OFF TO TURKEY -- PART TWO

The first informational meeting for the May trip to Turkey went well. There are about 18 people in the group, some of whom had traveled together on other UVM-sponsored trips. Nobody is a kid. There are three people, counting me, over 75. My concern about being too old is resolved.

The long agenda was covered cheerfully and confidently by the two trip organizers. I like the relaxed atmosphere and the enthusiasm. Everyone seems prepared to be flexible and once details about a Turkish visa and various phone and currency items, websites for hotels, health, etc., were covered, the ambitious itinerary begins to look exciting and doable. It turns out there is a woman from Turkey going along and she is helpful about what to expect.

Luggage: one carry-on bag plus a rucksack or tote. Packing for this trip will be fun. I am a minimalist packer anyway. Worries right now? Not so many and I take back what I said about being wrong to want to be part of a local local group. That was right thinking and I see it will be very good to be with people from close to home. We all start from the same place and somehow, we'll go to and from Boston and Istanbul together. 

More later about the Turkey trip  -- probably in February, 2015.

OFF TO TURKEY -- Part One

November 06, 2014

My husband died four months ago and as a challenge to my
newfound independence and a means of getting off the end of the couch, I signed up for a trip to Turkey sponsored by our local university.

I didn't especially want to go to Turkey. I'd rather be off to Spain
or Scotland or on a trip to Holland in tulip time. But this trip is
local and I thought I'd rather be with a group of Vermonters than
with alumni from, say, my Ivy League university. This thinking was
so wrong. The Vermonters, though neighbors, will also be strangers. I'll be just as much an outsider with them as I'd be
in any other travel group.

I've looked at maps and weather charts and researched a phone call app for my iphone. On line, I look at Today's Zaman, the English-language newspaper published in Istanbul. I read about the Kurds. I'll read Orhan Pamuk.

As suggested by the tour planners at UVM, I ordered plane tickets
via a local travel agent. There is a direct flight to Istanbul from Boston and group transportation will be arranged from here to there.

All of this sounds easy and for a day or so, I felt better about the trip. Then I got email from one of the planners strongly suggesting I get travel insurance which I always do anyway. I called the agent and she made me understand that because I am so old, the insurance is going to cost a lot. No pre-existing conditions, she stressed.

Then there came another email from a planner saying I definitely should have medical evacuation insurance. OK. The travel agent will take care of it. "Just do what you need to do, you've got my credit card," I told her. OK. All this insurance will cost just about what the air ticket costs.

I slowly understood what was going on. By May, when the trip
happens, I will be 81. There is nothing, nothing that can slow
down an ambitious trip more than having to wait for some
geriatric crock to catch up. These people must be having fits
about me being with them. What if she can't do stairs?  What if she can't deal with her own luggage, can't walk a block, can't, can't, can't? The poor things. I understand their concerns and I begin to
feel defensive and unsettled.  

Of course, nobody has actually said anything. They'll get a chance to meet me next Wednesday at our first group meeting when we
hand over our passports for Turkish visas to be arranged. What if the Turks won't give me a visa because I am so old?

AIN'T NO GRAPES AND AIN'T NO NUTS

A friend talked wistfully about Grape-Nuts (notice the hyphen?) Pudding, made via a recipe on the Post cereal box. I haven't had Grape-Nuts in the house for a while so I'll get some and make a batch of pudding for his birthday.

I can't think where I've seen this custard-like dessert on a menu.  Diners sometimes have it but it is rare to come across and is mostly a New England comfort food.  Grape-Nuts, developed in 1897 by C. W. Post, then marketed as a kind of health food, isn't always on today's cereal shelves and may be headed the way of Maypo -- "I want my Maypo!"and Maltex.

Here is a Grape-Nuts Pudding recipe from an old Yankee magazine:

Ingredients:

• 1 quart milk, scalded
• 1 cup Grape-Nuts cereal
• 4 large eggs
• scant 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter (approx.)
• Whole nutmeg
• Water

Instructions:

Heat oven to 350°. In a medium-size bowl, pour scalded milk over Grape-Nuts and let sit 5 minutes. In a second medium-size bowl, beat eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Add egg mixture to milk and Grape-Nuts and stir well. Pour into a buttered 2-quart casserole dish. Generously grate nutmeg over the top. Place the casserole into a deep roasting pan. Place in the oven and pour water into the roasting pan, enough to reach halfway up the side of the casserole. Bake 45 to 60 minutes, until almost set in the center (very slight jiggle).

