My World of Wonders, aka, the Sunday Five

Where have I been?  The gym, the pool, a new Amazon Fresh Store, out to lunch, Aldi, a walk in Old Town Alexandria and the Library. 

Who have I talked with?  My sweet bear, the lifeguards at the pool, an editorial board, hmm, maybe I lead a dull life. 

What have I been planning?  A short trip to New York to visit friends later this fall. 

What have I been up to in the kitchen?  I made sweet and sour pork, with veggies and saffron rice. (When you are in Spain, buy saffron.) 

Where am I headed? Chicago to see my fellow wizards. 

What have I been reading? Dusted to Death - a murder mystery set in the garden district in New Orleans, and an unauthorized biography of Tony Bourdain.  I have finished reading 50 books so far this year. 

What am I going to do in my retirement? Catch up on my reading. 

What am I painting? A linear color study in metallic paints. All that Glitters May Be Gold. 

What's on Television?  There is more olympic coverage than anyone can watch, the CBS Sunday Morning show was good last weekend. 

My wish for the week? Good friends, good food, safe travels. 

Travel Tuesday: Geysir in Iceland

 

Monday Mood: Life is About Choices

We make choices in life, as long as we understand the consequences of our choices, as adults it is a human right to do so.  

I am always puzzled when people make choices that make them uncomfortable, frazzled,  or unhappy, when there were clearly other choices they could have made. 

At home, my bedroom, my space, is cluttered and dusty.  Not just a little dusty, but mostly dusty.  There are cobwebs along the bottom of the window.  I know that.  I know my mother would have felt compelled to dust, and clean.  She dusted and cleaned even when it was not needed, because you dusted once a week and vacuumed the floors a couple of times a week, every week, no matter how much you hated doing so, or how unhappy it made you. No one was forcing her to do so, my father never criticised her housekeeping, if anything in later years when her housekeeping came to resemble mine, he commented that the house was much more relaxed now. I chose to live with the dust, and go to the pool instead. The pool makes me happy, and that is my choice.  

40 years ago I showed up at the office in a wrinkled dress shirt, and caught hell from my boss for being a mess.  I started ironing shirts, I hated it.  It was a chore that took an hour a week, when I would have much sooner gone for a bike ride. There was a drycleaners and laundry on the corner with a sign in the window that advertised "executive shirt service" for 89-cents. I tentatively took in a couple of shirts.  They came back looking better than anything I could ever do.  Yes it cost $5 or $6 a week, but it freed up and hour to ride into downtown Orlando and back once a week.  I still don't iron.  I chose to pay for someone else to do something that made me unhappy.  They say money can't buy happiness, but it can free up time to do things that make you happy. I still send my dress shirts out to be washed, starched and ironed.  (I wear one or two a month these days.) 

When I was growing up on the farm we mowed over 5-acres of grass between the two houses, the farm buildings and the pond.  My grandfather's health started to fail when I was about 14, and the duty fell to me. Even with a small tractor to do the job, I hated it.  It was noisy, it made me sneeze endlessly.  After I moved away the mowed area dropped to about one acre.  When I built my first house, I bought a lawn mower.  I still hated it, but it kind of had to be done. About 3 years later, I hired the hippy-dippy lawn service to cut it. He did the lawns for our offices, and I was living in the community with one of the offices in it.  He did a great job, when we was out of jail.  And it freed me to do things I enjoyed, like go for a nice run. 

A lot of chores on people's have to do list, are not really essential to living well. Or could easily be done by someone else. If they don't bring you happiness, why do you do them? Can the chore be ignored? Can you get someone to do them? No one ever lays on their deathbed saying, I wish I had dusted and ironed more. 

The Sunday Five: Artsy

4th of July

Spring Bloom 

 1: Did you ever do "finger painting?" 

2: If you drew a picture of me, would I recognize myself in the image? 

3: Have you ever exhibited art that you created? 

4: Should a person continue to paint, even if they are not very good at it? 

5: How many shades of green are there around you? 

My answers: 

1: Did you ever do "finger painting?" As a first grade student in Phoenix Arizona in about 1965, on manila file folders. It must have made an impression for me to remember that decades later.  

2: If you drew a picture of me, would I recognize myself in the image? No. 

