a little red hen

Chinese New Year greetings: John Fu & Warren Buffett

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning's email brought a dramatic, red, Chinese New Year greeting from John Fu in Copenhagen.  He was a college student when we met in Xian, China eleven years ago.  Determined to get his next degree in the English-speaking world (he was a proficient translator in 2000),  he got his MBA in Denmark where he now lives and works as a business consultant.  We had hilarious experiences with Chinese government officials he helped me to interview in Xian.  I wanted to know how they were dealing with garbage issues. Did they have a problem?  Mayo, as they say in Chinese.

As we sat in a cab on our way to Xian officialdom,  John asked what was in my backpack.  Unzipping the green bag, I pulled out the world's smallest kitchen composter and a red knit worm to explain my kitchen composting mission.  "Oh, so this is your religion," was his insightful reply.*

Dedicated capitalist that he is, John will surely be delighted to be headlined with Warren Buffett performing at a charity fund-raiser.  If you can read Mandarin, let me know how the translation works.  When I went to YouTube for the embed code, I found such ugly, racist comments!  Opened another window on why the U.S. is in deep stuff politically and socially.  Of course, you already knew everything about that from at weeks of the Republican side-show that dominates every TV news program. 

But I digress.  Busha Full of Grace raised my consciousness about the Year of the Dragon.  Currently this spunky, knitting Grandma is nanny to a Chinese family. To expand her knowledge of the celebration, her search led to the ten important facts she posted.   "No sitting in a bedroom" knocked me out;  Number 10, "Songbirds are Good," was more expected.

                                                         ****************************************

*To honor my "religion," John Fu had a chop mark made  with "compost"  in Mandarin.    For "This Dirt Museum: The Ladies' Room," my 2001 installation, I  enlarged the image,  added the word in Spanish. It had a prominent spot in the show and still hangs in our apartment.  Shown here with a few of the 150 red worm interpretations I knit for the exhibition.  [You too can have a chop; order here.]

Though amused by the idea that my intense practice of transforming  kitchen green waste into a useful, earth-enhancing amendment might be considered highly spiritual, perhaps a "religion," John's response has grown on me.

When we moved to our retirement community, a woman in the mail room invited me to join the Green Team.  What a vintage designation my NYC self thought.  Not that at all I discovered.

 We now live in Portland, Oregon, sustainability-intense city where you never forget your reusable grocery bag.  [See latest "Portlandia" episode.]  Once again we kitchen compost.  I am very involved in encouraging neighbors to do likewise.  No longer do red wigglers in our living room transform the stuff, but the intention is the same.

 

New York's deep history shaped by the rich

Why is it that I have to be reminded that New York City has always been shaped by the rich?  Those highly entrepreneurial Dutch settlers who pulled a fast one, actually many, many fast ones on the Lenape Indians, brought slavery to what they called "New Netherlands," but were eventually outsmarted by the English, and you know the rest of the story.

[Not a history blog here, just a Little Red Hen resource provider.  Read Kenneth Jackson's Encyclopedia of New York, for a left-of-center view there's Eric Foner on life among the working classes, when you're in the City, do a walking tour with Big Onion.]

Our son and his spouse suggest places we can visit while enjoying their Roxie.  On we went to another of the Historic Hudson Valley sites. Last visit it was Sunnyside, mid-19th century home of the writer, Washington Irving in Tarrytown/Irvington.  Roxie was a trouper as we stood near the Hudson, then squeezed into the small house with other tourists.

This time with better weather, it was Phillipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow and earlier years-- around 1750.  As we stood in the house, our tour guide explained that we were not really in someone's home.  Maybe a faux home would be a better description; the Phillips, an Anglo-Dutch family spent their time in Manhattan on Pearl Street.  This was their office, so to speak, where they conducted their extensive farming, milling, and trading business.

How much property did this successful family own? Though we were told on the tour, these details are not on the official site but were noted at TravelLady magazine (filled with more detail about how the place operated, who worked where).   52,000 acres from northern Manhattan to Croton.  Their holdings included 23 African slaves.  [The Rockefeller estate is nearby.] One of the impressive aspects of our tour was that we were told these facts by our guide, told what were the kinds of jobs done by tenant farmers who had to be trusted by their distant employers and, of course, slaves and who were unble to barter for freedom.  Detailed information on slavery at the manor on this video.

Unlike TravelLady whose visit was in 2007, we were at the Manor after the ruinous storms and flooding of Hurricance Irene in August.  At her site are photos of the Grist Mill when it was in operation, producing flour.  No longer; it will take a new round of fund-raising to fix it.  Natural disaster must have occurred in earlier centuries. I wonders how this changed things:  local people laid off, slaves sold?

