Past Blogs

Their house never had running water. Heat came from a cast iron cook stove and a wood stove in the parlor. One winter the stove was stoked with wooden hairbrush seconds (minus the bristles) from a nearby woodworking factory. The heat never made it upstairs: the boys got to sleep upstairs in the frosty rooms.

An electric line ran to the farmhouse, but all the cooking was done on the wood burning stove. Hot water was dipped from the stove’s reservoir. Water was pumped at the kitchen sink.

Walking into my husband’s grandparent’s home was like falling into a Little House on the Prairie book, only the time was the 1960s and the setting was northern Wisconsin. We had many memorable meals in that farmhouse kitchen, but my husband speaks most often of the “panycakes” and “Hard Times Cookies”. I have the recipe for these big, fat sugar cookies and they taste delicious despite the frugality of the ingredients.

We have only one memento from that weathered, wood farmhouse on Lonesome Road, and it graces our home every Christmas. Well over sixty years ago, my husband’s grandmother recycled her old kerosene lamp into a Christmas decoration. Nothing was ever wasted or unused in that household.

Grandma put Christmas ornaments in the glass base of the lamp and then replaced the chimney. Those ornaments, put there by her hands, have remained ever since. The first ritual of our Christmas season is to unwrap the old lamp with great care and place it on the kitchen buffet where it is in constant view.

Holidays aren’t about the new and the glittery, they are about our ties to the past. We are lucky to have a direct link.

The best Christmas decorations in the world start with ordinary brown paper lunch bags. Take a bag, fill the bottom with sand and stick in a candle. You have created a farolito. Then repeat the process 100 or more times.

The farolito is Northern New Mexico’s traditional Christmas decoration. When darkness descends on December 24, all the candles are lighted and the homes, neighborhoods, plazas and roadsides become magical. One college campus is adorned with 4,000 of these little lanterns.

The high desert is cold in December, so bonfires are lighted  in yards and roadsides  to defy the darkness and warm up the folks who are outside viewing the farolitos. The flickering lights combined with the ever present scent of burning pinon logs create a feast for the senses that could move the heart of Scrooge. Note that outside of Northern New Mexico the paper bag lights are called luminarias and the building of bonfires in the streets is frowned upon!

Many of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere are lighting up lights as well. The yearning for the light to return is an ancient and instinctual response crossing all religious and cultural boundaries. We may laugh at the thought of the Druids lighting fires on the hills to inveigle the sun to return and make the days longer, but we are still doing the same thing, lighting the darkness at the winter solstice.

So bring on the lights and drink a toast to the soon-to-return sun. Hope lives.

We had our first snowstorm of the season this week, and the snowsuit issue was raised once again. Some debacles can never be lived down.

Our son attended a preschool and kindergarten that was run by my best friend. She is an avid believer in getting kids outside in the snow with sleds and toboggans. So when the plows created massive snowy mountains around the edges of the school playground, she always took all the children out for some serious snow fun. This was forty years ago before all forms of kid fun were declared “not safe”.

I, in contrast, am a total snow wimp, despite my Wisconsin upbringing. My idea of enjoying the winter wonderland is to look at it through the window of my heated house with a cup of great coffee in hand.

When I dressed our son for winter, I did my best; a warm winter jacket with hood, yarn mittens, Sears “Toughskin” jeans and boots. I honestly thought he was well equipped.

Then came the end of his three years in the school. All the kids were asked their favorite memories and the teachers filled a wall with the reflections.

When I attended the graduation, I read my son’s words,”I liked playing in the snow the best, but my mother wouldn’t buy me a snowsuit.”

How was I to know that he should have had a waterproof one piece outfit that made him look like a Pillsbury Doughboy?

Our son has spent most of his adult life in San Diego, a place where snowsuits are a non issue. That is probably all my fault. I truly owe him one snowsuit, superfluous or not.

When something happy happens anywhere in the world, we can all share the joy.

I recently came across a small news item on my daily Dutch News computer site. “Rotterdam neighborhood pays tribute to prolific knitter,” the headline read. Starting in 1955, Loes Veenstra started knitting sweaters (jumpers). To date she has knitted 500 of them. None had ever been worn. Artist and designer Christien Meindertsma came across the sweaters, photographed them for a book and made a short celebratory film. The residents of Loes Veenstra’s neighborhood wear her vividly colored and patterned sweaters in the video as they pay her tribute. It is hard to view this vignette and not smile. (Link below)

As a small girl, I yearned to learn how to knit. My mother was not a practitioner of needle arts, so I asked my most patient grandmother to teach me. Despite her valiant efforts, I only created knots, tangles, dirty yarn and missed stitches. After hours of lessons, grandmother and I concluded that I was not destined to be a knitter. But to this day I tell my art students that “art is much more than painting. Art includes many creative endeavors such as music, dance, theater, graphic design, photography and needlework.”

Cheers to all of you who knit!

Video is here.

Now that Thanksgiving has past, it’s time to talk turkey. Quite simply, there wasn’t one. We gave the turkey a pardon. For the first time in 48 years, Tom did not grace our table.

Our family did have a traditional Thanksgiving feast with all the delicious fall foods; cranberries, sweet potatoes, squash, apples, pumpkin and more. I am a firm believer that traditions help us know who we are and where we have come from.

Our sans turkey day came about because of a phone call from our daughter. “We are coming over,” she said,”but you don’t have to make a turkey.”

My immediate reaction was one of joy….I love Thanksgiving and I love to cook, but I have never been fond of preparing those big, dead birds.

Our daughter’s reasoning was flawless. She and her spouse love turkey, fix them superbly and make several each year. But their daughter is a vegetarian, my husband has recently become anti-poultry because of the practices of corporate agriculture and I have always been uncomfortable with eating meat. Those of us who eat low on the food chain are starting to be the majority in the family. Note that we are not trying to convert others to our view. Humans do come equipped with teeth befitting omnivores, and most food involves something dying even if it is a lowly soybean.

The Tooley cats and the nighttime guests in The Tooley Cafe do not share our views on turkeys. In past years, the cats were euphoric as the turkey roasted. They seemed to be thinking,”You’ve finally got it: birds exist to be eaten by carnivores.”

The night animals outside always had a “beast feast” on the turkey carcass. Not wishing our cafe to lose its Michelin rating, we supplied hot dogs and miniature marshmallows along with sunflower seeds.  By the next morning, our guests had licked the ground clean.