had a remnant of this granite since one of the slabs was dropped when they
were moving it.
Immediately, I realized what a great
opportunity it was to have my built in bedroom vanity top out of this wild
looking granite. Drake negotiated a
pittance price for the remnant, and again, realizing we would own the entire piece,
I had the fabricator cut and polish the edges of the leftover section to
exactly fit the top of another piece of my furniture.
This second piece I had fabricated out of the remnant is
portable meaning not screwed down to the top of the furniture. I glued some felt on the bottom of the
granite piece, so it now just sits on the furniture piece, and believe me, it won’t move
because it is HEAVY.
Well, now you’ve learned more about
buying granite than you ever wanted to know.
It just shows you how consumed we’ve been with this house remodel. I’m really very pleased with how it’s been
going. Driving today towards Texas, we were congratulating ourselves on meeting all our pre-Christmas deadlines.
There have been only a few
glitches during the process, and when you do this, that’s to be expected. Fortunately, Drake was a project manager in
his former life, so the glitches have been minor, and of someone else’s
making. An example would be the
electrician got hung up on another job, was a day late coming to us, and set
everything back coming behind him. Luckily, the sheet rock guy worked the weekend, and that got us back on track.
We've been working awfully hard for having hired others to do the bulk of the work. I'm a 'silver' member of one of the largest on-line sales companies of materials because of my numerous purchases. Packages have just been streaming into the garage including faucets, rough in valves, light fixtures, shower heads, grab bars and towel racks. Naturally, one of the bulkiest things we ordered (the kitchen sink) was damaged. To the credit of Build.com, they replaced it immediately. The fly in the ointment is after a month, the damaged sink is still in my garage since they are fighting with the shipper about who's going to pay for it.
Yesterday, one day before we left for our Texas Christmas trip, I was in the bathroom finding places I needed to touch up with the new gray paint. I know myself: I would just go crazy standing in the new shower seeing some spot I missed painting. Take it from me, it really is much easier to paint a bathroom when there's no toilet, vanity, floor, or shower. You can drip paint with impunity. Drake painted the kitchen ceiling, and it was still a drag even though there was no floor to cover.
When we return from the holidays, you can
hear about the trials and tribulations of bathroom remodeling. Won’t that be
fun?
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