                                  ______________

The Post cereal company has a website https://www.postfoods.com with lore about Grape-Nuts. The copy is straight from the 1950s:

 In 1933, Post Grape-Nuts sponsored Sir Admiral Byrd’s expedition to Antarctica, where the first two-way radio transmission occurred. At the time, maps of the expedition even appeared on Grape-Nuts boxes. This was a huge milestone in the scientific community, and Grape-Nuts helped make it possible!

• During World War II operations before 1944, Grape-Nuts was part of the Jungle rations that helped fuel US and Allied forces on extended missions to Panama and other tropical parts of the world. (To Panama? WHAT are they talking about?)
• In 1953, New Zealand explorer Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay took Grape-Nuts with them for efficient, nutritious energy as they trekked to the top of Mount Everest, becoming the first climbers in history to reach the summit. It is the ultimate example of man’s persistence in the face of the seemingly impossible feat, and Grape-Nuts was there for every high-altitude step along the way.
•  
•                             
  
  
  

What's in this cereal that has no grapes and no nuts? (Thank you, Kurt Vonnegut) Mainly wheat and barley with some yeast, salt and malt. Straight from the box, Grape-nuts is bizarrely crunchy, so unchewable, in fact, I let it soak in milk a few minutes before I go near it.

Should the above be enticing, you will be so delighted when I tell you there is Grape-Nuts ice cream.
                                         + + +

ON THE ROAD

Yesterday was a long day. Here is what I can remember of it:

Arose at the Delta hotel in downtown St. John NB. Downtown
isn't much, a few busy streets and a deep harbor plus outlying
neighborhoods and vast ship repair and heavy works. A recent
blog mentions the refinery on the hill.

Getting on the road to Fredericton was easy and the way
quickly turned into a long stretch bordered by pine woods
and moose warnings. The road was high and surprisingly
hilly above the woods and swampy patches. Vistas opened,
some for miles. It was a gray day and that made driving a
little easier. 90K with me gawking.

Just before Fredericton, I took an interstate West. This is
the trans-Canada and I could stay on it all the way to
Vancouver. Again, a high road with evergreen woods.
West, OK, but too far North and I wanted to cross into
Maine. I stopped for directions at a gas station off the
highway. This would be the way it would go for the next
14 hours.

A couple of things here: my cell phone GPS doesn't work
in Canada. There is no cell phone service in remote areas,
anyway. I thought I had a map of NB but it is only a map of St. John area. Try reading a map when you're doing 65. I have
a good map of Maine but I could barely read it and it didn't spill over much into Canada. Advice for next time: map out the route carefully. Do not think dead reckoning will get me there.
Do not try to be such a smarty pants.

The gas station ladies between them decided how I should
go. I got off the Trans Canada and headed roughly southwest
toward Harvey, a town on a blue highway. This rough road,
not nearly as bad as the ladies said, goes through miles of
evergreen and through tiny settlements of mobile homes
and ruined houses with little sign of human activity. At Harvey,
I thought I was near the border, but no. I went on to MacAdam
and then to the crossing at St. Croix.

No problem with US customs. The officer asked questions
about how long, any live plants, liquor, purpose of trip,
where I live, etc. and looked in the trunk. Then I was on
my way, surprisingly happy to be back in the US and on
Route 6, all the way to Bangor, 193 miles from Fredericton.
I like the back roads. I enjoy being the only car in sight although
this can change at night as I was to discover.

I cancelled hotel reservations in Bangor because it was only
11 AM. NB time is an hour ahead, so this was a travel bonus.
It had started to rain and I wondered if I could possibly make it
all the way home to Burlington. Give it a try? I pulled out of
the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot. I tried to stop every two hours
and never let the gas tank get below half.

I wanted Route 2 West which I would take forever, all the
way to Montpelier. I plugged in the GPS lady and she sent
me onto I95 where I absolutely did not want to be. I finally
overrode her, got off at Route 69W, again going by my
own GPS which had failed completely more than once.

