Food for the Soul and Body

I'm stretching Weekend Cooking as far as it will go!

For many years I have been doing a yoga exercise on youtube with a fellow called Bhaskar Goswami. Recently, he began a series especially for this time. Every day is different, and ends with a very special story and /or meditation. I could do all of them except the couple days it was floor work. He is a wonderful teacher. I'll tell you how to find him in a minute, but I want to tell you a story he told one day. I put it up on Instagram, as well.

Jack Cornfield speaks of a time when he was studying in a monastery for many, many years under a great master. One day the master was going for a walk in the forest with his students following. And the master suddenly stopped and pointed at a boulder, a massive rock, and he asked the question, "Is that boulder heavy?" The students very sincerely nodded, saying, "Yes, master, the boulder is very heavy." And the master responded, "Not if you don't lift it." 

Bhaskar went on to connect this to what we are all living through as a way to say not to worry about every horror that we read about, but to take what we need from the news reports and not let the rest give us too much anxiety.

I subscribe to "daana" on youtube which is where you will find him. And here is the first "Home Health Practice during Coronavirus". He is going to continue with a "musing" one day a week, and a practice another day. 

Today'video -- Peace sung by Norah Jones

There's a place that I know
Where the sycamores grow
And daffodils have their fun
Where the cares of the day
Seem to slowly fade away
In the glow of the evening sun
Peace, when the day is done

If I go there real late;
Let my mind meditate
On everything to be done
If I search deep inside;
Let my conscience be my guide
Then the answers are sure to come
Don't have to worry none

When you find peace of mind
Leave your worries behind
Don't say that it can't be done
With a new point of view
Life's true meaning comes to you
And the freedom you seek is won
Peace is for everyone
Peace is for everyone
Peace is for everyone

Local restaurants

All the restaurants and bars in the state have been ordered to close. So the local eateries are offering take-out only. There are all kinds of options. You can go in and pick it up, or they will leave the food outside for you to pick up, or they will bring it out to your car, and at least one has a delivery service and more are considering it.

My plan is to get take-out a few times a week to support our local restaurants. Yesterday we got delicious homemade Irish soda bread from our town restaurant run by a mother and daughter of Irish heritage. If we ate meat, we could have gotten corned beef and cabbage along with it.

Tonight we got pizza, and Tom got beer from the local brewery, which will also deliver if you want. Each place was very grateful.

Tom's

Mine - Lucy is all for supporting local restaurants!

Going back to older days

I am feeling a wee bit brilliant today. Here is how it all began. I buy Kleenex from Amazon. They come in packages of four, and cost no more than at my local Walmart. But buying them online saves me driving a dozen miles, parking, making my way through the store.

When I looked today, they were not available. So I put on my thinking cap and remembered that when I was a girl, my father always had a handkerchief. I tried to find a photo of him with it in his breast pocket, but I guess he must have kept it in his side pocket.

So I visited Amazon, and found several offerings of cotton handkerchiefs. I read some reviews, made my choice, and ordered. I am just so tickled!

As I was writing this, I checked back to be sure that I had been right about the package of four (I was), and, lo and behold they are available again so I bought eight boxes. I figured they will suffice for the nationwide lack of toilet paper, even on Amazon where I usually buy it.

Winter activity

Not the human kind, but the animal kind. There is a lot of living that goes on in wintertime under the snow.

Molehills

A little trail with a hole at the end. Squirrel, chipmunk?

It is lovely seeing the vegetable garden again! There are a few deer tracks in there.

This may not look cheerful to those of you who have blooms now, but to me it is lovely! And even if snow comes again, it won't last. The saying here is that the back of winter is broken.

Today's poem by Iva E. Reed

I haven't posted a poem by this woman in a lot of years. She was a friend of ours who has since died. You may find more of her poems here on the blog by going to the Poems button under the blog header picture, and then scrolling down to her name. I have been thinking of this poem for a few days as I've been seeing more crows. I know they are around in winter, but it is only in March that they begin showing themselves.

Crow in March

Heard a crow this morning!

what a great sound
when winter is still
thick and cold and white
upon the ground.

Iva Everesta Reed


I did a search and found her obituary. What a life she led!

Iva Reed

Iva Everesta Reed

Passed away in San Francisco on October 15, 2014.
Iva Everesta Reed was born December 25, 1924, one of eight children, to Adelaide Kaziah Woods and Dwight Reed, in the tiny town of Landaff, New Hampshire, in the foothills of the White Mountains. She graduated valedictorian of her high school class in Lisbon, N.H., and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa with a BA in Sociology in 1948. She studied for a Master's Degree in Sociology at the University of New Hampshire.

