a little red hen

Food thoughts mid-20th century...and now

How I wish some of the retirement "authorities" would talk about the hidden danger of too much time on our hands.  Especially parents, now grandparents.

Guilt runs amook.  On the other hand, on a more upbeat note, I've explored the  possibilities for latelife shifts as we head toward the last frontier.  One that may last longer than we once thought.  Personally, ten years ago an expiration date of 80 felt like enough.  Approaching that marker, I now want to push it ahead.

 What does this have to do with "food" and "retirement" you might reasonably ask.

  Eating and preparation of meals has changed dramatically since we moved to Portland less than two years ago.   The local food culture, the emphasis on locavorism, has been a ethic easy  to pursue while not so much in New York City.

Cooking classes at Bob's Red Mill have been far more accessible moneywise/timewise/accessibilitywise than in our former home.Many, many farmers' markets and thoughtful vendors.  And some years back, strolling through the bountiful magazine section at Powell's Books, I discovered Gastronomica, the journal of food and culture--another link?

All roads appear to lead to Portland but is there more, some kind of epiphany-not-noticed encountered after 75?  Food is something that everyone  will talk about:  the latest restaurant someone's discovered, intense color of kale in the local market, less meat consumption, quinoa and how to pronounce correctly.  

With the help of Jeanne P, another  quite food enthusiast and native Oregonian, a new group was begun where we live in June 2010.  "Food for Thought" (FFT) we named it.

Georgia V, a resident, agreed to talk about how she came to write three cookbooks with two others working with her at the local Kitchen Kaboodle.  Here's Georgia, left in photo, at the first of a series of Potlucks, an additional food-focus event, that were an outcrop from FFT.

The monthly FFT  discussions have ranged from "Cooking for One or Two" to reflections by Joyce H, a 92 year old resident, a WWII Wave officer who became a Home Ec teacher in 1947 in the Portland Public Schools.  Titled "Home Ec:  What Martha Stewart Learned," the session included this 1955 YouTube, a 1955 film, "Why Study Home Economics?"   

When I first watched it, seemed quaint.  Then I reconsidered and find it very sound.  Except for that tired notion of preparation for wifehood, there's more about careers and personal relationships.  We need to bring it back to middle schools with a re-configured curriculum that includes material  about  housing.  In the 1980s, I used an excellent text, Self, Space & Shelter by Patricia J. Thompson,  a feminist home economist, for an Urban Housing  class at Morgan State in Baltimore.  Sadly, my copy was lost in transition and is out of print--and the course is no longer offered.

 

"Now You've Pissed Off Grandma," message for our crowd

Saw this on TGB. She found this stand-up, red-coated woman and her sign in the coverage of protests in Madison, Wisconsin this past weekend.

If I knew how to do it, would love to place as a permanent reminder on my sidebar. 

"Grandma," in my perspective is   all us little red hens and our leader, Mother Nature.

Union of Human Beings

Looks as if someone posted this on a telephone pole.  It was on Kay's Thinking Cap. 

Wish I could read the copy at the bottom...writing her to find out where she saw it.

You could post it too--in solidarity with these brave people.

UPDATE:  Rally in Salem, Oregon. Saturday, February 26...locations elsewhere at US Uncut.

 

Did YOU put me on the wacky doctor's list?

It was an odd morning, changing hour to hour.  Mt. Hood glimpsed at its glorious best.   The news internationally seemed promising from Egypt--until it was not. Then a dark thought, I turned to  spouse,

"You don't think the crazed Tea Party people will think, 'Those foreign Egyptians can do it, so why not us true Americans, the best, most patriotic, the righteous Americans."

I checked my email. Okay, Credo Action wants me to sign a petition to have Clarence Thomas recuse himself... locally Montavilla Farmers' Market in Southeast PDX is having final winter stock-up market...but what about this other one?

Big as life, right in the inbox, not my Spam filter, I had an email from this strange congressman, Ron Paul.  About his Revolution. How?  Why?  To all Elderbloggers?  Or did he get hold of a Social Security file, a Medicare data base? [Enlarge image to get full impact.]

