SPRING AGAIN

It's Spring again...birds on the wing, again...

Around here it has been a long, hard winter and snow lies
in the corners of every field. Huge piles at the edges of parking
lots won't melt until May and the poor robins will find it hard
to tug a worm from ground frozen six feet down.

So that's the weather which has allowed for a lot of time spent
at the end of the couch. Basketball is winding down. Today
was baseball opening day, thank goodness. The sound of
baseball can occupy us day and night well into October!

Meanwhile, my reading has sunk to unfathomed depths.
Now and then, something worthwhile will get my attention
but that gets harder by the minute. The last bit of so-called
literature I read was "The Invention of Wings" by Sue Monk
Kidd and I didn't like it all that much. Set in the slave-holding
deep south, it follows the lives of several house slaves and
their masters ending in the abolitionist communities of the north
where Quakers and other radicals struggle for the cause. It is
about women finding their voice and about lifelong struggles for
freedom. What I'm saying here isn't quite fair to the book: it
is a lot better than I'm making it seem.

I've almost made it through tax time although I cringe when the
phone rings, thinking it might be the accountant with questions
I can't answer. Pure sloth makes me want to wave a magic wand
over all such tedious matters to make them go away. 

The best way to escape this slough is to get moving and I will
do that before long when I travel to Turkey on a group trip arranged by UVM. If a dip into Asia Minor won't do it, heaven knows what will. This is ambitious and not at all tame. For that: perhaps a garden tour to Scotland?  Oh, well. We will see.

HAVE READ, AM READING, MIGHT READ, MIGHT NOT READ

A pile of "real" books teeters at the edge of a table too small to
hold them. Some I got recently for Christmas, others have been
sitting there, waiting for something to happen.

Truth is, I prefer reading books on various electronic devices and
cringe at the thought of propping up, say, Hermione Lee's excellent life of Penelope Fitzgerald (500 pages) although I longed for this
book more than any other. I whip through virtual pages, fighting
with the location and/or page locator, forget to bookmark, then can't remember the author or the title on the vast display provided via
the Kindle app. Still, I persist and whip out the iphone to read in
the supermarket checkout line. So many books, so little time!

For a book group, I read "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena"
by Anthony Marra, an American who spent time in Chechnya and Grozny and by way of some miraculous genius, wrote an impossible, overwhelming novel. Who knows how this kind of thing happens? Senseless, stupid wars and squalor both moral and
physical? What a harrowing read -- so powerful that took a break and read an old P.D. James, just to ground myself.

Back again in the Caucuses during the 1990s into the early 2000s with no resolution to the Chechen conflicts, Marra finds a way
out of the book. Inspired by work of Russian journalist Anna
Politkovskaya, (assassinated presumably for reporting she did from Chechnya) Marra became interested in the region when he was a college student in St. Petersburg.

So I got a book about Politkovskaya and maps of the Caucasus and delved to try to get some sense of the history and background of
this crazy place I knew nothing about. Thank you, Wikipedia.

The next book group book, a paperback this time, is "The Lowland" by Jhumpa Lahiri set in Bangladesh at the time of
partition as it moves from the 1960s, across generations, to the present in Rhode Island. Lahiri often writes about cultures crossing and changing. I always admire her characters and in this book, I especially liked descriptions of lowlands, of grasses and marshes and estaurine study. I didn't love the book but it did lead me into
an exploration of the history of Bangladesh, Pakistan and India
which I wrote down and now can't find.

I downloaded C. P. Snow's "The Light and the Dark" book 2 in
Snow's "Strangers and Brothers" series set at Cambridge during the 1920s and '30s.  I will read this for another book group where I will be a guest. Heaven knows how they chose this one. Better they
should have picked "The Man Who Loved China" the brilliant
biography by Simon Winchester of the polymath and nutty Cambridge scientist and explorer, the late, great Joseph Needham.