3: Have you ever exhibited art that you created? Back in the 1970s. 

4: Should a person continue to paint, even if they are not very good at it?  As long as they enjoy doing it, yes. 

5: How many shades of green are there around you? I am reminded of the astronomer Carl Sagan, billions and billions and billions. 

Please share your answers in the comments. 

The Saturday Morning Post: Istachatta Florida

Sometime in the late 1950's my grandparents started spending at least part of the winter in Florida. In 1961 or 1962 they bought a very small house that had just been completed in the fishing and railroad village of Istachatta, Florida.  The house was just a living room, bedroom, kitchen, two covered porches, and an outhouse.  Yes, a new house in the early 1960's without an indoor bathroom.  

Within a couple of years they had a bathroom built, closing in a side porch to do so, and had a carport added on.  They enclosed the front porch with windows. And they spent about 15 winters there.  

Istachatta is on a nice river, and hosting visiting fishing parties was a major part of the very local economy.  Canals from the Gulf of Mexico were only about a 20 minute drive away, offering saltwater fishing for a change of pace.  My grandfather loved fishing (and hunting.) My grandmother enjoyed getting away from cold snowy winters.  They had some wonderful friends there, played a lot of cards. Television reception was terrible, and cable TV was not an option.  So they spent many evenings playing cards with friends, and reading newspapers.  

It was their winter escape.  It fit their personality.  My grandfather had grown up in poverty. The house in Istachatta was comfortable and inexpensive (they paid less than $5,000 for it.) The house filled their needs with little excess.  

My family visited there a couple of times, the first time in the 60's when I was a toddler,  the second time in January of 1972.  I took this photo on that trip, my mother and grandmother standing in front of the house. I was in middle school.  My brother and I stayed down the street with friends of theirs, a retired school teacher.  

There was a tiny local general store, and post office.  It was fun to walk over and buy a Coca Cola, and listen to the locals.  Passenger rail service had stopped running, freight came through between the store and the riverfront "fish camp."  

My grandmother (on the right in the photo above) spent one winter there after my grandfather died, then sold it, bought a larger home on the east coast near my parent's last home. She remarked when she bought the house near the space center, that she had owned four homes in her adult life, and it was the first one that had an indoor toilet when she bought it.  

I did a Google search, the house is still there.  It has new siding, and air conditioning. But not much else appears to have changed. It looks good, my grandparents would be pleased.   

100 Ways to Slightly Improve Your Travel Experience: #16 Walk The Streets Before You Leave Home

Google has video taped millions of miles of streets and walkways. Going into street view allows me to virtually walk down the street in much of the western world. This is a remarkable tool, that has only been available for a couple of decades. Being able to do this on demand, was beyond the dreams of our parents.  

What am I looking for?  Traffic, parking, entrances and exits.  Restaurants, shops,  hotels, and attractions.  I can get a real feel for the place, long before I arrive there.  Knowledge of a few landmarks help me to navigate unfamiliar shores.  

The Thursday Ramble: Riding

I have vague memories of struggling to balance myself on  a bike, learning to ride on a tiny 20-inch childs bike. I remember thinking that getting half of me on each side was the key, then a fast roll down the slight slope of the gravel driveway and I realized that momentum is what keeps a bike upright.  

The little bike was bought for my sister to learn to ride on. Dad took the training wheels off when she started to ride well, and said it was too much trouble to put them back on when I was learning. He said I would get it soon enough, after a few spills on the gravel driveway.  Ultimately he was right, but I still thought it was cruel that she had the training wheels and I didn't.  

A couple of years later, a new full size bike came into my life.  It was ordered for my birthday, and Schwinn workers in Chicago went on strike and it was delayed.  It arrived a couple of months late, and it is red, instead of the blue I wanted.  I use "is" I still have it. It is old enough to be classified as an antique.  Air up the tires and it is still a joy to ride.   

My parents bought similar bikes for three of the four kids, I am the only one that somehow held onto mine.  When my middle brother and sister stopped riding theirs, my mother sold them. I insisted that I needed to keep mine.  It is secured in the storage room off the parking garage.  