Route 2 winds up and down through sleepy towns speed
limit 35. Rain hard at times. I stopped at a little gas
station -- two pumps: one diesel, one regular ($3.09) where
hunters were gathered after coming out of the woods. It is moose season but I didn't notice they had any luck. Got a coke for the caffeine and a delicious sandwich for the road. I went along
enjoying the scenery and the varying road conditions. Still
raining although not too hard.

Went through Skowhegan, Rumford and Bethel and finally
entered New Hampshire. Maine is a fat state and Route 2
went on and on. Rain. Now I was in the White Mountain National Park and the afternoon was getting on. Thank goodness I could
see the most spectacular scenery of the entire trip, except for Acadia National Park. I was deep in the mountains and the road wound through river valleys and on up and over. There is still a little fall color to add to the bliss.

As I entered Vermont, the light was failing but there was
still enough to see where I was going and to read the signs.
I stopped in St. Johnsbury as it got dark. For years, I have not driven strange roads in the dark and worried I was making a big
mistake. I wasn't tired but I was stiff and going along at about
45 with a string of cars behind me, lighting the way a bit with
and traffic coming toward me, bright lights and all, the road
shining in the wet. I got used to it slowly and was sorry I couldn't see anything out there except the white line along the right side of the road. Rain. Windshield wipers on slow, plus the one on the back window.

Entering Montpelier and finding signs to I89 was a terrific
relief. Even if I had wanted to stop for the night, there was no
way. Now I knew I'd make it home. Piece of cake after
all that. 290+ miles Bangor to Burlington.

OFF TO THE BAY OF FUNDY

Sunday morning in Bar Harbor, Maine, waiting for a B&B breakfast and looking again at the map. This is a kind of staging area before I push off into Canada to see/find/experience the
tides in the Bay of Fundy.

For the first time in more than 50 years, I am footloose. No
ailing parents, no child, no husband, no dog and no reason not to get up from the end of the couch and see something of this
great, amazing country.

The drive from Bar Harbor to St. John via Calais (pronounced
"Callis") ME was longer than I thought, mainly on blue highways.
The land is full of ups and downs and the most glorious Fall
landscapes made firey red by low bush blueberries. Whole
hillsides were aflame with an evergreen backdrop.

It is still hilly across the border. I was not sent right through
by Canadian immigration and they opened my car and looked
inside while I waited in a small building. I crossed at a backroad
and was scolded by the (gorgeous) officer because I had gone through a stop sign. Canadian stop signs are smaller than ours.

It is a little unnerving to drive where the miles are in kilometers
and the signs are all bi-lingual. Everything seems to be just
slightly different and I find that adds to the uneasiness. My
usual stellar sense of direction failed me more than once and
I backtracked, turned, caused hazard to other drivers, etc.

This is an industrial city although the scale is small. It is on
a deep harbor and the port activities (containers, a gigantic
cruise ship, derricks, cranes, all kinds of shipping) are
right down town. From my hotel window I see the ship and I
can see the containers piled up on the other side of the harbor.

A major refinery is on the outskirts with a tank farm flanking
the hills. Ships were built here although probably not much any
more. Plenty of wood not far away. There has been
a recent renaissance in the city center or downtown. A food
hall seems to attract crowds but it is not at all comparable
to our farmers' markets or the big food halls elsewhere.

The population is mixed with plenty of recent immigrants.
Public housing is evident as is everything else. There are
lots of blue collar jobs and many "For Sale" signs on
houses, whatever that signifies. Oh, and don't confuse St. John
New Brunswick with St. John's Nova Scotia. They are about
120 miles apart.

This hotel adjoins a large indoor shopping center with the
Canadian version of various store chains we know. There is
a MacDonald's. The main atrium and all available seating are
taken up with young people, mostly black, using free internet
access, hanging out in the late afternoon. This is mall
activity new to me. 

This morning I went to see the "Reversing Rapids" and had an
awful time finding the spot. Driving in fast moving city
traffic to places I've never been is hair raising. The tide
(High: 10:45 am) flows up over the falls and rapids and
then during the ebb, flows back out to the sea. It is interesting
but not especially thrilling.  A bridge for trains and autos
goes over the rapids.

