Simply 60

Fire and ice

Here's what I don't do: cook. Here's what I did today: cooked. Or, to be more precise, prepared. It is Derby Eve and all is a flurry of preparation and activity. The Kentucky Derby is my personal national holiday. 

In 1959, my earliest Kentucky Derby memory, I won a $2 bet on Tim Tam to win. I was eight.  It might have been the next year that my brother took me to the Derby itself, to the infield, where the day was lolled away in a stupor of sun and, if you were old enough and I wasn't, mint juleps. He recalls taking this innocent (me) to the track only to watch me whip out the Racing Form and read it like a pro. I didn't go back again until I was 16 or 17. My friend Tom's godfather was president of Churchill Downs. In a gesture truly hostile he gave Tom one — one!— Clubhouse pass. What good is one? So we passed it through the fence and got more than a dozen of us into the track. The next year National Guard lined up to form an aisle for notables — this was now 1966 and the world was roiling. We, on the other hand, were rolling in the tulips under the huge Clubhouse toteboard. That was the year we snuck into the grounds with a fifth of bourbon 'borrowed' from my father's bar — right past all that national authority and all of us underage ; it was the year, too, that we ate a styrofoam cooler. The next year, 1967, it rained. I found a box seat ticket and saved it for the seventh race (aka the Derby). I was not fool enough to go to the box designated; instead I found one under cover with only one man in place. Proud Clarion won on a muddy track. That man had put a lot of money on that nag. He was as dumbfounded as I was out of place. My friend Chuck had $2 on Proud Clarion, won $99 and was so fried he inadvertently hid it from himself for several years. His picture, an aerial photo still undeniably him owing to a distinctive madras jacket, revealing him suffering the woes of too many juleps, also made the Courier Journal the next day. (Hard to explain to one's mother!)

So many fond, if foggy, memories!

I had to leave Kentucky to grow nostalgic for it. Even that took awhile. Growing up in Kentucky did not have much to recommend it. Besides, it wasn't my doing. Was it my fault my father moved us from Pittsburgh to Louisville? No. A definitive, resounding, twang-less NO!

But for many years now the Derby has resonated with a cherished familiarity. And remembrances of things and people and youth passed. So now I reconstruct those memories annually with a Derby party. I invite folks who, for the most part, don't get it. And I don't care. I simply want company. A julep. And two bucks on the line.

Truffle: Seeing Don and Win coming across the lawn. He was our tenant in the cottage that is so in dispute right now. Because we gave him his walking papers, dear old Don, former MIT prof,  had to reinvent his life in a retirement community. We invited him to keep his canoe here and use our place as his base of operations in nature. I've missed his presence. It was good to know he took us at our word.

Quote of the day: "Tough girls come from New York. Sweet girls, they're from Georgia. But us Kentucky girls, we have fire and ice in our blood. We can ride horses, be a debutante, throw left hooks, and drink with the boys, all the while making sweet tea, darlin'. And if we have an opinion, you know you're gonna hear it." (Ashley Judd)

Historic? Or not historic? That is the question

How does one define "historic" as pertains to the architectural/cultural value of a given structure? 

We are confronted with this question as we seek to attain permission to tear down the cottage on our property so that we might downsize from the house we live in now. We live in a Historic District in Concord. Is the cottage, a cobbled together, style-less (e.g. not Victorian, not modern, not Queen Anne, or Stick or Shingle or anything else) post-war structure that grew off and from a remnant of a 1909 'auto house' or, less charmingly, an early garage — is it 'historic'?

Turns out "there isn't a universal definition of historic" — this from my friend Judy who is a career preservationist in Boston. Concord's HDC guidelines, like Nantucket's, which I wrote, makes no more attempt to define the slithery word on which all their decisions and policies are based than does the distinguished front-runner, the National Register of Historic Places. There isn't even a hard and fast age at which a building turns suddenly preservation-worthy, as cars become antiques at 25. Writes Judy: "The National Register has a rolling 50 year eligibility cut off...so age isn't necessarily the key."

Then what is?

The subjective judgment of the Commission. That's what. Even past decisions by an HDC may not stand in one's favor but be dismissed by the Commission-of-the-moment as erroneous.

What leg, then, does the home owner have to stand on? The poor dumb sod who only wants to spend his/her remaining years on property they already own but in a smaller house, one more appropriate to time-of-life concerns? A pretty spindly one, if there's a leg up at all.

Without even a definition of the bedrock principle upon which all decisions rest — historicity — how do we build an argument? Upon what grounds can we hope to convince a board charged to preserve to allow us to demolish? 

