Day 2 Day radishes

September 30

Wednesday I went to daughter number three's house for two nights.  Wednesday was book club and it was at daughter number two's house.  Why am I not using their names.  I am practicing  going public with this blog, and I am not sure how to deal with names. 

At Book Club we discussed the book the Baker Towers ,a book quite worthy of discussion.  I will add it to the book list.  Some books have more to talk about than others.  I mean by that we can pretend that we are in college discussing themes, and style.  Occassionally we talk about the author's sentences. This book is about a family living in a coal mining town and the father, the wager earner miner dies. The town goes down hill.  It takes place mostly in the fifties with a view of what happens to the family, and who wants to get out of Dodge.  If you like Richard Russo, you will like this. 

Another book I am reading, If You Lived here, I'd Know Your Name,news from Small-Town, Alaska.  The author is Heather Lende, an author to which I aspire.   She and her family live in Alaska, and she writes obituaries, and a social column for the newspaper in Haines, Alaska.  The back cover says if you like the Prairie Home Companion or Northern Exposure, you will love some real news. Reading this book was reassuring to my writing.  There is a lot of meaning in everyday life.   I am going to continue to practice.  This is a book that can be read in bits and pieces.  It is a good book to carry with you when you are waiting for your kids at the school bus, or when the doctor is thirty minutes behind, or when you get in bed and do not want to read for a long time. 

Septembr 27/

For me an instruction manual is only a suggestion.  It can be used for a coaster, or a trivet to keep my counters unmarred.  All of my manuals are kept in the middle drawer of my file cabinet, and when I move out my little Japanese dished I collected from my Japanese phase, I will move the manuals back over to their drawer.  At least the manuals are kept together. 

I started an on line Sony Digital camera class, which I promoted on this blog, but the class wil probably tell you what you already know.  People are very helpful on the message boards and there are some nuggets along the way.  In my case, one  ah -ha  said to get your manual out, read it, and use it.  Such a novel concept.  Sony's manual is written for people in Japan who perceive us as already knowing a great deal about cameras. There is a lot of information, if you know what you are looking for, and where to find it.  I am now  carrying my manual around with me; this is how well I take instruction.  And you know what?  That hand that has been waving at me in the LCD screen, while I can not find the page it was explained today in the manual, I read yesterday that you are shaking the camera and it can not focus.  I knew that.  Right!

Tomorrow I am going to read the refrigerator manual. 

Yesterday I read that my printer actually needs maintenance, and if you will only read about it, the machine will do it for you. 

I am off to see some grandsons. 

September 26 /cured meats

A 1950 casserole is an example of the dating of recipes.  We have food trends. Alongside the dating of recipes has been food artisan phases. We become obsessed with the nuances.  Wine is the first that comes to mind. First it was red or white we were drinking, now it is what plot of ground does the wine come from which we are "tasting." There are microbreweries. Artisan bread is an example.  We got hold of good bread, and good-bye white fluff.  That sourish taste, the holes of the European baguettes. could be a meal before we got to the entree. Some people even got picky over the oil and vinegar served alongside.  We even learned we could make loaves ourselves, with or without a bread machine.

I read the latest artisan food movement is going to be in cured meats.  That would be salami, etc. I love salami.  I look forward to "artisan". This going to be fun!  A new set of cookbooks to look forward to.  A whole movement of taking prosciutto to a higher level.  YES! This week is a good week to serve prosciutto and melon,

September 25, apples

When I was on the women's retreat, our delightful co-host and chauffeur, (who made himself scarce), told about his mid-life departure  from teaching.  He bought an apple farm in Eastern Washington. He sold it about five years later, I can only guess why.  But he said that the American market is very fickle.  He bought a orchard of hundreds of trees of Yellow Delicious, but we, the American market, had already moved on to Granny Smith, and by now we have moved on to Fuji. think hhow log it takes to make a transition in an orchard. 

September 24/Lawrence Wright

Yesterday I listened, off and on, to a two hour(minus commercials)interview with Lawrence Wright,a New Yorker reporter and now author of the New York Times best seller The LOOMING TOWER. The book chronicles the road to 9/11.   I will probably not buy the book without at least glancing at it, as it could be too hard for me. Should you wish an accurate account of the show, perhaps they have some of it on www.hughhewitt.com.  But a few things were said which impressed me. 

One thing that caught my attention, was that during the reign of King Farouk, one middle aged man came from Egypt to Greeley, Colorado and stayed there about five years.  I think he had come either to train recruits or recruit.  As Wright tells it, the Egyptian had a love hate relationship with the culture .  He both loved and hated the farm girls which were willing to spread themselves around (those hussies!) and the looseness of life.  He later returned to Egypt and started a radical Muslim following.  Some of this hatred was transferred into what eventually  became the current radical Islam mantra.

(I interject here that in 1956/57 I attended the University of California /Davis.  Although I was very pretty, I had very few dates. So sorry, so sorry.  The ones I did have, the men were total alcoholics. However there were at the time a couple handfuls of Egyptians.  This was an agricultural school at the time.  To the best of my knowledge, I could not tell when they actually went to school.  These guys wanted to date, to copulate, whatever, and they trailed you, trying to get you to go out with them.  They had very expensive cars.  They found me very attractive.  I could have been one of the seventy two virgins, had I wanted.) 

