The Burrow

Daddooooo and G'ma took me to see Pirates of Penzance when I was little.  They took me when I was medium sized and again when I was grown. I blasted the music on my car stereo as I drove to pick up The Cuters in elementary school, and we sang along with it driving home.  We saw it on the stage and we saw it on film. On Sunday afternoon, I took FlapJilly to the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame to see it, live, un-mic'ed, with a Mozartian orchestra - plus an oboe or two- conducted by a gentleman with a green parrot perched on his shoulder. I told her the story that morning, skipping lightly over the complicated 21st-birthday-leap-year scenario, concentrating on the Pirates wanting to marry the daughters and the policemen who marched, tarantara, tarantara. We talked about Ruth, who lied to Frederic about her beauty, and laughed in the afternoon when the actors rhymed it with booty.  They didn’t mean stolen wealth, they meant just what makes a 4 year old...

We are very glad to be here, surrounded by family and love. But, when we left Arizona the temperature was headed firmly into the 90’s. This is what I faced on Sunday morning: I looked outside. I was depressed. The view out the front door wasn’t much more enticing.   It’s a good thing all my winter clothes live here. I put on several layers and went out to breakfast with some of my favorite people. My heart, at least, was warm.

He was always larger than life, bigger than anyone else in his orbit, sui generis as I called him in his New York Times obituary. The world revolved around him - from his perspective and from that of those around him. We always considered, in the front or the back of our minds, how he would react. Kids loved him. A lot. The five year old daughter of the divorced mom living with her parents across the street rang our bell every morning, sometimes before anyone in our house was awake, wondering, "Can Herbie come out to play?" My friends brought him their broken (homemade, of course) skateboards to fix. He was the first to grab the baby and dandle her on his knee, the one who was always up for an outdoor game, the one who would listen attentively to the most convoluted story told by a little one. He was also the first one to pick up his ball and go home if things didn't go his way. His rules. His timing. His game. That was fine when his playmates were ti...

The 3,4,5 combo class was finished learning about worms. The teacher wondered if they might find a good home in the garden. I love freebies.  I love worms in the garden.  I love the teacher. Getting to "YES!" was easy.. After careful and proper examination, interrupted only occasionally by an  eeewww  or frantic jazz hands waving the creature away, we set to preparing their new abode.   We deposited the worms fairly deep, in lines we drew in the soil. ("No, we don't need gloves.  It's good to feel the soil on your hands.") Then we covered them gently, to protect them from the sun and predators.  Escaping their cover, these squirmers were busy pooping, or so the scholars showed me. Yes, there are small black dots at the back end of the dusty worms. Gardeners call that  castings ; the scholars much preferred  poop.   Later in the day, it was all about the rakes. It's a congenial activity, with love...

 Ocotillo usually bloom when it rains.   It hasn't rained, yet the blooms are gorgeous all over town. They are usually smaller and pointier.  Fast Eddie and JannyLou and I were admiring them this morning, agreeing that they've never been lovelier.   On the side of the house, the aloe are sprouting tall orange spiky booms. The Euphorbia AntiSyphilitica have their small white flowers weighting them down. Even the succulent I transplanted without recognizing that it was ready to sprout a tall spiky yellow addition managed to endure the afternoon sunlight and lack of proper irrigation and put on a show. You have to be hardy to survive in the desert.  Just look at that tiny little bit of blue, appearing with no assistance from anything human.  She makes me smile.  This yucca was rescued from the discard pile at the middle school; he and his friends were free for the taking.   Also left pretty much on hi...

I had this quote from Dr. Spock on my refrigerator when The Cuters were kids: All parents do their best job when they have a natural, easy confidence in themselves. Better to make a few mistakes from being natural than to try to do everything letter-perfect out of a feeling of worry. Or, as MTF wrote, in a postcard that was affixed right above Dr. Spock: CONGRATULATIONS! Remember this: no matter what you do, you’ll feel guilty. So, you might as well do what you want to do and hope for the best. Words to live by, indeed.