Please advise:  If I choose "UNSUBSCRIBE," at the bottom of Paul's page,  does my name go on an ENEMIES list (not to be confused with the right wing's fiction about a current enemies list kept by Obama)? 

This really scares me.

WACKINESS UPDATE :  Saturday afternoon, 2/12/11

Marked the doctor's email as SPAM this morning.  Checking my spam box (always do this because sometimes real messages get caught), discovered a new one from him, "I have not heard from you," in the subject line.   Are we speed-dating?  

Truly weirder:  I could not open it!  A call to join Wimmins Auxiliary for his revolution?  By the way, only commenter here who also received that first messaage, also lives in Portland. Maybe the mailer got hold of Michael Munk's mail list.  He wrote The Portland Red Guide (includes maps, walking tours), sends me count of latest fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It's a different sort of revolution my people envision.

Cartopia Dinner with Zach

Thinking over why food carts, the outdoor food art-form here that I admire but do not engage with often.  It may be   they require the  stand-up-to-eat pose.   I'm similarly disinclined toward buffet dinners, cocktail parties.  Not much of a casual eater, I want a chair/bench and table!

We had found a place with great middle eastern food around 6th and Broadway (across from a Kettleman's bakery) but it disappeared.  We'd buy the very ample dish in the afternoon and take it home for dinner.

Between our place (it may be known as the  "West Hills") and our daughter's house in Hawthorne, there's a collection of carts known as Cartopia with benches protected by tents.  I learned their proper name not from a sign (maybe there is one) but a massive fact-stuffed blog, Food Carts: Portland. Driving home  around 11 p.m. after baby-sitting, we'd see all this action as we turned the corner from Hawthorne onto  12th.  All lit up, many young people.  What were we missing...we found out when  we visited closer to our old-fashioned foodtime, 6 p.m. 

El Bracero, a Mexican place, is the early bird opener, in fact hardly closed.  We've stopped by for delicious  vegetarian burritos--just one big enough to share.  A little later the Belgian fries cart,  Potato Champion with its Poutines via Canada, comes alive...excellent not-so-good-for-you food but you gotta do something risky once in a while.  And choices of things  to decorate the greasy things.

 I favor the remoulade but you might prefer rosemary truffle ketsup.

Knowing our grandson Zach is a burrito fan who loves to eat out, we took him there one mild evening.  Other families with kids are always part of the mix in the early hours.  But the pizza cart got his attention first.

 The fries worked for him too. He was very interested in the crepe-making (huge productions) at Perriera.  Turned out he'd had one recently and mentioned that the milkshakes were very good too.  What could we say?  We took two very, very rich Girardelli chocolate ones home to his Mom and Dad (his sisters were in bed) and split them among the five of us.

You could call our particular adventure Portland Cart-lite.  We have yet to try some of the other places at Cartopia.  One very decorated one, Yarp with its long message of mission, comes to life  after 8 p.m.  Of course, this scene is not here for our crowd; we are the outsiders and they are very polite in an offhand way.

Welcome to Portland, Oregon, Ronni & Ollie! 

NASHVILLE: How you can help in flood's wake

 One of the most satisfying aspects of blogging is making connections with people who support some of your more adventurous efforts and also live in places you might never visit.  That's the case with my friend the south, Rachel Walden in Nashville, Tennessee.  She posts both at her own site, Women's Health News and Our Bodies Ourselves.

Our virtual friendship must go back about three years, early in my bloglife.  Recently I mentioned her in connection with our shared alma mater, Oberlin, and the Condom Amulet created to honor it--so to speak.

Rachel is a medical librarian in Nashville.  I'm hoping that libraries there have mostly survived the recent flood.  These institutions took a terrible hit in New Orleans as a result of Katrina.   She has linked to this very thorough site for How To Help Nashville.  Those who live nearby can find many ways to contribute time--and others of us can post blogs reminding our readers about needs in the city--and organizations that need contributions for the service they are providing.

New Fridge and Immigration Madness

 Oh, there she goes again.  I hear you but can you blame me for trying a new way to get your attention?  Done it before and will do it again because older people, Elderbloggers, seniors, geezers--whatever you want to call us-- need to add immigration reform to the list of issues that need our attention as much as healthcare. 