When we started spending winters in Florida, I bought a ten-speed. The first one at K-Mart, and a couple of years later a much better one at a discount store that was going out of business.  I rode those back and forth to school in Florida, stored them in the summers they were not well suited to gravel roads in Michigan.  

After I moved to Orlando there was a long dry spell when I didn't ride much.  Then in my late 20's I lost a ton of weight, and started riding again.  After a while I bought a better 10-speed at a garage sale. 

A year or so later I bought a dream bike.  A Trek 1200 Aluminum.  At the time it was Trek's top of the line racing bike.  (The first Trek Carbon Fiber frame came out a few months later.) The Trek was built for speed. I remember shopping for a super fast bike, several bike shops tried to push me into something heavier and slower.  The shop I bought it from was honest, he said, "it is fast and can get away from you easily, work on it, build your skills, respect it and it will take you places you never thought you could go." He also taped his card and a quarter under the seat and said, if you get in trouble with it, call me and I will send someone to rescue you.  I never needed to make the call. I only laid it down once, a street that I thought was a through street that came to an end faster than I could stop. 

That bike took me to the nation sprint triathlon championships in 1989.  I passed Mike Pigg on the bike course.  I finished in the top 1/3rd of the field.  I was glad to be there, passing one of the fastest in the sport was a bonus.   

It hangs on the terrace.  I should part with it, but I don't want to. My ramble down memory lane on this Thursday.  

My World of Wonders, aka The Wednesday Ws Last of July 24th

Where have I been? Not much of anyplace, home, the gym, the pool, the farmers market, the library, dropped a donation off at the local animal shelter, a walk in a park, Aldi, and out to lunch on King Street. 

Who have I talked with? My sweet bear, John from upstairs, the lifeguard at the pool, my old office mates (a Zoom board meeting last week.) 

HoW is everyone doing?  My sister is recovering well.  Sweet Bear's oldest brother had open heart surgery last week and post op complications.  It is going to be a rough recovery, he is 83. 

What have I read? 32 Yolks, The Ideas that Made America. When I finish the current stack from the library, I will have read 50 books, my goal for 2024. 

What am I watching?  The Tour De France finished on Sunday, the Olympics start next weekend.  The Indy Car Race from Toronto (we will be in Toronto in August of 2025.) On YouTube: Billy at the Convent, an amazing renovation, Glen and Friends cooking, Photo Dude, Dude's best friend, and an remarkable expat in Japan. So far as broadcast television, the CBS Sunday Morning Show and 60-Minutes are about it.  

What am I listening to? Saturday afternoon, the sounds of silence.  I went to the pool, in a light rain. About ten minutes into 30 minutes of swimming laps, the power went out.  I heard it go, come back on, and go out again. Then it got quiet, really quiet.  I came back the house and had a hard time taking a nap, it was so quiet.  The power was out about an hour. 

Where am I going?  Chicago soon. 

What did I learn this week? The development of American English was intentional, an effort to create a unique identity though changes in spelling, definition and word usage.  We use the spelling, tires instead of tyres, color instead of colour, because of an intentional effort to create American English.  We say someone is in "the hospital" instead of someone is "in hospital" because of a difference in defining what article of speech "hospital" is.  Confusingly we have "ice cream," instead of "an ice cream." In a music or theater performance, we have an "intermission", as a break between parts of the show, instead of an "interval" a word we use to define a period of time. All of this is the result of an intentional effort by intellectuals in the late 1700's and early 1800's in North America, to define differences unique to the Americas. 

What is the strangest thing I have done this week?  Swimming in the rain. It wasn't raining when I went to the pool, a few minutes in, it started to rain.  I thought, oh my, I will get wet!!!!! It was actually very pleasant, the water is warm, maybe even warmer than the weather. 

What fun have I had in the kitchen? I made a peach pie, fresh peaches from the farmers market, Mary Berry's sweet crust pastry, a glaze made with a chopped peach, brandy, sugar and cornstarch. It set wonderfully, and the pastry is some of the best I have ever made. 

Time Travel Tuesday: A cooler day, January 3rd 2022

This was a very heavy wet snow, and many trees were damaged or destroyed by the weight. 

