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.

My sympathy to all of you who will be taking a domestic flight to be with your family and Thanksgiving feast. Have fortitude, a terrific book and a brown bag lunch.

On our last trip, the flight attendant started out by announcing,”you can get an extra five inches of legroom for only $20.00.”  No one on the plane booed, laughed or took the guy up on his offer.

In case you haven’t flown lately, air travel is the last frontier of marketing to a captive audience. It is also a case study on how not to give customer service.

My husband has often joked that it’s a good thing I didn’t pursue a career in marketing as my creative energies would be used for diabolical purposes. That flight attendant spurred me to dreaming up all the revenue possibilities the airlines have missed, a nice mental exercise as I was crammed into my steerage section seat for four hours.

Consider that armrest between you and your fellow passenger. For only $2.50 it will come down to assure your minuscule space cannot be encroached. Want to read a book on your long flight? $3.00 will turn on the overhead light. The space under the seat in front of you is all yours for a mere $10.00. For $1.00 per cubic inch you can rent a handy overhead bin.

While congregating near a lavatory is strictly forbidden, you may have the misfortune of having to use one. Bring your credit card with you and it will open the locked door for a fee of $7.47. Soap, paper towels and toilet paper will be available from the handy vending machine inside.

Breaking news! If your weight meets the airline standards and you fork over $200.00, you qualify for a seat in the new skinny section.

Be forewarned…your airline purchases cannot be bought with cash. Need coins for the bathroom vending machines? Don’t even dream of asking your flight attendant for change. None of them will touch the filthy stuff: these airline folks don’t know the meaning of the words “legal tender”. You can easily die of thirst or hunger if you don’t have a credit card.

This blog comes with a warning: Do not forward to anyone even remotely connected to the airline industry.

Thanks to my husband, we have become trackers. I am not referring to the deer and goose tracks on the beach or the possum, skunk, raccoon and myriad other tracks in our yard. No, we are now official trackers of ships, and our reporting number is 1080.

Last spring my spouse climbed to the peak of our steep roof and installed his absolutely free ship tracking antennae, thus making us an official reporting site for the University of the Aegean in Greece which maps global shipping.

We  report on ships in Lake Michigan that are in our range and sending out radio signals. Thanks to the Saint Lawrence Seaway which connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, ships registered around the world regularly pass through our “front yard”.

Then my guy had another brilliant inspiration and started writing a computer program. “You’ll love this, Mary,” he beamed. “My cell phone will now ring every time a ship is in front of our house.” Since November is prime boat time in the Great Lakes, the phone started ringing around the clock and the cell phone bill started soaring. The program has subsequently been modified to notify the computer.

Our tracking station has a good record, online 89% of the time. Our cat, Batman, did, however, interrupt our ship reporting for a while. We discovered he was jumping up in the basement rafters where the antennae wire comes into the house and taking us offline. We gave him a lecture on Homeland Security and closed up his access to the wires.

Check out the worldwide Marine site at http://www.marinetraffic.com. Click on the ship icons to get a photo, name, destination, etc.