Back in Egypt, Mr. middle aged Egyptian started getting male twelve year olds for recruits, sodomizing them, taking their pictures, telling the boys they would tell their parents, and forcing the boys to gain information and then starting to plant bombs.  These boys were caught and killed.  And so on and on, starting in Egypt and moving radical Islam through the middle east.  Anything else I might write would not be accurate enough.

But this I do remember clearly from the interview.  Lawrence Wright said that we really need people on the "inside" in Muslim countries. We need to infiltrate the system.  But there is no one who  speaks the Arabic in the CIA. Possibly three. And there are five more middle Eastern languages. And  of course, you not only have to speak the language, you have to look Muslim.This last class graduating from the CIA school, out of 50, there was only one who spoke any foreign language.   Think about this for a while. 

This could be a good book whatever your politics. 

September 23/computer

Yykes, I have a new computer!!! How great is this? What a lucky kept woman I am. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, Sally.  If it means anything to you, I now have a gigabyte and more memory.  What this means to me is my computer can handle lots of pictures. Also, should I choose, I can go back to digital scrapbooking.   I did not look at a lot of computers, just bought one off the shelf at Best Buy.  A GEEK SQUAD guy helped me find one.  I did notice , there is a big difference in size of computers.  Like cell phones, the little ones are very sexy.  I was aiming for one of those, until I realized that I couldn't see very well, and decided I needed  a LOT of big print.  So I am happy to be back blogging.

In the Seattle Times this week there was an article on the lack of youngsters coming out of high school bright enough to be Computer Geeks.  They are heavily recruiting . 

September 21/Movie

This is the first day of fall.   But it looks calmer than yesterday's rain.  My friends in California tell me the weather is great.  Not here. 

This is a short post due to aforementioned environment.  Geeks sent me home saying there was nothing more they could do.  I doubt that.  In any case rent the movie, The Last Waltz.  I may have mentioned it before.  If you like music from the 50's, 60's, and early 70's.  It is the last concert of the BAND. Excellent musicians. 

September 20/office

Today the $500.00 computer repair job goes back to the GEEKS.  Basically nothing has changed and while I sometimes can make it work for three hours, most of the time, I cannot get it to work at all.

I am working now on my husbands computer, which we shared for years, but he has switched keyboards and I find it too hard to work.  And it is very hard to create in his office.  He has a very accurate(and about this I am not kidding) system of piles on the floor, on two desks, a sideboard and a chair, and the window sills.  But I just don't feel "me" in this office.  Although God knows, I am grateful that he shares with me.  I look to the left and there is a can of Bullshit repellent.  On the walls are photos of the family.  One I am especially endeared to, as it is a portrait of the two of us at 37.  In the book case there is GRAYS ANATOMY and an ancient copy of Webster's Dictionary, to mention two.    And there is a whole case of National Geographic on Cd's which we have never opened. 

This is his place.  But alas autumn is on the way, and it is cold down here, and even I see that he can not stay down here.  Given his age and all.  Soon all these files will be on my kitchen table. 

September 18/retreat

Over the weekend I attended a retreat in the San Juan Islands with eight other women from my church.  Since I moved to Camano Island, three years ago, I have had few women friends. In fact, one in three years.  At first it was very hard not having women friends, but I was lucky in that my husband and I enjoy each others company.  I also have three great daughters who keep in touch with me regularly.

To be really great friends you have to have a history.  But there are people who are friends for maybe a few months, for example when you are  working through a project, or you are on the same committee for a year.   And sometimes you make what you think are friends, who later you wish you hadn't been so quick to associate.  I was getting desperate living here, I was thinking a friend was someone you could say "hello" in the grocery store, or the same waitress who smiled at you when she brought the menu.   

Being on this retreat was an opening experience.  I think a condition of being a woman is the need for friends.  Women needing to support women, was a common theme. As you age, or move, or change, it becomes harder and harder to form friendships.  Here I think I am the only one without a friend, but often people who seem so self assured, are the ones who need the friends.  So if you are not living in the town where you were born, and don't have your old high school buddies around, you need to start looking. 

Being on a retreat gives you the time to study the prospects.  The place that we stayed, Pearl Island, we had no place to go, except for a walk around the small island.  We delved into our lives, our scars, and our talents.  We ate, knit, beaded rosaries, played games, drank wine. . .or not, had pedicures and massages, and we talked about our  spiritual life.  And we laughed.  What happens when you  do this, you gradually learn what is behind the presentation of the other person.  You can see how far the person has traveled, and you see their bruises, foibles, and crusty exteriors, so that when you next see them, their personality, for good or bad, has gained dimension. Usually enhancing them to a higher level, which in turn mirrors back to the other person.   

My computer, while back from the hospital, is not working well.

I will publish some pictures from the retreat mostly for the retreators soon.  Look under photo albums. 

Also get ready for National Cupcake Day, October 18. 

Sesptember 14/missing

My computer has been down since Friday.  I have been using my husband's computer.  The guy actually uses it for profit.  So I have to wait my turn.  By the weekend and $500.00 later, my computer should be back.  In the meantime, I am leaving early tomorrow for the San Juan Islands to Pearl Island.  It is a woman's retreat and should be great.  I am taking my camera and will work on photography and knitting.  Should a daughter like to take over here on the blog, I know it will be either fun or informative, or both.  No pressure here girls. 

In the meantime, think about whether the average man is smarter than the average female.

Also, I was glad to read that now even math teachers are calling for a return to old style math.   

There is a recent study saying that homework for grade school children is not productive.  I bet they spent a lot of money on that study, and they could have asked a lot of us and we would have said the same thing, for free.  A victory for common sense.