So that's book groups. Now to the pile on the table: As I said earlier, I look forward to "Penelope Fitzgerald, A Life" by Hermione Lee. I hoped for this book for Christmas and there it
was! How sympathetic: Fitzgerald's great writing career didn't even begin until she was in her '60s.

Also for Christmas: "We Are Not Ourselves" by Matthew Thomas.
I'd heard of this novel but know nothing about it. Family saga. Irish. Set in Queens. 600 pages. Great reviews and on everybody's end of year best of 2014, etc. etc. I plan to read. Good title.

"Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Paperback. Bestseller. A novel I've known about but would not have owned
were it not for Christmas. I heard Adiche interviewed on NPR
a while ago and was intrigued by her surreal experience being an African becoming an American with racism and stereotypes in both places. I will read this. Thank you whoever gave it to me. I forget.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. I don't know this novel or author but my daughter-in-law says she enjoyed it so I will read it. Paperback.

Gail Godwin's "Evenings at Five" loaned to me by a friend who
thought I'd be touched by the title story. A husband and wife have
their ritual drink every afternoon at 5. He, of course, dies, so this is a sad story. Especially sad because I made Michael a perfect martini -- Absolute Vodka with two cocktail onions -- and delivered it to him (often in bed) at exactly 6 pm. Love and death. Maybe too
close to the bone. We'll see.

"Tracks" by Robyn Davidson is the Australian version of the American Cheryl Strayed's "Wild." Add several camels and a 1,700 mile trek across the Australian desert and you have a companion story: young woman tackles impossible journey, survives (somehow) and the book gets made into a movie.  Same setup: meet every peril once: sand storm, bad snake, killing cold and thirst, lost compass, sore feet, sunburn, etc. etc. The Davidson book is surprisingly well written. I did see the movie and it wasn't all that great.

"Pastrix" by Lutheran preacher Nadia Bolz-Weber a tattooed, foul mouthed ex junkie, alkie, and stand-up comic, with perfect qualifications to become an ordained minister and founder of the
"House for all Sinners and Saints" in Denver. What a bold girl!
What a shock to the everyday clerical community Nadia must have been. She is devout, devoted and amazingly hardworking and funny. Her ideas of how religion should go and how church should be certainly resounds. With Nadia, Christianity is alive and well.

"By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from the New York Times Book Review" is the kind of collection I enjoy. I love lists. I always want to know what other people are reading. Here is an example: Gary Shteyngart says the best book he has read recently is "Middlemarch." Don't you love it? He says he likes stories where people suffer a lot and says he has a weakness for funny characters who can't shut up. Carl Hiaasen's "Bad Monkey" was his favorite book of 2013 and he read Nabokov's "Pnin" so many times the book no longer has a spine. Oh, and Shteyngart's
own "Super Sad True Love Story" is on my list but so far I don't have it. Maybe just as well.

I've read most of Kate Atkinson's novels, including "Case Histories" and "Started Early, Took my Dog." I got "Life After Life" (500+ pages paperback) for my birthday in December and so far
it sits on the little table. Atkinson says the book is about "being English," but it begins with a young girl killing Adolf Hitler in
the early '30s, so go figure that one. We will see. Maybe if I
have this book alone, when nothing else is around. Desert island, maybe.

"My Own Country" a memoir by Abraham Verghese has been lent by my friend, Sue. She loves this book so I'd better read it. Set in Johnson City, Tennessee, it is the story of AIDS in a conservative community and the work of a dark skinned outsider. Verghese went on to write "Cutting for Stone" and "The Tennis Partner," among others.

For Christmas, between us, Sam and I ordered three copies of
Philip Klay's "Redeployment", a collection of short stories that won the 2014 National Book Award for fiction. Klay is a former Marine
who served in Iraq and people say Klay writes it like it is. I will certainly read this, almost did a week ago. Will send a copy to Roger and Sam will keep his. We've done this before. I get the same thing he gets for me.

Exhausting, isn't it? There is another pile across the room, stacked
up near the TV. Let's skip those at least for now. Happy New Year.

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.