My little VW Convertible 

 

KAMALA! - A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

An Oldie, but A Goodie 

Monday Mood: Bit Shocked

A source told me early on Sunday that VP Harris was screening possible candidates for Vice President, then in the pool Sunday afternoon a neighbor broke the news to me that President Biden had withdrawn. 

It is a shock, but not a surprise.  His debate performance was abysmal, but then he has never been a strong public speaker.  There has been a lot of pressure on him to step aside. 

I worry that a dedicated public servant has been publicly hounded into retirement. The press and leaders in the Democratic party have been increasingly putting the pressure on him to withdraw.  I worry that the concern is ageist and not based on ability.  Older adults are often perceived as being less capable, just because of how we look and sound. Joe has never hidden his age, no fake hair, to spray tan, what you see is who he is.  But looks are not what get the job done. 

I Thank President Biden for his decades of public service, and wish him well.  I expect he will be a strong campaigner for the selected candidate.  

As John said in the pool Sunday afternoon, I would vote for Mickey Mouse if he was running against HeWhoShallNotBeNamed.     

The Sunday Five: Local Landmarks

1: What local institutions are you a member of? 

2: How much does it cost to enter local museums? 

3: Have you booked admission to a museum on your phone? 

4: Should there be more public support of museums and local landmarks? 

5: When was the last time you visited a museum or local landmark? 

My Answers:

1: What local institutions are you a member of? Mt. Vernon, and the Smithsonian 

2: How much does it cost to enter local museums?  The Smithsonian museums are all free, Mt Vernon is about $30 - I have guest passes if you are in the area and want to see Mt Vernon. 

3: Have you booked admission to a museum on your phone? Yes, I really don't like it, but I have done it. 

4: Should there be more public support of museums and local landmarks? Yes, the National Park Service especially struggles to maintain local landmarks. 

5: When was the last time you visited a museum or local landmark? About three weeks, it has been rather hot. 

Please share your answers in the comments. 

The Saturday Morning Post: Grandparents

 I was lucky as a child, I had a full complement of grandparents, both my maternal and paternal grandparents lived into my adulthood, and one of my great grandmothers lived into my young adulthood. She outlived my two grandfathers by a year.  

My paternal grandparents lived on the same farm, at least nine months out of the year.  They started snow-birding, going to Florida for the winters when I was a toddler. My father and his father ran the bee farm together.  He was born in west central Illinois, north of St. Louis and on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. He was one of a dozen kids, by the time he was born his father had spent through a trust fund, and landed on 80 acres of mediocre farmland that he had neither the ambition or knowledge to farm.  As a boy my grandfather spent summers working fields along the Mississippi River with horses and mules for 15-cents a day, his family needed the money.  When Ford advertised $5 a day, they sold the farm and moved to Detroit. Both my grandfather and his father, worked for Ford.  My grandfather as a machine setter, my great-grandfather in the power house at the Ford estate. My father's mother was born near Greenwich, England, and her family moved to the USA when she was a child.  Her father was digging tunnels in Detroit, and lived near where my grandfather's family did.  

They were bright people.  My grandfather had a grade school education, my grandmother was nearly a high school graduate.  Her mother was burned in a kitchen accident during her last year of high school and she never went back to finish.  They were industrious and careful with money.  Two fond memories of my grandfather, curling up with him in his big wing chair and watching Lawrence Welk when I was a little thing, and the day he quit driving.  I was helping my grandmother in the kitchen on a canning project and he went out to put his car in the garage.  He pulled forward and hit the wall on one side, backed up pulled forward and scraped the wall on the other side.  Backed up parked it, came in the kitchen dropped the keys on the counter and said, "if I can't get it in the garage, I shouldn't be driving it." A very wise man. He died a couple of years later.  I spent many hours in that kitchen helping my grandmother or just watching and talking. 

My mother's parents were complicated.  Both had grade school educations.  He was at heart a farmer of the old school, one of about 20 kids, he loved farming with horses or mules.  Her mother died from tuberculosis when she was a child (I only learned the cause a couple of years ago, it was a deep family secret.)  Her father remarried and started a second family and she never got over the loss.  She had a lot of emotional baggage from her childhood.  She married the first man who showed any interest in her so she could get out of the house.  The early years of their marriage were difficult, he worked on farms often for barely enough to live on.  My mother was a C-section at a time when any surgery was considered life and death. She never really recovered from the terror of that surgery.  My mother was an only child.  