As a young woman living in Boston, she acted in soap operas on the ABC and NBC TV networks while supporting herself as a waitress, hat checker, and part-time office worker in order to pursue her love of theatre. She played the lead in a live production of Joan of Arc in Summer Stock, Westborough, MA. In later years, she lived and worked in New York, where she became a member of the Communist Party and worked for political causes with Black activists in Harlem. She also lived for a time in Columbia, Missouri.

In 1958, she moved to San Francisco, where, in 1979, she published a book of poetry, Time Before Winter. Many of the poems in the volume express through a child's eyes Iva's love of the natural world in the White Mountains where she grew up. Many are whimsical stories about the wild animals she saw in the woods and fields she played in as a child, others a poignant search for meaning in a world of loss.

Iva is survived by her niece, Sue Malone, of Jacksonville, Florida, and by myriad other nieces and nephews scattered across the country. She will rest in peace with her parents at the Landaff Center Hill Cemetery in New Hampshire.

Published in San Francisco Chronicle on Oct. 26, 2014

Quote du jour/John Galsworthy

From In Chancery, published 1920.

A character is pondering the death of Queen Victoria who lived from 1819 to 1901.

"Never again would a Queen reign so long, or people have a chance to see so much history buried for their money."

She reigned for 63 years and 7 months.

It just shows that we can never know what may happen in the future. Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee (60 years) in 2012, and five years later celebrated her Sapphire Jubilee. It is remarkable. And all due to unexpected circumstances. Who knew that Edward VIII would abdicate and George VI would die?

Galsworthy at 65.

February Books

February - 5

7. Overdue - book two in the Village Library series
by Elizabeth Spann Craig
mystery 2019
Kindle
finished 2/6/20

I liked this, and will read on in the series.

8. The Man of Property - book one in The Forsyte Saga
by John Galsworthy
fiction 1906
Kindle
finished 2/20/20

It was The Forsyte Saga that made Tom and I television Anglophiles. I think it was on in the US in 1969, but was seen a couple years earlier in England. Beautifully written about a certain branch of society at a certain time in history. This is a family that shows hardly any real emotion and whose raison d'être is to accumulate property and money. The property sadly includes human beings, like wives. Well worth reading. I'm going on with the series.

9. Bread and Jam for Frances
by Russell Hoban
Illustrated by Lillian Hoban
children's fiction 1986
print
reread
library book that Margaret took out for Hazel
finished 2/21/20

The other day we were down at Hazel's house. She was quietly playing and Tom was sitting down, and I began reading aloud a most beloved Frances book. I wrote about this series years ago here. As I read along, Hazel went upstairs for something but I kept on and Tom and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It tells of a very wise mother's handling of a tricky situation - that of a child not liking too many foods and not wanting to try any new foods. Being myself what the world calls "picky" and I call "discerning", I appreciated how there was no cajoling on the parents' part to eat what she didn't want to eat. My folks were excellent about this. If I wanted spaghetti with butter in a restaurant, they had no problem ordering it for me. My mother never made me eat tripe which I found unbearably disgusting. I have grown up to still be a "discerning" eater, but I eat a lot more foods than I did as a child. Becoming a vegetarian introduced me to a world of eating I had never known growing up.

10. Indian Summer of a Forsyte - an interlude between The Man of Property and In Chancery
Now would be called 1.5 in a series
55 pages long
by John Galsworthy
fiction 1918
Kindle
finished 2/23/20

This short novella, what Galsworthy called an interlude, was sublimely beautiful. Old Jolyon is different from his brothers and sisters, and especially so when he is in his eighties. He is mellower, and a great appreciator of nature, and beauty, and his grandchildren. The writing is lovely.

11. Lassie Shows the Way
by Monica Hill
pictures by Lee Ames
children's fiction 1956
print
reread
my childhood Golden Book
finished 2/25/20

Hazel ate supper at our house on my birthday as her parents had to go out. We rented the movie Home on Amazon Prime. It is currently her favorite movie. It was really quite delightful, and warm spirited. Afterwards, she picked up one of my childhood books, and "read" through it, and then asked me to read it to her. I so enjoyed going back in time. Lassie was very popular when I was a child, in books and movies and television. Though played by a male dog, Lassie was a female in the shows. I have had a lifelong love of Collies, and we had one for seven years until the dear boy died young.

This is our MacIntosh in 2002.

I wrote about him on the blog here, and just a few months later wrote about his death here.

We wanted to get another but just didn't dare. We didn't think bear going through possible epilepsy again.

Anyhow, back to the story. Timmy stops in at the store for his mother, and there is a stranger there. The guy thinks his dog will win the dog show. As Timmy leaves he hears the man asks for his address. Today a store keeper would never give a stranger a child's address!! Lassie is later stolen, but comes back home as she always does! And leads the sheriff to the "bad guy". Pretty much par for the Lassie course, but to Hazel it was all new and she enjoyed it.