Along with Roxie, I was intrigued with this gourd container and the corn cob  wrapped with twine to create a stopper for it. 

Thanks to our first guide at the manor house whom we asked about her shawl (handwoven there), we were directed to another guide, also informative, the fiber expert.  In the photo, she is explaining the origin on the farm of each color in her coat.  Roxie proved adept at carding and rolling wool into rolags.  We thought she'd been here before but, no, her parents said... maybe another nursery school adventure.

With all the sights and sounds in the afternoon,  the variety of beans --and their names--(Roxie took home a black and white soldier bean), being able to touch the cheese in hardening stages, sheep roaming about, it was something we did not catch on camera that happened very fast just after this cow was led to the barn.  A farm cat rushed past us, climbed quickly up a tree, rushed to the ground with a baby squirrel in his mouth.  In seconds he/she began to eat.  Ron was fascinated; Roxie missed it and was taken with the excitement of onlookers. 

If we visit again in April, we might be able to  see a "Sheep to Shawl" festival at Phillipsburg.  The link, to a 2009 event, shows the traditional border collie sheep run held at many wool fairs and Manor guides enacting slaves.  The costumed staff added a great deal to my experience, help to move me back in time.  Made me wonder what it would have been like if I'd been costumed when I was a docent at the Tenement Museum on New York City's lower east side.  A simpler setting in 1997 than now, the choices might have included myself as an immigrant German Jewish widow in 1860s, orthodox Jewish woman post World War I, or early 1930s first generation Italian housewife. 

With all my political and moral critiques  of the rich in America and what they have done/are doing to our lives, I am grateful that we had another wonderful afternoon with Roxie--thanks to the enormously wealthy people who decided to provide this connection to our pasts in New York.  It is an ambivalent life.

Early Autumn in New York with Roxie

It was mid-September when we reached New York--weather as unpredictable as Portland.  But not our Roxie: darling as on Skype with her newly cut long hair-- and our last realtime encounter in December.  And more verbal, "Look, Daddy, Grandma made me a shrug!" 

She shared her preferences with us.   Lunch in Tarrytown required the companion doll, one of those awful pink princess objects all the rage with contemporary little girls on both coasts and in between.  The Disney triumph.

Pink shoes too.  Roxie does include purple in her color range.   As the 1970s Mom who hyper-consciously did not dress my daughter and son in "those colors," even as babies, all the pinkness makes me sad.  Is this what is meant by "be careful what you wish for"?  Or proof once again that advertising and commerce rule in America and tiny social movements like the one by women change some things but resist who controls how clothes designers regard women and girls.

Along with our own dinner-for-the-flight, we'd brought along Ron's rooftop "portrait tomato" the one that elicited a wonderful range of blog commenters recently.  As we were describing it to her parents, Roxie declared, "I love tomatoes!" and transformed it into an ordinary tomato.

Here's the consequence of  her vegetable enthusiasm.  Because we saw a similar tomato from another home garden in Portland (New Seasons would never put one like this on their shelves), I speculate it is a Northwest phenomenon.  Have you spotted them elsewhere outside the PDX "keeping it weird" area?

Roxie also is a careful observer of the natural world.  She called our attention to  the glorious sunsets over the Hudson River from their balcony. Hard to resist taking photos.  At 4.5 years our New York granddaughter has already learned to do the same from her mother whose own mother was an accomplished photographer.

Seattle, bigger city in the Wild West

Readers of Hattie's Web will know that the traveling grandparents convened in that bigger place than Portland.  We learned of a certain self-consciousness here in Rose City about that home of Microsoft--faster cars, bigger museum, more famous sites (Bill Gates' home, Pike's Place).  Our former home in Baltimore was kind of that sort, second city to Washington, D.C. (until its murder rate soared).   

But now, Portland, Oregon, is firmly on the map of the cognescenti.  Began with anointment by the New York Times in very regular stories--food, music, sustainability awareness.  It seems to have reached its apotheosis with the new IFC series, "Portlandia." In the interest of "real reporting," that stuff political blogsites claim we'll get when print disappears, I was going to watch the entire first program.  Too elusive (had to sign in and thought I'd be tempted to leave a comment), so chose this one about a feminist bookstore.  Watching this scene sent me down memory lane to Baltimore in the 1970s.   John Waters, the filmmaker, gay man whose movies have put funky Baltimore on the map, plays a straight guy here.  Could have been the long-gone feminist bookstore, 31st Books in Balto.  For a moment in time, yours truly was the token straight woman on their board.  [Never, never agree to be "the one."]  And I'm embarrassed to confess, swept up in the fervor of those promising days, outfitted in my Indian blouse/jeans/cowboy boots,  I stood behind the counter and indicated to the man standing before me that he was someplace he was not welcome.  The fervor remains; the behavior is mellower.