We stand to have our dream destroyed. The HDC can do that to us but we may not be able to destroy a wreck of a dwelling that was not built to last in the first place. So now we must consider withdrawing our application or face marking the cottage with the scarlet letters DD: demolition denied. Allow that to happen and no one, neither we nor new owners should we sell, will have recourse for quite some time. If ever.

Truffle: Our kitchen filled with the fragrance of mint. Apple mint, to be exact. Raided from my friend Dinny's garden this afternoon. And then this evening, making mint sauce. After all, the Derby is but hours away!

Quote of the day: "When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." (Franklin Roosevelt)

Gym-nostic

I want to believe. But I just can't. 

Three times a week I go to the gym. I ride the recumbent bike for 30 minutes (approx. 5 miles, I'm informed by the digital display) and spend another half an hour doing my weenie regimen. That being a series of stretches, isometric exercises and mini weights (2 lbs on each ankle) outlined by my physical therapist. I've added upper body weights in an effort to reduce my Hi Jane's (that flap of arm-dangle that wags off the bone to which my bicep once adherred when I make an unfortunate show of it with, say, a wave in a t-shirt or, heaven forfend, a sleeveless blouse); and to improve the golf game you know I've given up.

I am trying. Really. I do the bike rather than swim because it's my legs, strength and plain old stamina, I need to improve upon — soon. I need to be ready to walk a half-marathon a day, consecutively for four days...

But I am essentially, fatally, a non-believer. I listen to info-mercials, I kibbitz on the locker room love-throes of the enthralled exercise fiend, I slyly observe the ritualistic rites of the Cult of Eternal Youth carried on gruntingly in the weight room, I recall the athlete I used to be — ah, this could be approaching the core of things! I remember. Vividly. As if it were tomorrow — the grace and agility I once had to leap, if not tall buildings, at least three-foot fences with a single bound. 

Why is it that as our bodies poop out our psyches don't? I have perfect recall of my former, youthful, athletic self. Why hasn't my remembrance of things past dimmed along with my ability? That would seem just. That would seem fair. Proportionate cognitive-body diminishment. 

On the other hand, do I really want that? Proportionate diminishment? Hell no. I want, of course, no diminishment at all. Which brings me full circle. I will go back to the gym again on Friday. Even though I know, think I know, working out won't work out the way I hope it will.

And so I confess. I am a gym-nostic. 

Truffle: Getting back in the saddle. Wow. A day and a half of stored energetic resources released on Greater Concord. A swath of singed grass and melted tarmac marked my path through town today.

Quote of the day: From a sign in Harrisville, NH

 

Lie-In

The stupor continues.

The big question of the day — get dressed or not get dressed for dinner? And I'm not referring to gowns and pearls, just clothes. 

I had a lie-in all day. This is the equivalent of a sick day without being sick. I walked the dog twice, getting in my minimum miles, both times in my jams. The rest of the day was spent in bed — I read the New York Times, Time magazine, finished Joyce Carol Oates' Little Bird of Heaven, played on the Net (a little surfing, a little shopping, a little dreaming), signed up for Skype (sort of) in preparation for the England trip, and waited for the bon-bons to arrive. They didn't but it was the only 'let down' in an otherwise glorious day of repose.

Sometimes a girl, even a classic Type A+ girl, needs a day off.

Truffle: A roaring fire on a dank and rainy evening. 

Quote of the day: "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes." (Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, Iranian Muslim cleric; no really, he said it. I knew we made the earth move, a la Hemingway, but I didn't realize we were responsible for Haiti and Chile!)

Leaf luscious

Listen? Can you hear it? Me either. And that is the bliss of it: a house to myself. After the fray.

They say nature abhors a vacuum. But my nature doesn't. There is a black-hole effect, of energy sucked out, when what was once Activity Central is becalmed. Sometimes this is disorienting and sometimes painful. As in  a house were once someone vital lived who no longer does. But in an ordinary run-of-the-mill kind of way, it can also be the herald of a return to normalcy, routine, peace.

All afternoon I have been alone in this cavernous house. And loving it. The lack of freneticism is profound. So is my fatigue. We have had a week of event-ing here. I wanted to show my brother the Best of Times, to borrow from Dickens. And I hope we did. But after dropping them off at the airport (I have to believe they were as glad to be en route to normalcy themselves) and returning to my aerie overlooking the remains of Lake Temporary (we almost have our river back), all I can think to do is read People magazine and drift off in a deep and unnaturally hot bath. 

Poor Pete. He fell into a thatch of meetings this afternoon and evening. We met briefly over dinner. So his restorative must wait until tomorrow. But mine, this afternoon, tonight, is sublime. The silence, the stillness, O, how very fine.