Before I started school, he had an accident on the farm and broke a leg. While recovering from the broken leg, he had a heart attack. The doctors advised him to give up farming or plan a funeral.  (This was the early 1960's before bypass surgery and pacemakers.) They sold out, bought a travel trailer and a new pickup truck and started splitting the year between Michigan and Florida, with occasional fishing trips to Canada. On their way back and forth they would sometimes spend a few weeks parked on the farm, they spent a couple of summers parked on the farm.  They were a presence in and out of my life. They could be very welcoming or cold and prickly. Over the years I have learned about their path in life and probably better understand them now than then. 

Ah, the great grandmother.  My father's mother's mother lived with my grandparents for about a decade. For a few years she would winter with one of her sons, she spent one winter living with my aunt, and several winters in Florida with my grandparents.  She was born in Wales, moved to the USA as a young mother.  Had lived across the eastern half of the USA, from New York, to Chicago, and as far south as Memphis. She was nearly blind, and spent her days listening to the radio, and walking back and forth in the sun-room on the farmhouse. I would sit and listen with her and talk. She was an amazing story teller who had lived a fascinating life. 

My grandfathers died weeks apart when I was in high school, my great grandmother a year later.  My grandmothers lived on, one dying while I was in my early 30's, the other one the year after we moved to Kentucky. 

All five of them played a role in me, being who I am today.  I was so lucky to have them around. 

100 Tips to Slightly Improve Your Travel Experience #15 - Finding the Right Hotel

Novotel, Nimes, France 

 One of my little black books contains a list of every hotel I have stayed in since 2005, currently 729 hotel nights. Only a handful of them have a note "NEVER AGAIN!" next to them.  Meaning never stay there again.  I select and book most of them, some of them are selected based on a conference or meeting being there, a few times someone else was paying the bill and they selected the hotel. Hint, Medical Societies stay at really nice hotels, glad I was not paying the bill on a couple of those.  

The old saying in real estate is that the three most important things are location, location, and location also applies to hotels.  Start by understanding what you want to do, or see, or be near and then look for hotels based on that. How close you want to be, depends on where you are. Are you walking, taking public transit, taxis, or driving.  The closer you are the easier and less expensive it is to get to where you want to be. 

Read hotel reviews, with a critical eye.  There are some people who no one can satisfy, and some competing hotels write bad reviews.  For me numerous reviews about the property being in poor condition are a red flag.  Every hotel has a busy day, when half of the housekeeping staff calls in sick, and a party bus of noisy people check in.  I give those complaints less value, than comments about overall run down conditions.  

Look at the online listing.  Is there an elevator (lift.) Is there air conditioning (not as common in Europe?) Is there an onsite restaurant? Is breakfast included? What do the photos look like? The photos are going to show the best the hotel has to offer, and what the managers think is most important.  

Bring up the location in an online map and look at the aerial view, and street view. I missed this on one last year, and didn't realize that half of the rooms backed up to a very busy expressway.  Street view allows you to take a virtual walk around the block, if it looks scary online, it will be in person.  Are there shops and restaurants in the neighborhood? What does parking look like if you are driving?  

Look at the room layout and bedding options.  Book what you need to be comfortable, not what is cheapest and struggle to make it work.  

Lastly look at price.  Some hotels I dismiss out of hand as being beyond my budget. I have learned to dismiss the lowest price options, there is a reason why they are cheap.  

Interesting, price is the last criteria.  A cheap hotel, that is in the wrong location, or is cheap because it is a mess, is not a good value.  Not that I don't often have a price target in mind. I look for the best value on a nice hotel, in the place I want to be. 

A few hints.  Use a travel agency such as Orbitz, or Trivago to find potential hotels.  Then look at the hotel website.  If I can, I always book on the hotel website, rather than through an agency.  If there is a problem, or I need to make a change, the hotel can work with me more easily if I the reservation is made directly.  Sometimes when booked through an agency, all changes have to go through the agency.  