But why?  Because 90 per cent of me no longer believes that I can be an agent of change in troubled, patriarchal American society.  On the drive to Seattle, we listened to a program on Canadian broadcast about competition among young girls, bullying,  and its effect on their grown-up lives.  If you have granddaughters, "It's a Teen World" could be startling--unless you know it already.  [I've only heard the first of the three so far.]

Seeing Marianna and Terry in suburban Seattle was delightful as always.  We treasure those few with whom we can have intense conversations about ideas.  And we laugh a lot thanks to Marianna.  This trip she walked us to closeby Ballard Locks.  Always entranced by both rolling and still waters, the views in the dying light were perfect.  And keeping up with Marianna's stride was a boost to the body's system--10,000 steps that day on my pedometer.

Yes, as M reported, we saw "True Grit" in a vintage movie house filled on a Saturday night.  Ron had been wanting to see it perhaps as a remembrance of all those many, many boyhood hours in a Brooklyn movie house known as "the Dump."  Among us, I was the one who unequivocally hated the whole thing:  violence through guns and fists and attitudes toward women.  Why wasn't the sheriff impressed with the 14 year old heroine's determination?  Why do I ask questions unrelated to screen fantasy?  Announced this was the final western I'd ever see! The only ones I can recall from the past-- unlike my spouse's rich repetoire--are odd ones from the 20th century, "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "High Noon."  On "True Grit" Stuart Klawans nails it in The Nation:

"...the experience cancels itself even as you watch, given the indifferent curiosity with which Joel and Ethan Coen call up and then skim over the themes that have long haunted the western, as if they were mere outmoded superstitions to be ticked off a list. Finally the Coens have achieved the goal toward which their cinema has always tended: a perfect void."

Being resident now in the northwest, I'd like to shift away from my narrow view, much like that famous magazine cover,  "New Yorker's idea of the United States."  But it's hard, people, when Utah may have an official state gun by the time you read this.

Knitting Catch-up: our very different styles

Carried my latest big project, another more complex vest, on our December trip to New York.  Very cold--this before the big blizzard--so had taken two scarves.  Put small extra (always prepared to shiver) around Roxie's little neck.  She liked that:  Grandma's scarf.

Should I make one for her?  She liked that too.  On our only day in Manhattan, our first stop was a sentimental one at Knitty City.  Crowded before Xmas with many customers, big beginner's class.  "Naomi Bloom!" Pearl Chin shouted as I was enveloped in a hug, "Where's Ron?"  He arrived soon, triumphant at finding a parking spot.  About to celebrate its 5th year on the upper west side, it seems Ron and I spent many years at this very special neighborhood store.  Bought soft purple yarn for Roxie scarf (second-best little girl color after pink).

Kay Gardiner famous via the Mason-Dixon knitting blog arrived for three of us to do lunch at Hampton Chutney Co., Amsterdam and 82nd.  She introduced us to Dosas and was amused we were so taken with them.  You can miss many things when you live in the Big Apple and this was one of ours.  I'm going to see if these "light, crispy, sour-dough crepes made from rice and lentils" might find a place to light  in foody Portland.

What did we not discuss? Yarn, of course, and her adventures as a "lone blogger" while partner Ann worked on a novel.  Kay also quilts, so we heard about "long arm quilters" which may be a bit arcane for most of us...SuperEggplant, a knit/food/thread PDX blog whose wrap-around skirt could work for your tights-wearing friends in the Northwest.  Cultural stuff is always on our minds when we meet.

I copied in my notebook her phrase about how we respond to these times, the challenges for young people like her children and our grands who are "living in a world where it's all optional."  Think about schools where students become accustomed to no-deadlines.

Ron realized he'd not made Kay a hat.  Gasp!  She tried on my Ron-hat, and now one is on its way to her.  I accept responsibility for Ron's dive into wool [link is to THE story/book]--all that schlepping around to fiber festivals.  And telling him that spinning had to have an end product like knitting.   Never did it occur to me that he'd turn into a major producer of hats--with labels.  The count is beyond 100 now!  Some of the most recent resting on his spinning wheel with Kay's at the top, ready to be mailed.

Yes, he is all about production, a very tempting destination.  I did that once with the 150 red wiggler worms some ten years ago.  Now it's just one slow project at a time though I did turn out Roxie's new scarf on a three-day turnaround NY-D.C.-Tarrytown.   Photo is recent products of the hat-worker, a/k/a, "knitting fool."  Kay's ready for mailing on the top.