I drove about 60km east to St. Martin's, another tide spot
where there are caves that fill and empty with the enormous
tide changes. When I arrived (sunny and not so windy) the
caves were about half full of water. When the tide is low,
you can walk into them. The area around St. Martin's
is poor and trailers are the thing. It is pretty but the road
is bad  and the poverty obvious. Nothing exotic or
fascinating about that. The gift shop dealers were expecting
3 busloads of tourists from the cruise ship.

Then I came back to St. John on a byway and ran into
detours due to road repair. Once again, I just kept trying
until streets looked familiar. I put the car in the hotel
garage ($20 per day, not so bad) and went for a walk.

In the food court again, I bought two corn muffins and
an inferior ice cream cone. We are spoiled by our local
stuff which costs the same as this. I think everything is
so expensive but I'm behind the times.  

I'm not sorry I made the trip although am pleased to be
leaving tomorrow. Rain is on the way and I see how this
tide thing works. It is not as fascinating as the Panama
Canal, but it is the kind of ebb and flow you see there.

I think there may be such a thing as the Fundy of the Mind.

COOKING FOR ONE

Greetings, friends, from the Widow Standard.

I am alone now, trying to make the best of it

and experiencing unexpected blows at every turn.

When I'm not looking, a memory will jump out and
bite me.

Today, I went through a transfile of Michael's papers. It put me in touch with the vigorous younger Michael, the man I met when he was 29. So now I have this revised image and the memories that flow from it. Instead of the dependent, disabled, somewhat demented old man, the one who made messes and couldn't initiate anything, I see the man who traveled the world, who argued before many courts, including the Supreme, who had friends who adored him in all those unreachable places: Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua, and in the jails of our own great country.

Now I am thinking about him the way he was. The charmer, the totally generous and impossible Jew. The echt New Yorker.  I miss all the signs and symbols of that old fashioned New Yorker in my life. And who, in this age of homogenized culture, intersperses conversation with Yiddishisms?

He and I had the same take on people. Even recently, he recognized a jerk when he saw one. He'd look at me and we'd know. We thought the same things were funny. Even diminished, he sometimes could make a joke.  Nobody, ever, is going to tell me I look pretty.

Now that I'm cooking for one, I make all the stuff he didn't prefer: string beans and zucchini given to me by friends. Veal chop (cost a fortune) more zucchini with tomato and onion. Sea scallops with more string beans and zuccs. The refrigerator is quite empty and when I open the door it seems too bright in there. Tomorrow night: short ribs plus more string beans. I throw capers in everything. I spread the most bitter orange marmalade I can find. I eat fig paste or guava paste off a knife. Eggplant becomes a staple. Oatmeal with raisins.

I could go out to eat but not for a while. For now, I'm

sticking close to home, a place that had been a refuge and

a cage until July 02, exactly one month ago.

ART IN THE HOME

I was just reading a piece about art critic Kenneth Clark in the August
14 edition of the "New York Review of Books." The reviewer of two books about Clark mentions that Clark came from an affluent Scottish
family that had a lot of art in the house.

This made me think about the art we had in our house on Spruce
Street when I was growing up, although there certainly wasn't much
of it. I'm thinking back 75 years here, and wrack my brain though I might, I can only come up with several disappointing images.

One was an elevation of a cathedral (Chartres? Winchester? Notre Dame?) done in some kind of waxy stuff so it was layered and you could feel the arches with your finger. It looked carved in ivory but it wasn't. This small work was hung too high and now that I'm thinking about it,
I cannot possibly imagine what it was doing there. Someone must have given it to my parents.

Over the couch, there were copies of Redoute roses in two Victorian
walnut frames, hung one higher than the other. In two arched niches
flanking the entrance (also arched) to the dining room, was an
encyclopedia taking up most of the space. On the top shelves were
two bisque figures of ladies in flowing gowns and they must have
belonged to my father's mother.

There were a few other books jammed in with the encyclopedia. I
know there was a slim volume by the American poet Eugene Field.
"The Yellow Cur: A Story of Love and Life Before the World's War"
by Clarence Holton Poage (1932) is even more a mystery. Heaven knows
what that was doing along with "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1858).