So that ends my reading month. Not many finishes, but lots of reading joy.

Today's song - All Things Must Pass/George Harrison

On this our shared birthday here is George singing. I'm sorry there wasn't a live version, but this one is kind of nice because it shows the lyrics. Such a loss to this world.

Today's poem by Midge Goldberg

Busy Signal

No busy signal from his cell,
Instead I'm on "call waiting."
I can't hang up the phone and so
I'm left anticipating

Whether when he sees my name
He'll want to take the call,
And if he doesn't, am I on
His contact list at all?

Or am I still a nameless number
In this three-way hell,
Will he know it's me or think
"That doesn't ring a bell"?

And who is on the other line
He might prefer to me:
His mother, sister, college friend,
That girl on speed dial 3?

But if I choose to end it then
"missed call" gives me away.
No anonymity will hide
The things I didn't say.

Times have changed, these days there are
No hang-ups any more;
I'm strong enough, so go ahead:
Accept or else Ignore.

Midge Goldberg
from Snowman's Code

2020 Book Facts

Only a collecting post.

My mother's muffin recipe

These were the best cranberry muffins I've ever tasted. In fact, I had a couple other recipes for them in the recipe box, and I threw them away, knowing this is IT from now on. So many recipes I see call for 1/2 - 1 cup of sugar. That's a lot for twelve muffins, I think. This one calls for 2 Tablespoons, and even with tart cranberries, they were perfectly sweet. The same goes for butter - most of the time, recipes call for more than 3 Tablespoons.

The things I changed - I didn't separate the egg, and I used the whole egg. Also, as you must know by now, I only ever use butter in baking. And I greased the muffin pan with cooking spray.

Can you tell what is under the word "preheated"? Is it 400? Well, I wasn't sure enough so I put the oven at 350 F. I've made these muffins almost half a dozen times, and they have turned out perfectly. I baked them for about 20 minutes, but check because all ovens are different.

You may use fresh or frozen cranberries, and I put them in the food processor to break them up.

I love that she called them "standard" and that the cook can use any fruits she or he wants.

Please visit Weekend Cooking for more food related posts.

January Books

I had a good reading month, though I still mean to read more of my print books. I've begun my reading from the 1920s.

January - 6

1. Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War - book one in the Mrs Caldicot series
by Vernon Coleman
fiction 1993
Kindle
finished 1/2/20

As I read a line in this book, I had a flash of seeing a television production of it. I looked it up, and it starred Pauline Collins and John Alderton. I don't remember much about it, but from what I read, the film was changed some from the book. The story is about a very passive, very sheltered woman whose overbearing husband suddenly dies. Her son feels that she should go into a retirement home. She is my age (gulp!). The book is all about how the residents become empowered about their living conditions, and their lives. It is quite inspiring, with a happy ending, though there is sadness for the reader seeing how this place is run. And that there is such little regard for the inhabitants until Mrs C shows up.

2. The American Agent - book fifteen in the Maisie Dobbs series
by Jacqueline Winspear
mystery 2019
library book
Kindle
finished 1/8/20

Gosh, a lot of time has passed since we readers first met her in 2003. I so enjoy these books and the characters. One of the very great pleasures of my reading life.

3. The Nine of Us
 Growing Up Kennedy
by Jean Kennedy Smith
nonfiction 2016
print
finished 1/8/20

Jean Kennedy Smith is the last surviving child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. She has written a really lovely telling of her life. Even if you've read everything about the Kennedys, she offers a new perspective. I loved this book, and am so happy she wrote it.

4. Mavis of Green Hill
by Faith Baldwin
fiction 1921
Kindle
finished 1/13/20

My first book of the 1920s, and such a joy it was. This wasn't about flappers and gin, but about a young woman who was bedridden from a train accident a dozen years before. She begins a correspondence with a young poet, and rather falls in love with him through his poems. She is a romantic soul who doesn't have a lot to amuse her in the life she leads. A new doctor comes into her life who suggests new treatments, and suddenly her whole life changes. One of the treats of the book is seeing Cuba in those days.

5. Brooklyn Legacies - book five in the Erica Donato series
by Triss Stein
mystery 2019
Kindle
finished 1/16/20

I do so enjoy this series. The reader learns something new about Brooklyn in each book. This one focused on the tensions of development between the Jehovah's Witness church and an historical home. The only negative for me is that I got annoyed at the main character's little criticisms of older times, while she is an historian!

6. The Cask
by Freeman Wills Crofts
mystery 1920
Kindle
finished 1/30/20

I've never read anything quite like this 100-year-old book. It is the ultimate police procedural, with the emphasis on procedure. It was almost like reading a police report, and then later a lawyer's report.

These policemen are mostly all men, except for a short time when three women do some work. They don't have families or girlfriends. They have friends, and they eat out, and they go to the movies, but there is no romance. They are totally devoted to their work. This work is slow and methodical.