The Burrow is 10 years and 1 week old today.  Born on April 14, 2009, it's a creation of Big Cuter's encouragement ( Mom, you are  way  hipper than you think you are)  and Little Cuter's unlocking the door ( If Suzi can't write, maybe Ashleigh Burroughs can).   This is the 8th post I ever wrote.  I like it just as much today as I did then. I hope you are able to be out and about, planting or enjoying one of my favorite holidays.   ***** Earth Day I like Earth Day. I was there at its creation, after all. It was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970. Initially, it was a touchy-feely alternative to the harsher realities of the anti-Vietnam War protests. You wanted to do something, but war was such an uncomfortable subject and arguing against it made your parents wonder why they were spending tuition dollars while you were telling the lawfully elected President of the United States of America that you knew more than he did...

Brother is an excellent writer.  He kept me amused all through college with his semi-monthly JA NEWS.  All sides and corners of the pages were covered with amusements and philosophy, as were the envelopes.  He has his own particular take on the world, and this description of his seders is a window for the rest of you. Enjoy the weekend, whether you are celebrating anything or not! ***** Our Wacky and Wild Seders We have two dozen haggadot that are all the same. Sometimes we start reading around the table, each person reading one sentence. You have to pay attention – “Where are we?” is not acceptable with this crowd. Then we switch to each person reading one word. It goes slowly at first, then picks up speed until somebody says “REVERSE” and we go the other direction. It usually ends in laughter when two people next to each other keep saying “REVERSE!” We also have a collection of different haggadot, from fancy collectible printings to crumbling ancient Ma...

I blame the 24 hour news cycle. There's really nothing to report.  People are anxious.  People are angry.  People are concerned.  No one knows anything except what we don't know.  Yet the talking heads keep talking.  And talking.  And talking.  And, because there's really nothing to talk about, they're picking on the low hanging fruit. Bernie Sanders made money from his book.  The socialist, the Independent running as a Democrat, the guy with the funny voice and the funny hair and the funny ideas is a rich guy after all.  This is, apparently, an item worthy of intense scrutiny.  Is he allowed to rail against the elite when he is, himself, a member of the 1%? Three hecklers were outside a Mayor Pete rally in Iowa, dressed in costume.  They vowed to follow him everywhere he goes, ranting about abortion and homosexuality.  I was reminded of the giant chicken that followed one of the candidates around one year.... or was...

It's that time of year.  School is almost out and summer looms.  What to do? What to do? I wasn't old enough to work at more than neighborhood babysitting through most of high school. I went to Cornell for a summer program after my junior year, and my grandparents sent me to Europe after my senior year.  Then, I was a rising college sophomore, home for the summer, with no prospects at all. I called Aunt Rose.  She and Uncle Frank ran Jack and Jill Nursery School and Summer Camp.  I'd been in her first class of kindergarteners, those who missed the public school cut-off but were certainly ready for learning.  I'd gone to summer camp with my siblings, riding the bus for hours, sometimes scoring a place in the front seat of Uncle Frank's sedan if the buses weren't available.  Aunt Rose and G'ma hit it off from the get-go, my retired kindergarten teacher mother bonding with the woman who would start us off on the right foot for school.  My phone...

We drove there every summer, a 10 horsepower outboard motor packed in the car along with our suitcases and G'ma's red cooler filled with snacks.  Each kid had a suitcase upon which to perch in the backseat, the better to see over the front bench and out into the world. We stopped at the first rest stop over The Bridge (I'm not sure which bridge) for breakfast, having left home before dawn.  I never knew or questioned why we had to leave so early, it was just what we did. Timberlane   still exists, just as it did when Daddooooo drove down the barely marked rutted lane off Lake Shore Drive in Bolton Landing in the late 1950's and early 1960's.    Richard and Cecilia McCann owned the rustic cabins and dock and fire pit around which we held sing-a-longs and roasted marshmallows and threw kindling in to watch it spark.  For G'ma, it must have been her job without the electric luxuries (washing machine, dish washer) which, added to the fact that one of the ki...