And the fridge news?  A recent post at Time Goes By (moving to Portland, Oregon, next month) brought a comment from My Mom's Blog that she definitely should get a refrigerator with a bottom freezer.   Millie is so correct.  We've been bumping our heads on the 1980s model that came with our new apartment.  We like the way the door is a slide-out drawer.  We'd had a side-by-side in New York but no room for that here.

Much looking around and voila!  Sears has a perfect Kenmore to fit our 30-inch space; love the cheese drawer, easy temp controls.  Had to take out a cabinet to get the height but no loss since it's just about unreachable.  And what was it that we had up there anyway?  I do miss my former glass-front Ikea cabinets.  But that's the past and in this present the important issues are treating one another like human beings.

Which brings me back to immigration madness.  How sorry I feel for Darlene, Elderblogger with progressive leanings who lives in Arizona, home of the Hispanic haters, and God knows what else that does not belong in a democracy.  She posts in more detail under the title,  Arizona's Shame.  The majority of people there appear lacking in morality with their latest move to make it a state crime--in less than three months from now-- to be an undocumented immigrant  in Arizona.

Morality aside, for those that can go there, how do they imagine their infrastructure will work without all the workers from across the borders.  Like the two excellent movers who seamlessly delivered our new fridge and took the old one away.  Spoke very good English too.

Boycott Arizona (link is to the number one Hispanic website, Hispanic News)  is the only thing that may stop clueless, vicious Arizonans.  Today I had lunch with my new friend, Elizabeth, who lives in the apartment right under mine.  With her family she had to leave Austria in the late 1930s.  They went to Mexico, were not able to come here till 1950.  Perhaps many readers here have forgotten that the U.S. would not open its doors to Jews trying to leave Europe: 190,00 000 - 200 000 Jews could have been saved.

There are stories in all American families about what it was like to be the first immigrant Irish, Italians, Japapanese, Roumanians....where does it end?  We are all immigrants, many of our forebears came here legally.  But it did not matter to many who'd had some years to Americanize. We need to get it together around just what it means to be American whether you speak "perfect" English or still have a Latino accent.

***UPDATE:  Saturday, May One, there will be a May Day Rally in downtown Portland, Oregon. 

Hattie's Web arrives in real time...

Last night Marianna, of Hattie's Web, and I had our third Portland encounter.  This time, however, she and spouse Terry could visit us as voting Rose City residents.  No more Powell's or Pearl Bakery--lovely as those sites are.  Ron and I revealed life in a retirement community, Dagen/Bloom style.

It has been a very, very hectic week.  After dropping out for a bit for low level illness, I'm back to Water Aerobics twice a week, with the glamour of my new bathing suit (partial view)--a tankini as Marianna once suggested from her superior experience as a water baby in Hawaii.

Tuesday school started again at Portland State--two classes back to back.  The quarter system is more intense than the semester one of my past; two hour sessions with no break.  And there's Blackboard to learn--more life in the electronics lane.  When the men separated from the women last night, Ron tells me that Terry was intrigued by this online approach to class readings and assignments. Thursday much cooking for a delayed Seder, first time for us, at our daughter's.

Marianna showed me her much-loved Kindle and I countered with a favorite old book, the beautifully illustrated temperance autobiography, Frances E. Willard's Glimpses of Fifty Years, published in 1889.  This is a good a time to begin my long-planned project of writing about the temperance movement and its contemporary relevance.  [We enjoyed a bottle of Beaujolais-Villages brought by our guests.]  As I pointed out, Willard was known to drink a little wine. That's the true meaning of temperance,  a concept with little currency in the U.S.

We talked about making changes to blogs over time--whether they are a very new concept that will continue to evolve stylistically or on their way out as some recent reports claim.  Marianna has recently changed her blog's look--impressive effort.  When I said my instinct is to write more about food, her right eyebrow raised.  I sensedalarm in her plea, "Please don't become a foodie blog!"  Ah, I answered, you must read The Blog that Ate Manhattan (doctor who cooks and talks about women's health) and another with much more than recipes,  A Chicken in Every Granny Cart.

