Monday Moods:

A dear friend asked if life was really as "humdrum" as I make it sound.  Life can be stressful. I carry most stress and worry internally. After 34 odd years, Sweet Bear still has a hard time reading when I am down, or stressed. I know, but I don't show it. Maybe I learned to repress my feeling from my parents (they were a product of their upbringing.)   

I have spent years learning not to let stress get to me. Most of what we worry about either already has happened or never will happen. And the rest we often have limited control over. I do what I can, little things like VOTING, but the rest is fate. I am sure I will be surprised to wake up dead someday, but I know it will happen. I assume the stress will all end at that point. 

This is not to say I don't have opinions. Oh, I do. I was reading a policy paper the other day, and responded with the following comment, "we need affordable housing, not homeless concentration camps." In eight words, everyone knew how I felt about a current administration policy. 

I try to be kind to others. I send cards, and sometimes gifts. While it is nice to hear back, my real goal is to brighten the day of another person.  Kind of like a radio transmission, we send it out there, and hope that someone hears it. But often you never really know. 

On my blog I try to send out a positive message. To make someone's day just a little better. If I reach one person, it is mission accomplished. 

So yes, life is a bit stressful at the moment. Such is life. Bloom where you are planted. When the horn honks, maybe it is a comment on your looks and not your driving.  

The Sunday Five: Time Travel

 1: If you could go back in time, what advice would you have for your 20 year old self? 

2: If you could travel forward in time, what advice would you have for your 80 year old self? 

3: What grandparent would you most like to spend an hour talking with today? 

4: How do you cope with travel across time zones? 

5: Should we stop "daylight savings time" (shifting the clocks forward and back for summer and winter)? 

My answers: 

1: If you could go back in time, what advice would you have for your 20 year old self?  Be true to yourself, be honest with yourself. 

2: If you could travel forward in time, what advice would you have for your 80 year old self?  Relax, we are all going to die. 

3: What grandparent would you most like to spend an hour talking with today? My paternal Grandmother Emily.  

4: How do you cope with travel across time zones?  One or two hours, I do fine, longer shifts the first day I rest and relax. 

5: Should we stop "daylight savings time" (shifting the clocks forward and back for summer and winter)?  Yes, it is a silly. 

Please share your answers in the comments. 

The Saturday Morning Post: Halloween Day and Creativity

I have to admit, I have been a bit mystified by adults who are infatuated with Halloween.  In my journey to explore creativity this year, maybe I get it, maybe I understand why. 

Celebrating Halloween as an adult allows adults to do, say, and create things that break the rules of being an adult. They can dress in theatrical way, and not be seen as weird. They can decorate and be creative - there are few rules about what is an acceptable Halloween decoration - it allows adults to be comfortable being creative. It allows the freedom to be wicked, to be naughty, even a little devilish. 

Most of us, allow society's norms, to constrain our creativity. For some Halloween is an exception, they are free from the shackles of daily adult life, and can be as strange or weird as they want to be for a day or two. 

In our creative lives we need to give ourselves permission to be weird all of the time. Paint the weird painting, create a drawing that breaks all of the rules, sing off tune, write what you think, sentence fragments and offbeat punctuation, that reflect what flows out of your mind. We discover what we can do, by doing things that break the rules, things that ignore the norms. 

Use Halloween as the perfect excuse to be weird and offbeat, and treat every creative day as Halloween. 

Foodie Friday:Taming Grandma's Fire Water

 

A couple of years ago we were in the liquor store and Sweet Bear noticed bottles of Silivocia on the shelf.  He remembered his grandmother keeping bottles of this at hand, and drinking it. It is a plum brandy, this one is made in Croatia. It is unaged and 80 proof. 

I bought a bottle, and tried it. It will knock your socks off. I don't know if grandma downed it in shots or sipped it slowly, but either way she had to be one strong woman. It was relegated to the bottom shelf in the liquor cabinet for a couple of years. 