I really really really don't want to send this government our money.  I felt this way during Viet Nam, too, but I was getting a refund rather than directly contributing, so it hurt a little less.  This is very painful.  I really really really don't want to fund his wall, though I will gladly pay for bus tickets from Nogales to San Francisco for any asylum seeker who needs one. I watched Mayor Pete this afternoon.  Do yo think they will let me send my tax dollars directly to him?  I, too, am ready to define a new era.  I'd like to help fund it as well. Thanks for listening.  I feel much better now.

I was out of the NCAA Men's Basketball pool after the third round.  I watched the games with a lackluster sort of enthusiasm, barely tuning in until the end unless TBG shouted for my attention.  There was a time when I planned my late March around the Madness.  I missed no games.  One year I won the brokers pool (I knew about Jim Valvano and they did not) and made $90, a nice chunk of change in the early 1980's.  Time passes and that which used to amuse now becomes background noise to aggravations I wouldn't ever have imagined.  ***** Government is quirky.  Some things - deportations and tax collections come uncomfortably to mind - happen with alarming rapidity.  Others - road repairs, at least in my neck of the woods - seem to languish for eternity until they all happen at once.  After years of closed entrances to the interstate at all ends of our neighborhood, rumor has it that everything will be open for business in a very short ...

She was taken from the street in front of her daughter's new home. They had an order of deportation.  There was nothing to be done. She was allowed a phone call, the phone call the family had been fearing.  It was as awful as they had imagined. Through tears, they moved on to Plan B, the option the immigration attorney had urged her to think about, to plan for, to have ready.  Her tio on the other side   would meet her.  Her girls would bring her clothes and supplies tomorrow.  From there...... who knows.  The plan was just that - a plan.  No one wanted or expected to use it. Except that she was taken from the street early in the morning and by noon she was in Nogales.  Two hours that changed everything. She came here 25 years ago, when border crossings were fluid, when the back and forth of workers and families was not viewed as criminal, but was accepted as the normal course of events.  When a path toward citizenship began to...

That's just one of the phrases Bill Penzey weaves into the pamphlets in his gift boxes, into his emails, into his Facebook posts.  The store makes me smile, the spices are delicious and interesting and have expanded my cooking horizons, but up until yesterday I didn't really get the whole soothing my soul thing. Fast Eddie and JannieLou, Dr. K and Not-Kathy, and TBG and I were all quite upset at the world around us, at events beyond our control, at the current political and social climate.  We were functional, but not by much.  TBG claimed to have malaise. Everyone gathered at our house for dinner and commiseration.  Dinner for 4 turned to dinner for 6, with gluten free and carb-less and dairy avoidance in attendance as well.  Denizens of The Burrow know about my fractured relationship to the kitchen; in general, it's not a pretty sight.  But we needed to be together.  We needed community.  And I.... I needed to do something.  So, I m...

The artist was dressed as you'd imagine he'd be dressed. He had a big belt and a fancy neck adornment and a cowboy hat that was just this side of too much.    He smiled as passersby discovered the contents of their junk drawers, on display, transformed, causing them to stop and stare and go deeper and deeper in to something that is either profound or profoundly absurd.  Whatever it is, I stood there a long time, listening and staring and taking pictures with my new phone. There were so many parts on which to focus, so many options on the phone itself, but the artist was generous, enjoying my conversation with the inanimate object in my hand.  I walked on, admiring the art, smiling at most of it, until I came to this.   It's an aging hippie.  The look on his face spoke to me.  We communed for a while before the artist wandered over.  We laughed and sighed and then he turned and showed me his favorite piece.    T...

Under two long tents and in between them, there was a lot to see.  Unless, of course, you've been there for two days, after which  the magazine is more interesting than the adult conversation. I went early in the morning, before the heat and the crowds. There was time to stop and listen to the music, to pause in the shade and admire a tented wonder, to marvel at the proximity of the parking to the event. The artist wanted to show her piece in the light. I took some time to stare back at this face. There were many faces on display,   some creepier  than others. There was whimsy  in all sizes. There was a fox canoe with oddly coiffed oarsmen, and a table to put it on.  And these are just pieces whose creators I didn't talk to. Tomorrow, I'll share those.