Past Blogs

My Aunt Lillian worked in a hat factory. Shortly before her untimely death, she was promoted to be a designer. In fact, she had been designing and creating hats for years for all the women in my family. It’s no wonder that I, too, am a lover of hats.

When I was a child, Sunday mass was mandatory as was hat wearing for women in church. I couldn’t wait to see the weekly chapeau fashion parade – intriguing shapes, colors, flowers, feathers, ribbons and veils.

The hat as art form reached its apex on Easter Sunday. The show at my Polish Catholic church was lush, but I yearned to be at St. Patricks in New York. To me Easter and hats were synonymous.

I’ve had my share of great hats through the years. One of my favorites is an elegant purple felt one, a gift from my then teenage son, who picked it out all by himself.

Fashion has become much more casual and so have my hats. For the past decade I’ve been attached to my beloved denim bucket hat which can be rolled up and kept in my purse with no ill effects. It has literally traveled all over the world with me. Last year it took a vacation alone for a month in New Mexico. However, it was miraculously returned by a kind gentleman who found it in the parking lot at my aunt’s assisted living and said, “I knew that was your hat the moment I saw it.”

The big news last week was cheese. A Wisconsin cheese has just been named the finest cheese in the nation at the prestigious U.S. Championship Cheese Contest.

The particular cheese that was voted the country’s best was a Parmesan from Antigo, Wisconsin, my husband’s home town. The Antigo cheese beat out 1,359 other entries.

California has been extremely in our collective state faces about having more cows and producing vast quantities of cheese. This prize just goes to show that adding a few cows to your state doesn’t make you great… quality still counts.

It’s no secret that I am an unabashed cheese lover. I manage to incorporate cheese into almost everything I cook. However, I do draw the line at using cheese as an ice cream topping.

Pine River Dairy, a cheese store that features 100 kinds of Wisconsin cheese, is a short drive from our house. The shop is the size of a large walk-in closet. The folks there also make vats of butter in the back room and sell decent size ice cream cones for 25 cents.

I have been spotted leaving Pine River with a shopping bag of cheese and butter over my arm, a cheese stick in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other. I do not feel a twinge of guilt. I am simply doing what every health and environmental expert is telling me to do… eating locally sourced food.

“Once again the time of the great sex orgy is at hand.”

Unfortunately, I can’t begin my botany for kids program, which teachers request in spring, with this succinct and scientific statement. America is too puritanical a country for talk of sex, even if it’s between consenting, adult plants.

If you’ve read Barbara Kingsolver’s amazing book, Prodigal Summer, you know where I’m headed here. Spring is all about sex (say “regeneration” if that feels more comfortable), and it is everywhere we look these days.

Thanks to the fact that the Earth in its orbit is tilted 23°, we have seasons. The increasing light in Spring energizes everything, and it’s no secret what we think of when energized.

Eons ago primitive plants had dismal sex lives. That all changed with the angiosperms, the flowering plants that cover the earth now. Flowers have male parts, the stamen, and female parts, the pistil. Since the male needs a bit of help to do his thing, the flower often has bright colors and a tantalizing smell to seduce the helpers or pollinators. After getting stuck to the female pistil, the male pollen grows a tube down to the ovary. The egg is fertilized, and the ovary grows into the fruit with its precious seeds inside.

If plants stopped having sex, we would starve. All of civilization’s major food crops, wheat, oats, rice and corn, are angiosperms. Thank goodness sex (pollen) is in the air!

Too bad basic botany can’t be taught this way. After all, it really does get back to Dick and Jane. Happy Spring!

At the age of seven I got my first library card, and life turned mysterious.  I discovered mystery books in the children’s stacks at my storefront, neighborhood library. My addiction to the genre was instant.

Fast forward fifty-eight years. Finding a mystery by a favorite author on the library’s new book shelf can still make my day.

Matching wits with authors to detect the perpetrators or puzzles is not my style. I prefer to be surprised, entertained and, in many cases, amused.

If I were marooned on a desert island, I would want books by these ten authors to wash ashore.

• Robert B. Parker – Spenser is forever macho, Susan sexy and Hawk invincible.
• Laurence Shames – Key West, mayhem and a Chihuahua star.
• Alexander McCall Smith – Three cheers for Madame Ramotswe and all traditionally built women.
• Janet Evanovich – Skip the between the numbers series. Diesel pales next to Morelli and Ranger. Note to Stephanie… pick Morelli, and you’ll get Bob in the deal.
• Donna Leon – Her series is a luscious mix of Venice, civility and paradox.
• James Lee Burke – Wonderful stuff considering the number of adjectives he injects per square inch.
• Randy Wayne White – Intrigue, tropical sunsets and marine biology play out in an idyllic marina.
• Carl Hiaasen – More over the top than the real Florida – not an easy feat to pull off.
• Tim Dorsey – OK, I’ll admit it, I love that history-loving psychopath, Serge Storms. I can’t wait to get my hands on the latest book, Nuclear Jellyfish.
• Tony Hillerman – Joe Leaphorn’s creator died on October 26, 2008. The Navajo Nation, New Mexico and mystery readers everywhere are mourning.

Kindly share your favorite mysteries if you’re inclined. Happy sleuthing.

Please click here if you wish to send me a private email or click below to share a comment.

Last weekend I developed an advanced case of cabin fever. It hit like a shock wave as my car was sliding down the driveway into a snow bank on the opposite side from the garage door.

Our driveway goes straight down from the road and currently resembles a shimmering Alaskan ice field. Even a polar bear with its five inch claws and fur covered pigeon toed feet couldn’t get traction here.

It is high time that spring put a tentative toe in the door. Walking up the driveway to the roadside mailbox or filling the bird feeders have become limb threatening activities.

And then there’s the morning issue. I find no incentive to get out of bed when my nose is as cold as a popsicle. For the last week the AM temperatures have been single digits (above and below zero) and the wind Arctic blasts. The only sensible response to this situation is pulling the quilt over the head and going back to sleep; i.e., hibernation.

The snow hasn’t been a stranger, either. I took three trips to the carwash last week in a valiant attempt to remove the patina of salt and slush that permanently envelopes my car.

Try as I might, I’ve only found one glimmer of hope. A few days ago I spotted a huge Sandhill Crane, an early returnee from its winter home in Florida. It was gliding down from the gray skies for a perfect landing in a nearby wetland.

If the thermometer ever hits fifty, expect to see us dancing naked in the melting snow banks.

Please click here if you wish to send me a comment