This was early on in my childhood. Later, when my parents subscribed
to The Book of the Month Club, a bookshelf was created on the landing
leading upstairs. When they forgot to send selections back,
I had a lot of adult reading to myself. completely unsupervised.
I read "The Carpetbaggers," and "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," both
books with unsuitable material for a pre-teen. I read "A Bell for Adano"
and I can recite the captions for Bill Malden's Willy and Joe World War II
cartoons. I read "Hiroshima" and "Cluny Brown" by Margery Sharp and
many other bestselling novels of the immediate post-war era. I got myself
a good introduction to popular literature although there was a some of it
I didn't understand.

I realize this: aside from the above, when I was growing up there was not one single picture or anything that could be described as "art" in the entire house. There were empty walls but nobody put anything on them. The dining room wallpaper was huge cabbage roses so maybe nothing possible there. But really, there had to be total disinterest by two adults.

Years later, when Aunt Dot took up oil painting, there were a couple of
her works, one a nice green landscape above the table just inside the front door.

OLD PEOPLE SMELL

OLD PEOPLE SMELL

A gigantic nose guards the entrance to the Monell Chemical Research
Center on Market Street in Philadelphia. Researchers there examined
sweat-stained pads from the armpits of a cross-section of ages, and
were able to tell by smelling them which had belonged to the old.

"It confirms what we all know but were hesitant to say: old people smell."
Writing in the May 8, 2014 "London Review of Books," Jenny Diski
thinks this may be one way to tell people are old because now it's a
little hard to say who's old and who isn't. Diski is reviewing a "Out of Time: The Pleasures and Perils of Aging," a memoir by Lynne Segal (Verso, 2013) which is a "personally informed discussion of the politics and sociology of her own aging and that of her generation (she was born in 1944) and the attitudes people now have towards it."

"The idea of being invisible," says Joan Bakewell in a review of the Segal book for the "Independent," "comes as a shock to a generation who as feisty young women had liberated their bodies and celebrated their open sexuality. Now they looked in the mirror and say their mothers' faces reflected back at them."

At 80, I certainly do see my mother's face looking back at me and our culture has taught me to feel shame and disgust at this.  I know
I am old and often call myself an "old lady." People tend to deflect this
by offering infuriating words like, "you are as old as you feel," or
"80 is the new 70," or something equally awful. I know I'm invisible and sometimes the old ego rails at this. I know time is getting short. I wish I could make more of it; make it count more. If there is a war between generations -- and Segal says there is -- I haven't felt it because maybe I'm too busy thinking about being old.

I know I am lucky and say a prayer of thanks every morning when I put my feet on the ground. I have enough money to live on without working. I have family nearby and a community of people who love and support
each other. I walk downtown. I still can drive.

Writing in the "Guardian," Bronwen Clune, almost 39, talks of herself
as "edging toward a worthlessness that society has constructed around my age." Good heavens! Poor girl! But, as Diski points out, people are going to be cross with you for declaring agedness too soon as too late. Not easy, as she says, to"define the right moment." This may be where Monell comes in.

SECRETS! SECRETS! SECRETS!

SECRETS! SECRETS! SECRETS!

Don't ask what came over me but I've just read two borderline

chicklit novels, both recent best sellers. I thought I was done

with popular fiction after I survived "The Goldfinch," but maybe not.

"You Should Have Known," by Jean Hanff Korelitz (NY:Grand Central, 2014.) is one of those novels about Manhattan rich girls -- the skinny

moms with their $9,000 Birkins and everyday Choos, waiting for their children outside whichever private school they somehow got their child into.  Korelitz is smart about this Upper East Side milieu. She knows all the signs and symbols. You get the feeling she is in them but not necessarily of them.

Grace, forty-something, is a couples therapist, married to Jonathan, a

pediatric oncologist, mother of Henry, a 13-year old student at

a Dalton-like school where Grace also went. Grace is about to publish

a book central to this story. Her theory is we marry or commit to a person

we really know nothing about. Courtship has dulled our senses and we

refuse to look beyond the glow. We don't question, we don't probe, we

leap ahead blindly, trusting in love. "If a woman chose the wrong person,

he was always going to be the wrong person," Grace says.