Used up every bit of the Malabrigo skein (51% silk/49% wool)bought for Roxie's scarf.  Found a variation online I  when I couldn't remember (what a surprise) one used over the years.

Mistake rib:  Multiple of 4 + 3, size 8 needle.  Slip first stitch knitwise, then knit 1, (p2, k2) to last three stitches, knit two, purl one.  Repeat every row.  Roxie's knit on 39 stitches.

Hoping it keeps her warm in all the very cold, snowy weather in New York.  We were sad to miss her 4th birthday last week, could only sing on the phone.

being east coast again: other side of "distance grandparenting"

From lobby of Tarrytown, New York motel.

Laptop on my thighs, rolling carts pass by, all the wired people.  Arrived December 2... (Pepsi in the morning...didn't his mother tell him it's not a breakfast drink).

Roxie will be picked up at noon today from nursery school as we continue a different, eastern grandchild schedule.  She continues to be adorable and very verbal--family trait one supposes.

Spentcouple of days in Washington, D.C., to visit Ron's 89 year old sister, an amazing woman as she weathers dialysis, so very many life changes.  

There's an old-fashioned shoe-shine stand across the way in this glossy place.  Can see the swim pool behind me--favorite of Roxie.

More when we return next week--with images of course.

Corvallis Peace Vigil reminds us...

That would be Ron and me.  Driving to Philomath, Oregon for dinner on a farm, with extra time before our 7 p.m. reservation, we made a slight detour  to visit Corvallis, home of OSU (Oregon State University).  Another new Oregon city for us; we noticed a large bookstore still open after five.

Parked the car  in front of  a beautiful courthouse** and immediately saw a station wagon filled with NO WAR signs.   We had chosen the right time--five to six every evening  different community members stand tall for a peace vigil. 

 Every day for the past nine years. 

People in cars waved, honked in a friendly way.  Were the students at OSU active in anti-war efforts?  No, we were told they are a conservative group.

As usual, we fit in age-wise: most of  us gray hairs.  Except this young engineering grad student from Saudi Arabia.  He brought a sign made for the vigilers to show support in another language.  Often they are joined by the local Veterans for Peace chapter.

One of the women had moved to Corvallis from Queens, New York, a few years ago.  She agreed that nothing like this could take place back east, especially in front of a government building like the Benton County Courthouse.  Unlike the Corvallis group who do not have to get police permission for their vigils, in NYC the smallest street gathering with a sign (not to include any holder more rigid than a cardboard tube)  requires a permit.

We talked about Grandmothers Against the War HERE and HERE with whom I had vigiled at Rockefeller Center.  Recalled with the former-Queens grandmother how each of us had stood on the steps of the 42nd Street Library with Women in Black some time in the 1990s.  I told her that their behavior code was too militant for me.  Called me out for speaking to my neighbor.  Violated their rules:  wear black, do not talk. Wearing all black was a stretch for me, not talking even more so.  As in the familiar, often misquoted (see link)  Emma Goldman sentiment, If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

  I hung out with the women, a couple of them knitters who were surprised to learn about the prevalence of HIV in women over 50 and my other blog about the   Condom Amulets project.    Later I realized that they would have appreciated that there was an OSU amulet in the school's colors that proved too political (?) for a Portland yarn shop.

Ron stayed with the men  near the station wagon.  He learned about their rocky times as former professors at OSU.  We both did sign-hoisting and were grateful to the group for the opportunity to relieve a bit of our current-events-in-America angst on September 10. 

** Calvin Beale Senior demographer at USDA photo, one of a series of courthouses around the U.S.  

Purple profusion-- discovering Hulda Klager's lilacs

We thought the flowers would begin to fade, but Portland florals hang on to please us.  Iris, wisteria though fading hangs on, and an very, very deep blue bush.  Do you know what it is?

And the lilacs, everywhere.  We heard we could have an especially intense encounter with them a half hour away in Woodland, Washington.  We arrived just in time for the last week  the  Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens were open.

Beautiful as the many varieties of lilacs were I was fascinated by the tour of this 19th century farm.  Hulda Klager (1864-1960) was the daughter of German immigrants.  Farming, raising a family, in 1903 she was recovering from an illness and read  a book by Luther Burbank. The   result was her  interest was piqued by the notion of plant propagation.  First she produced a larger apple to make one that would be easier to peel.  In an early magazine interview, she described using a crochet hook to do her hybridization.