Using her Kindle, Marianna attempted to alter my recent dismissive attitude toward Michael Berube's writing, expressed in a comment at Hattie's Web.  I warmed to his idea that the CIA influenced European attitudes about American art produced during the years of the cold war.  But he goes on too much in a certain academic style that is very familiar to me.  

   Attempting to memorialize our evening, we passed around cameras.   Marianna models one of Ron's growing collection of knit hats and inspects my latest knitting pattern for an elephant toy...the two Elderbloggers examine my lost art of neckpiece-making and demonstrate the lost art of  talking with hands sans electronic objects...the men explore nuances of Yiddish vis a vis German.  It's unlikely we will get to Hawaii but  I forgot to mention this idea--that we meet up on Marianna's  next Seattle trip with that other blogger/thinker/grandma, 20th Century Woman, who like me admires chickens (scroll down).

Super Bawl* Sunday: Ads a Feminist Could Support

Much chatter* about this year's TV ads accompanying today's football event, the yearly display of testosterone with accompanying rise in spouse abuse.  Women's Media Center has coordinated shout-outs to  CBS to dump the ad.  And been ignored.  Everything more you'd want to know appears in the blog,  The Reclusive Leftist.  She rightly nails patriarchy as the true source of the problem.

For image, I offer one  saved on my desktop for a couple of years--a poster on bus kiosk around New York City.   I'd support variations on it year round.  Living closer to the ground, so to speak, these days in Portland, Oregon,  I now start the day with the  local Oregonian delivered to my door in contrast to the national NY Times (read later when picked up at the front desk of my retirement community).

Locally Portland would seem to harbour more women abusers than back east (I doubt this) because the "small" incidents here are reported by the media.   In NYC only prominent men receive notice by journalists.  Coast to coast, however, they are always lightly punished. 

Writing to promote the "Geezers' Crusade" , David Brooks on the Op-Ed page of the Times, wants us to do more on behalf of younger people.  Would he support a movement by older people that demands  more visible signs of respect for women in every American city--bold ones like this poster? 

Could it happen in  your city?

What I Did NOT Wear...till Portland

Have you read "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" by Ilene Beckerman?  An east coast woman, middle class child of the 1940s/50s, she speaks to how we once thought about clothes.  Her New York City life was much tidier, more elegant than mine yet there's a resonance.  Similar to the sense I've always had when meeting Jewish women around my age in different cities:  a vibe, often brief, that we share until I learn she's a Republican.

"I wore this black bathing suit when I went to Florida with my grandmother.  I was fourteen," Ilene reports.  The drawing on the facing page--I wish that were a skill of mine--tells me more.  While I never had a Florida grandma nor a black bathing suit till now, the pose is familiar.  Second position, the one we learned in ballet class.  That came along with the expected piano lessons that other first generation Jewish mothers like mine understood as required for our upwardness in America. 

Here then is my first black bathing suit.  Bought it maybe 15 years ago to wear to the beach, a place enjoyed by the rest of my family.  I have a purple one that is equally sensible and unused.

On our 1970s and 80s summer  vacations in Cape May, New Jersey, or on Cape Cod, I was comfortable under our generous green and white striped umbrella with my knitting.  Sometimes Ron coaxed me into the salt water which I reluctantly admitted enjoying.  He had been a lifeguard at Coney Island in his youth.  At the same time, after years of summer camp and beginner swim class, I was a day camp counselor (no water required) in St. Louis.

Yet, this very month I have dipped my toes in the excellent warm water of the pool at Terwilliger Plaza.  Four times so far in "Gentle Water Aerobics."  Chlorine not too strong.  Still have to master/mistress the dressing room thing.  Afterwards I put in some minutes on the treadmill, conveniently located on the way back to our apartment.

The first time into the pool, I recalled a suggestion sent me by Hattie when I mentioned my reluctance to take the water.   She likes trim Land's End  ladies' swim suits minus the skirt.  That would be my nod to the 21st century and thinking beyond how black makes me look thinner.  After diving into color and pattern in my Baltimore life, going back to New York City edged me toward, as Ilene B. would say, "...black is always chic--and makes shopping choices much easier."  Third stage retirement requires shifting...more to follow.

I'm not in Manhattan any more.