Truffle: Leaves on the trees. Little soft green fists unfurling. Suddenly, in the three days we were away in Nantucket, Concord has become leaf luscious.

Quote of the day: "Never mistake endurance for hospitality." (Unknown, needlepoint pillow)

Observation

What is it that I value? It is not a bad exercise to ask oneself this question. It's a lot like saying I will chart my day and think about each aspect of it. So easy to neglect, so easy to cheapen, even easier to avoid altogether. 

There's been a flurry of nostalgia over the past week spent with my brother. We both love a good story and the past is extraordinary fodder. Particularly good because it all comes glossed in warmth; the rough, sometimes cutting edges, worn smooth by time and repeated tellings. Distance, too, helps. It's so easy to forget the misery, a pregnancy a week past birthing. 

I would like to say I value my family, and I do. But not like some. They do not, have never, defined me. Their gift to me is the very fact of them in my life. Had I not been born into the same family, I would never have crossed paths with this man who is my brother. Because of this, he is a kind of gift. My sister the same.

Of all the things I value, number one is the right of self determination. I wish I'd done it better. But at least I knew I had the chance. A close second are the many people — oh so many! — who have enriched my life by determining themselves before my eyes. Great nephews, talented proteges, a brother who got to live his dream, a sister who knew her calling before she could speak, a father who in spite of class was classless, a mother who was an intellectual cast among housewives. Friends who have shown me the way by knowing who they were first, and not apologizing for it. 

It is a great unfolding, these lives played out before me. And I would just like to say, for the record, I observed, and am observing still.

Truffle: Fair weather for a Nantucket Sound crossing. One of the tricks of island life is the vicissitudes of weather as they directly effect the workings of the Nantucket Steamship Authority. Cut it close — e.g., leave no room for error — as we did today and you have to be grateful if it all goes as scheduled. Today it did.

Quote of the day: "But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?" (Albert Camus, with apologies to all women because we, too, are the beneficiaries of such harmony)

A (daffo) dilly of a day

If Nantucket is good at anything, collectively, it is good at throwing a party. So good, in fact, that often the party takes on a life of its own that soon excludes the island. The Christmas Stroll comes to mind. But the last weekend in April is sacrosanct. Of course, the word is out. It got out first among antique car owners. There was a time years ago when the antique cars in the Daffodil Parade were all, or mostly all, local. Now license plates bear witness to Virginia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. But, heh? They, and there entourages, still don't spoil the down-home effect of all things daffodil.

Our good friends Tom and Jan began preparing for the festivities in 'Sconset at 5:50a today. That's when Tom was out in 'Sconset scoping out a picnic spot and then claiming it for later in the day. Twenty-one of us were the beneficiaries. What makes the Daffodil Parade special (to me, at least) is the beauty of the old cars, the decorative imagination that comes with many of them (there are, after all, ribbons for Most Decorative, among several others) and the communal picnic that occurs at the end of the parade route. Has occurred at the end of the parade route for as long as I can recall — and I figure this is my 24th one. 

Jan, chef extraordinaire, slaves behind the scenes in preparation; Tom does the field work, set up and clean up. In between we, as my mother would have said, dine. Three courses under the blue blue spring sky. Some wine or bubbly, depending on taste. And food to shame the chefs at the CIA. But best of all, the to-ing and fro-ing, the meeting and greeting, the mingling and tingling, of Nantucketers from 2-82. Tiny tots in tutus, adults in wigs, ladies in daffo-silly hats. And a pervasive sense of all having emerged from the underneath the rock of winter to bask in the warmth of sociability.

Truffle: I learned a new word today. Blibula — The spot on a dog's belly which you can scratch which makes its leg twitch uncontrollably. You won't find it in the dictionary because it is a sniglet which is, by definition, any word that should appear in the dictionary, but doesn't. Remember sniglets? Tile comet – the trailer of toilet paper that sticks to your shoe and follows you out of a public restroom? Or ECNALUBMA? In your rear view mirror it translates as AMBULANCE. I'd forgotten what a kick a good sniglet is. Now to go find Cajun's secret blibula...

Quote of the day: "A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity." (Robert Frost)

Crush on crustaceans

When I was a young person and a romantic I would plan out my 'last meal' — not that I expected, or wanted, to be a Dead Girl Walking but because I'd watched too many B movies — and it always consisted of lobster and whatever the culinary fad du jour happened to be (milk shake, spinach salad, sushi). Lobster only faded from the menu when its richness and my aging digestive system came to be at odds.

Still I love them. Covet them. I have a crush on crustaceans! As much for the ritual these days as for the meat itself. The picks and crackers, the bibs and paper towels, the tablecloth of newspapers, the sucking and slurping. The melted butter with lemon!