In a couple of years she had created 14 new varieties of  lilacs. I was reminded of a late 19th century woman photographer I'd reasearched, Mary F.C. Paschall of Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  It was illness that gave her time to study how to develop her own film.  Guess that's what it took for a woman to give herself time to think outside the dailyness of life.

  The gardens are owned and maintained by the Hulda Klager Lilac Society.  Members, all wearing purple, are docents; the woman with the scarf is a second generation Society member.  A recent  video that shows some of the 100 lilac varieties that populate the Garden.The docents did a fine job of telling how hard life was on the  farm and Hulda's strength as a survivor of flood and personal loss. This side door was only used for bringing in and taking out caskets.

I would have liked to know more about how Hulda herself.  Someone needs to write about her, other farm women of that period in the 1920s when she began to hold  yearly open house for the public to visit her gardens.   And buy plants.  She was honored by many organizations including the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard but there was not as much about her online as I expected.  She is in Lilacs: A Gardener's Encyclopedia.

Though not a purple flower, I found in the Garden a name to go with a plant I've admired--Viburnum. So much to learn, so little time. [A little more history on the lilac in Oregon HERE.]

Bialy memories: Kossar's Bialy store, New York City

The other day Ron Bloom unearthed photos I took in the 1980s on one of our trips from Baltimore to New York to visit relatives and return home with provisions unavailable in what has been known as "Charm City."  Baltimore had its appealing qualities but "charm" was not one I'd identify.

Kossar's Bialy store (link has instructions on how to eat one!) has somehow stayed in place on the lower east side though the bakers have changed ethnicity.  As I mentioned on an earlier post, this is THE place for authentic bialys and we would fill our car trunk to enrich our Baltimore freezer with about 10 dozen--some to be shared with fortunate friends and neighbors, always plenty to last us till the next longing.

I offer this as a window into how deeply some are attached to particular food connected with memory.  This is Ron's, honed over many years in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn,(scroll down on the page)  a Jewish ghetto of an American style.

My own special food is tapioca (this public service link has recipe how to make it with real, not instant, pearls) probably tasted in a Manhattan cafeteria like Horn & Hardart (gorgeous photo of odd machine that delivered cocoa for a nickel in my memory--rather than coffee mentioned in copy.)  A far less emotion-filled food recollection than his.

More North Carolina, past and present

After many years visiting Cape Cod beaches in the 1980s-, we were ready for a less expensive venue.  Much as we enjoyed Welfleet, Truro, Provincetown, it was time for a place with fewer airs and crowds.  We also were tired of socializing with smart people who talked mostly about their great  real estate ventures.  That was the 1980s.

Judy Lombardi, our Baltimore friend told us about  Holden Beach, a barrier island near Wilmington,  North Carolina.  It was very different from the Cape, quiet and reasonably priced.  "Proud of what we do not have" is their motto. Going south was a change for us-- territory where we knew no one.  We found a comfortable house right on the beach, "PostHazel," named after a 1954 hurricane, "one of the worst of the 20th century on the east coast."

Through another Baltimore friend, Debbie Bedwell, we were encouraged to visit a gallery run by her friends, Tom and Stephanna Tewey above their printing shop in nearby Southport. Debbie and other artists from Baltimore Clayworks had exhibited in their  gallery, Blue Dolphin.    The second year we were at Holden, I showed some of my own work, necklaces of shells, beads, hardware.

They have sold the business and moved into Wilmington where we visited their house in the woods one afternoon on this trip.  Always active in politics and the environmental movement, we asked many questions about newspaper stories we'd read in the local paper--good news and bad.

January 1, 2010 marked the start of a smoking ban in restaurants and public places.  Who would have thought a tobacco state would do that!  The dark side was opposition by the county to permitting  high school grads who were illegal immigrants to attend the local community college.

As a northerner who expects the worst from the conservatism of the south about social issues, I was surprised by  this sign in a Wilmington gift shop (great selection of altered rubber duckies--as hippies, pirates).  Talking with the owner of The Black Cat Shoppe, about her strong commitment to health care reform reminded me--once again-- that there are people of reason everywhere.  She had made a trip to D.C. with her business organization, The Main Street Alliance, to talk with her congressmen.  She  joined the Alliance after becoming disgusted with the local Chamber of Commerce.  Check out her website.

Wilmington, an old port on the Cape Fear River, was a place we enjoyed when we were vacationing at Holden Beach.  Ron suprised me on my 60th birthday when he asked a women's trio (what were their names, my faulty memory wants to know) playing at a local bar to sing "Happy Birthday."  They were a group from D.C. with an hilarious extended version that delighted me--and the bar crowd. 

Here's the river at twilight...with a red kayak  in the background.