 

The Thursday Ramble: Something about this painting

The remnants of a tropical storm blew through last Friday, it was cool, only getting up to 82(f), with light rain. I took advantage of the day to take the train into the city for a walk.  It started to rain, so I went into the National Gallery of Art to walk.  I can walk in their for a couple of hours. Much of it remains constant, the sculpture changes little, the religious art changes little.  There was a new exhibition of photographs, that was hosting a press event and not open to the public. 

Up on the top floor there is a new exhibit of paintings from the renaissance. A lot of Dutch and Flemish masters, and England. And a room filled with masterworks from Florence in Italy. I like this stuff.  I remember the first time I encountered a wall full of it in the National Portrait Gallery in London back in 1990.  I sat down and stared for five minutes.  My soon to be ex, thought I had lost my mind.  On the contrary, I think I had found it.  

After walking for about an hour, I sat down for a few minutes on a very comfy grey leather chair.  I watched the people, and I spent a few minutes looking closely at the paintings around me. My style is usually to glance and walk, glance and walk, but not really linger of paintings. Sitting there I lingered.  

The painting above caught my eye.  It also caught the eye of other passers by who stopped to study, to read the curators notes, and stare some more.  It is a portrait of a Medici who was assassinated.  In all likelihood it was painted after his death. That explains some of it, but there is still something that looks strange.  To me, it looks like they painted his head on backwards, or his face on the back of his head with his hair over where his face should be.  Now maybe he was just a strange looking guy.  But the squareness of the shoulders, and lack of any shape in the torso, makes it look more like his back, than his front.  

My World of Wonders, aka The Wednesday Ws July 17th edition

What are my thoughts on Saturday evening in Pennsylvania? He missed! But how ugly politics have gotten, the overblown rhetoric lead by HWSNBN, has gotten us to new lows.  It feels like a banana republic, denial of election results, prosecution of politicians, inflamed rhetoric, blaming the other, leading to acts of violence. This is not who we are as a county.  I mistakenly paused on a "news" report and was appalled that no one is willing to tell HWSNBN that he needs to turn down the rhetoric a bit, he is destroying the country. Please don't miss on election day, every vote against He Who Shall Not Be Named (HWSNBN) is needed to send a message for him to crawl back into his cave and stay there. Don't think of it as voting for Joe, think of it as voting against HWSNBN and all of the ugliness he has brought out in the country.  

Where have I been this week?  Target for some shopping and to get out of the house.  The pharmacy. To get my hair cut.  Friday we had a cold spell, the high was only 82, I went into the City, and wandered in the National Gallery of Art for a couple of hours.  The farmers market. The pool.  

What have I been watching? The Tour de France, the past few years I have dreamed of being able to watch the live feed 5 to 6 hours each morning, and this year I can.  And Indy car racing, Iowa this past weekend, Detroit the weekend before.  

Who have a talked with?  Ana and Susan were in the pool with the two grandkids the other day, John a neighbor here in the building in the pool, Marcie who lives in building one in the pool.  My middle brother who called to update me on my sister's health.  

HoW is my sister doing?  The docs adjusted her medications, put her on a continuous blood pressure monitor and sent her home. The best they can figure, she was over medicated and her BP dropped way low.  She hit her head and neck in a nasty fall at home.  

What was my good deed for the week?  I checked the mail, and there was a key for a parcel locker.  The two boxes in the locker were for someone down the hall.  I could have left the boxes at the door to the mailroom and the postman would have re-delivered them. Instead I walked down the hall and dropped them at the door of the person they were for. She heard the boxes being placed and came to the door, and was so thankful.  She said she had been searching for the misdelivered packages, had reported them missing to the postal service and the shipper. It only took a couple of minutes to take the boxes to the right door, and it made someone's day. 

When is my next meeting?  I have a Zoom board meeting on Friday. 

Who deserves a slap this week? I had a slice of carrot cake at the National Gallery of Art last Friday. Some barbarians coated the outside for the frosting with flaked coconut. Coconut does not belong anywhere near carrot cake. 5 slaps out of 5 for poor taste. 

What is the photo above? The National Gallery of Art was built in the 1930's, the original elevators (lifts) were installed by Westinghouse, and these medallions are embedded in the floors. Westinghouse stopped building elevators and escalators decades ago. 

Travel Tuesday: Cleveland from the Water