It begins with the act of tranquilizing the creature, to spare it (I like to believe) undo anxiety as it is thrust into the steaming water and, in so doing, reducing the toughening effects of the adrenaline rush that comes with terror. Stroke the dorsal fin in slow and loving measure. Prop the lobster up in a tripod position, asleep. Amazingly, this can be done, is done by me/us all the time, every time as a kind of side show (and sometimes to appease children and some adults who cringe at the placing of a live animal into boiling water).

Once asleep, upside down on the kitchen counter in a position dramatically unnatural, the lobster can be dropped into the pot with impunity. Sort of. There will be no screams. No scritching of claws on the side of the pot in a desperate attempt to escape. Fifteen minutes later my beloved crustacean reaches the plate and all is forgiven — my conscience is as tranquilized as the lobster had been. I have stroked it with rationalization until it sleeps the sleep of the dead.

Truffle: Compliments flowing toward my girl for her good behavior, and she was a good girl, this evening (with seven humans crowded in this teacup cottage for dinner) and around town today. Nothing pleases me more than people stopping as we pass and saying, "What a beautiful dog! What a well behaved dog!" It must have been the 8+ miles we walked today.

Quote of the day: "Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grown out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development." (Dorothy L. Sayers)

Making sense

It is a sad state of affairs that I am, after all these years, uneasy asserting my writer-dom. Most of the time I try not to embarrass those closest to me with public displays of creative assertion. So, logically I  guess, many don't take me seriously as a writer. It's a Catch-22. Gross modesty (read: lack of faith) prevents me from claiming my vocation as my constant preoccupation and so gone is any hope of being taken seriously as the real McCoy. I will not, for instance, say I am a writer in the presence of my sister-in-law who is a writer. You know the kind: infinitely kind, gloriously modest, prodigiously gifted and the author of five books published by a 'real' publisher. Her success is my grandest and baitingly elusive dream. I am too old for dreams such as these. They either are by now or never will be. 

But tonight over dinner and flowing wine I had a conversation with two women artists, both 20 years younger than I, neither of whom I knew and so I could be frank, could be me, could say the things I think and feel about my art  — and it is art to me, to me it absolutely is — that I cannot speak of to, well, people who know me well enough to hold me accountable. A conversation the likes of which my pent up, unfulfilled, dismissed writer-self yearns for. Where I was able to talk about the importance of writing in my life, about the magic carpet ride I take every time I steal the opportunity to write (what else is this blog?), about how hard it can be to 'get down to it' when life is always intervening, how hungry I am for it. Writing. Making sense of my world in words. 

Truffle: Seeing Beverly all aglow, albeit in turquoise, at the opening of her 40-year retrospective.

Quote of the day: "Ego imbibo proinde ego sum." (some Roman philosopher of infinite wisdom, in response to the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce 'spoiler' effect)

Yank the urinals

The trouble with public women's rooms is that they were designed by men. And until recent times, clearly they were designed by men whose wives were never let out of the house.

This evening four of us, Pete, my Excellent Brother, his wife and I, attended Young Frankenstein:The Musical at the Boston Opera House. Gosh, what a gem of a building! The facade, the foyer, the lobby and the house itself are tributes to High Rococo. Built in 1928 for vaudeville, it died the first time in 1929 — and we all know why. In came the Depression, out went all excess. Not only was theater in general hit hard, vaudeville as an art form perished. It's had many lives since then, including a brief run as an actual opera house hence the name. But what it hasn't had is a remake of the restrooms.

So tonight we (the women) were treated not only to a line that snaked out the door but one — and this is a first for me, so hit the drum roll now! — that was marshaled in back-and-forth sequence by portable aisles. You know, those retractable gizmos that line you up in front of check-in counters at the airport or in cineplexes before the box office or at all the rides at Disneyworld.

It is one thing to be forced to make a public display of yourself in need of relief (ask any woman who has had to stand in one of these lines the origin of the phrase: 'relieve oneself'; no one knows better) and even more insensitive to set up cattle shoots in the door.

Since someone near management acknowledged the problem by putting them there in the first place, why don't they do something about the problem of too few loos? Take the space alloted them (the space episodically filled up with desperate women hoping the lights won't flicker before their turn comes) and expand the facilities? Better yet: yank out half the urinals and make the men's room unisex on a first-come-first serve basis?

Truffle: Harrisville, NH. Who knew? This gem of a 19th century mill town, perfectly preserved by a Colony as hindsighted as he is foresighted, is out in the middle of Nowhere, South-Central, New Hampshire. Never have two streams converged to inspire such a wonder of brickwork. It's like a town in a train layout.

Quote of the day: "Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire." (Abbie Hoffman)