I actually had to look up the word cask.  It is a large, barrel-like container used for storing liquids. In this book casks also held statues, and a dead woman's body.

The people investigating went back and forth from England to France to Belgium, trying to find out who killed her. The phrase about not leaving a stone unturned absolutely applies to these men. A fascinating book with a thrilling ending.

I have mentioned before, I think, that I subscribe to a publication called Give Me That  Old-Time Detection put together three times a year by a man named Arthur Vidro. The autumn edition featured Mr. Crofts. The 1996 review ofThe Cask was written by Charles Shibuk in the British publication CADS. I am going to quote some of the review.

Crofts suffered a major breakdown of his health in 1919 and, while seeking something to distract him from a slow and tedious period of convalescence, decided to try his hand at writing a detective novel.

The Cask (1920) secured rave reviews, and was translated into many languages, and had sold the not inconsiderable total of 200,000 copied by 1940. 

With the exception of E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913), The Cask is probably the best first detective novel in the history of the form, and with Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), it heralded the advent of the detective story's great Golden Age. Critic Anthony Boucher, reviewing a 1967 reissue of The Cask, remarked: "Probably the most completely competent first novel in the history of crime, it is the definitive novel of alibis, timetables - and all the absorbing hairsplitting of detection..."

Ellery Queen, who considered it one of the ten most important detective novels, described it as the first great modern police novel.

The Cask is available on the Kindle, in paperback, and in hardcover. Not bad for a century-old book! Well worth all the praise. I was completely immersed and fascinated.

Today's picture/napping house

Did you ever read The Napping House by Audrey and Don Wood? Wonderful children's book.

Today's video - Nina Simone / Why? (The King of Love is Dead)

Written by her bassist, Gene Taylor, this is Nina Simone singing.

These words were written by the person who posted the video, Baye Kambul:

Recorded on April 7, 1968, live three days after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and performed at the Westbury Music Fair. Nina Simone dedicated her performance to King's memory. The song was written by her bass player, Gene Taylor. An edited version of this performance appears on Simone's album, Nuff Said (1968). I felt the unedited version captures the true emotional energy of the period surrounding Simone's performance.

It's (almost) midnight and the kitties are sleeping

Do you remember Letterman singing this song?



Well, we got our kitties today, and it was 11:30 when I took these pictures. That's Gemma on the couch, and Maisy on the floor. They have been wild as sin! Play, play, play and then fall down asleep. I had forgotten the utter joy of kittens. More, and better, pictures to come.

Quotes du jour / Rudyard Kipling and T.S. Eliot

These two quotes are from this year's Susan Branch calendar - A Year in the English Countryside. The Kipling is on the cover, and the Eliot on the January page.

British Isles Friday - The Queen and the future Kings

I am finally putting up a post for British Isles Friday, a weekly event which may be found here. It is rather the perfect thing for me who reads mostly British books, and watches pretty much only British television, and follows many of the Royals on Instagram! In fact my first entry for this weekly event is a photograph I saw on Instagram. You may read more about it in The Guardian here.

I found it such a touching photo. That dear little boy. He has such presence already. It seems like a minute ago his father was his age. The generations match my own family. Tom's mother is almost the Queen's age. Charles and I were both born in 1948. William was born a month before Margaret, and George was born five months before Hazel.

If you are interested, you may read about the succession to the British throne here.

Beginning my posts about the 1920s with some photos of real 20s people

These were in my mother's photo album. Happily she dated them, so I know they are from the 1920s. She grew up on a farm, and went to school in the next town. This was a small place in northern New Hampshire, far away from the cities, but these girls look quite as fashionable as others I've seen in pictures from those years.

Marcel. Is that what it was called when their hair had those folds in it? Yes, I just looked it up!

This is the only one from the 20s that had my mother in it - a brother beside her.

And another brother (there were ten kids)

One of her sisters

 Girl friends

And the teachers! They don't look much older than teenagers themselves.

And life on the farm (my mother boarded with someone in town during her high school years)

Her father

Today's video - Love Me/ Elvis

I know I've mentioned my mother here on the blog, and put up pictures, but I'm quite sure I've not told you this story. When I was 25, Tom and I sat in the waiting room while my mother was having her gall bladder out. The doctor came in and told us that they found pancreatic cancer, and she had 2-6 months to live. This was March 18, 1973, and she died exactly a month later. I really can't remember that month at all, only that it was awful. But there was one bright light, one hour or so when I was able to completely immerse myself in something else, and that was the televised version of Aloha From Hawaii. I took the phone off the hook, and Tom and I just watched. We are both huge Elvis fans, and watching him now I still feel there will never be anyone to top him.

On what would have been his 85th birthday, here is one of my favorites from the show.