Grace's own marriage is seamless, a fine balancing of professions, polite

and equitable. Jonathan is immersed in his work which, of course, is

always going to be more urgent and important than Grace's. You simply cannot argue with pediatric cancer.

Grace goes to fund-raising meetings for the school and sees her patients. She manages family life in the 3-bedroom flat she grew up in on East 81st Street. Her wonderful boy and her god-like husband leave her with little to wish for. Naturally, this is a set-up for disaster.  Just when you are wondering where all this is going, Grace's world falls apart.

Jonathan, it turns out, is a psychopathic liar, a person who completely

fooled Grace and everyone else. Nothing, nothing he ever said or did,

was true. Grace and Henry flee 81st Street to restart their lives in

an unheated lake house in Connecticut which also happens to

belong to Grace. It looks like there may be a happy ending --

wandering into "Bridges of Madison County" country.

I didn't like Grace much. Jonathan, who never appears in person, is intriguing. Henry is a solid character, a fine, decent boy. Even if I didn't love the book, I see that Grace's theory has a lot going for it. Do we ever know the truth about somebody else? Isn't it a gigantic crap shoot to link our destinies to someone we barely know?

"The Husband's Secret" by Liane Moriarty (NY:Putnam's, 2013) is about three Melbourne women whose lives intersect. The level of their comings and goings doesn't compare to the hedge-fund stratosphere in the Korelttz novel but it is comfortable enough.

A marriage splits and the wife goes home to mother, a 29-year-old mystery surfaces and a perfectionist housewife (and super Tupperware specialist!) (WHAT?) cracks up. A husband and his mother keep an awful secret. Family life continues with descriptions of pirate birthday parties and soy decaf cappuccino in the Australian suburbs.

The reader doesn't give a rip what happens to any of these people and

wonders why she downloaded the book in the first place. The writing is

excessively fluent. Admittedly, there are a few insights into marriage

and parenting and the question is raised to what lengths would you go to preserve family life.

You're on your own here. It is too exhausting to say more.

CRUMBS

CRUMBS

In an act of sublime stupidity, this morning I put halves of a fat, flaky biscuit in the toaster. After trying to fish it out with the handle of
a wooden spoon, the thing disintegrated among the wires. This did
seem a bit of a fire hazard so I unplugged and for the first time in
years, cleaned out the toaster.

Crumbs, ancient remnants of bygone breakfasts, went everywhere. The
little clean-out drawer didn't pull easily and then it did. I prodded and
dug again with the wooden handle. I upturned and pounded the sides
setting up a metallic rattling and a shower of crumbs.

I cleaned up the mess around the kitchen sink but didn't do the floor.
(She can get down, but she can't get up!) I re-plugged the toaster
but didn't use. I wonder if I can remember not to do such a dumbo thing again.

The above is a kind of stalling from getting back to reading. Lately, I've been reading romances -- can't-put-down novels with plucky heroines and happy endings. I read authors who include a lot of humor and not too much sex, whose writing is as good and more entertaining as much found in more exalted genres.

In a departure from the above, yesterday, I began "The Poisoned Island," the second novel by Lloyd Shepherd (Washington Square Press. 2013) which begins in Tahiti in 1769 and continues in 1812 Georgian London.  The Solander, a ship commissioned by Sir Joseph Banks and others, has just arrived at Kew from Tahiti with a cargo of precious plant specimens. Among the fashionable crowd to celebrate the event are the Prince Regent, Banks, the adventurer/botanist, and his Scots assistant, Robert Brown. Not far away down the river are John Harriott of the Thames River Police, and his constable, Charles Horton.

Soon after, a seaman just off the Solander, is found with his throat cut and a smile on his face. Horton, who has newfangled theories about police work that consider evidence and motive, finds the body and the investigation begins.

There is a lot to like about this novel, especially the excellent writing. It has a little too much of the paranormal for me, but I'm trying to get beyond that. Some chapters are narrated in the present tense, a tricky device that works here. I haven't read "The English Monster" Shepherd's first novel where the Herrriott/Horton team solve a mystery but not without making important enemies.

Readers will be reminded of the recent "The Signature of All Things" by Elizabeth Gilbert that not only details a strong interest in botany but follows the trail of specimens to Tahiti and then on to Kew. I wonder what the authors make of this coincidence?