Recently I wondered if I could make something drinkable of it. Hmm? 

I decided to try cinnamon and sweetness. I had a bottle in the spice cabinet with three cinnamon sticks in it. You buy them, use one, and the others slowly get old. I dropped a couple of them in a small saucepan, added 3/4 of a cup of sugar and 3/4 of a cup of water, a dollop of corn syrup and put over a medium low heat. I dropped the remaining cinnamon stick in the half empty bottle of fire water. The corn syrup changes the molecular structure of the simple syrup, making it less likely to crystalize.  I heated and stirred a little until the sugar had dissolved, not quite to a boil.  I fished the cinnamon sticks out and dropped them in the bottle, and then funelled the sugar syrup into the bottle, capped and shook it up. I shook it a couple of times over the next 24 hours, then sampled a little bit. Oh my, it tastes like apple pie. It brings out the fruit in the brandy and adds that wonderful cinnamon bite on top. I shake it each day, it picks up just a little more flavor, and it is drinkable. And probably 60 proof.  I have tamed Granny's fire water.  

How good was it? It is all gone. 

The Thursday Ramble: A Glorious Cacophony

With the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts closed by the orange menace, the NSO sought out alternative venues.  Planning for a symphony season takes years, the NSO had mere months to scramble and try to find available venues around the area.  Ticket sales are a mess, with different venues using different ticketing sites, sadly there were a lot of empty seats in the hall last week. 

Two of the three works were from living composers, including one by the conductor Leonard Slatkin. It was wonderfully modern, mixing old school classical music, with thunderous modern percussion, and two harps on stage. The second piece was by a living woman composer, who was on stage to introduce the piece and then along with the brilliant saxophonist to play a brilliant encore. The final piece was old school classical. 

It was a wonderful show. It was nice to see many of the loyal patrons there, the old guy wearing jeans with the long whitebeard was in the middle of the second row, his favorite place, just like at Symphony Hall. 

I do hope that the NSO survives the displacement. Many symphonies are suspending seasons, or failing. The temper tantrum of a failing leader, has put the future of the NSO at risk. 

It would be a great loss to the world to lose the glorious cacophony of a yet another world class orchestra.  

My World of Wonders: October 29, 2026

Where have I been this week? The National Gallery of Art, Northern Virginia Community College performing arts center, the Farmers Market, a long walk, Dyke Marsh, the drug store, the library, Mt Vernon, another long was around the neighborhood. 

Who have a talk with this week? My sister, my sweet bear, Helga, 

What have I been thinking about this week? My oldest brother has cancer and is not doing well. He has largely isolated himself from the family for most of his adult life.  He is a complicated individual. I sincerely doubt he will survive this hospital stay. 

What artsy stuff am I up to? The current show comes down today, the new show goes up Friday. I have been doing all of the behind the scenes organizational things that this involves.  

What have I been reading? A so-so book on healthcare policy, an interesting book on Whisk(e)y, started a book about delivering mail in rural Virginia. 

Who deserves a slap this week? Anyone who thinks it is not worth their time to vote. In the USA, elections are lost based on turnout. If you are eligible to vote and you don't bother, five out of five slaps. Democracy not exercised, is democracy at risk. 

Thanks Debra

Who gets a hug this week? The musicians of the National Symphony for carrying on in the midst of chaos. I think we lost Oboe boy to the Pacific Northwest, I wish him well, he will be missed. 

What am I avoiding this week? Facebook for the most part, the political shitstorm is happening. I unfriended a high school classmate and decided that is enough. 

Travel Tuesday: Hawaii February 2015

The View from Lunch One Day

The North Shore

The night before I left for this trip, I discovered that my camera was broken, it had been in my messenger bag and had gotten crushed. These were all taken with a Samsung phone. It was an intense trip, five workshops, on four islands, in five days. A week of 14 hour days, in paradise.