tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86465898996774932252024-02-22T01:28:17.018-08:00In 999 words...or lessObservations and opinions, memories and musings, and other pieces of my mind.Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-9879020168055608512015-11-21T15:44:00.000-08:002015-11-22T15:21:08.137-08:00The Universe, what a trickster…<style>
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<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The $20 check was written and in an envelope in my hand, and I was driving out
the driveway when Jon came walking up from the train station, home from work
early. He looked as though he was going to pop with some great news. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Well,
I did it,” he gloated. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“I
have to get this check in the mail right away. I’ll be right back!” I called,
and then sped to the post office, still rattled by an earlier trip to Ardmore.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I
had driven over there to have lunch with a friend (who was going to tell me all
I needed to know about setting up a website) and then afterwards to pick up a
pair of running shoes I had ordered. It was a sparkling late fall day and I had
looked forward to the outing. I parked in my usual lot off Cricket Avenue,
loaded the meter with enough quarters to get two hours, and headed to the
restaurant, the one where you can get a burger and fries. I waited by the
register. And waited. And waited. I finally thought to look at my phone, and
there was a text message: she wasn’t going to be able to make it because she
had to pick up her daughter. (The dreaded call from the school nurse.) Okay. At
least I could get my new shoes. So off to the shoe store – where they brought
me a box with the wrong shoes in it. “Oh, we are so sorry. We’ll reorder for
you. They’ll be here before the end of the week!” </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">No
bacon burger. No website wisdom. No new Nikes.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I
trudged back to the parking lot and, as I approached my car, I could see that
the meter was flashing that red EXPIRED flag. But I had put in many quarters!
It should have had almost an hour left on it! In fact, it should have had
exactly the amount of time on the other meter on the shared pole, where
there hadn’t been and still wasn’t a car… </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Yep.
I had filled the wrong meter. It was only then that I turned around and saw the
Lower Merion Township parking ticket tucked under my windshield wiper. The
ticket had been written five minutes after I had parked the car. The fine was
noted in nice big, bold print: $20. I stewed all the way home. There was no way
to fight it, of course. It was my own fault for not being careful about the
double meter thing. On top of that annoyance, when I got home and read the fine
print on the ticket, I saw that the Lower Merion Township office had to have
the money in 48 hours or “additional fines could be imposed.” I didn’t feel
like driving another 25 miles to Ardmore and back any time soon, so I had to get that check
in the mail pronto.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Once
back from the post office, I poured a cup of tea and sat down to hear Jon’s
story:</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jon: I got her. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Kathy: Who?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jon: The woman who gets off the train here the same time I
do. She always walks up our street ahead of me and gets into a car in front of
the Holts’ house. I had suspected that she was parking there all day, but
couldn’t be sure. This morning, I had to take the 7:53 instead of the 7:14, and
I saw her park the car in the very same spot. As I passed her, I even pointed
out the two-hour parking sign, just as a friendly gesture, in case she hadn’t
seen it. She snapped, “Oh, I know. Who cares?” So at lunchtime, I called
the township office and asked if they could put an official warning notice on
the car. But they don’t do warnings! And when I walked by the car right now, I
saw she had a ticket! Hah!</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">(I
need to note that Jon is usually mild-mannered in his conscientiously Quaker
sort of way, not one to take revenge or exhalt over another’s misfortunes. But
this business of people using our little one-block street next to the SEPTA
station as a parking lot gets him agitated. The weird “great news” look was
back, he was so sheepishly gleeful that he had taken action.)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jon: Now she’ll have to pay a fine.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Kathy: Could you see the amount of the fine on the ticket?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jon: Yes! $20! </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
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Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-89454721874813678072015-08-04T08:46:00.004-07:002015-08-04T08:46:55.441-07:00Notes from Brewster, MA
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<span lang="EN-US">And now for something completely different…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">Here is a book review I wrote for the <a href="http://www.brewsterladieslibrary.org/" target="_blank">Brewster Ladies Library</a> on Cape Cod, one of my favorite vacation hang-outs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">---------------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Unfamiliar
Fishes, </span></b><b><span lang="EN-US">by Sarah Vowel </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US"> </span></b></div>
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<span style="line-height: 150%;">William Zinsser,
the late non-fiction writer, editor and teacher, wrote: “Ultimately, the
product any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who
he or she is. I often find myself reading with interest about a topic I never thought
would interest me… What holds me is the enthusiasm of the writer for his
field.” Sarah Vowel with “Unfamiliar Fishes,” her study of Hawaii’s fortunes
from 1819, when the first boatload of New England missionaries left Boston
Harbor for the Sandwich Islands to save the heathen, through to annexation in
1898, illustrates Zinsser’s point. Encouraged by a friend to read Vowel, I had
no interest in Hawaii, but “Unfamiliar Fishes” was the volume handed to me.
From the first pages I knew I was in for a fun voyage.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A caveat: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vowel’s style and structure are unconventional.
Vowel wears her politics on her sleeve – or perhaps more accurately on her hard
drive. As early as page 3 she shows her colors, describing the annexation as “a
four-month orgy of imperialism” that gobbled up Puerto Rico and Guam in
addition to Hawaii and included the invasion of Cuba that resulted in American
control of Guantanamo Bay. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the
book, there are no chapters, no headings, no index. Instead, Vowel unfolds her
narrative over 233 pages with occasional section breaks throughout, weaving
into the 19<sup>th</sup>-century history her personal observations of modern
day Hawaii and vignettes about her research.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Nevertheless, the dominant
focus is the decades of conflict between the native population with its royal
families and the sons of the white missionaries who ultimately “dethroned the
Hawaiian queen,” handing Hawaii over to the United States. Indeed, some natives
who were on the scene when the first missionaries arrived foresaw the
conclusion. Vowel quotes David Malo, the native Hawaiian historian who became a
Christian minister and died in 1853:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a big wave comes in, large and unfamiliar
fishes will come from the dark ocean, and when they see the small fishes of the
shallows they will eat them up. The white man’s ships have arrived with clever
men from big countries. They know our people are few in number and our country
is small, they will devour us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With warm sympathy she portrays the doomed
dynasty of the Kamehamehas, I through V, their passions and also their flaws. With
considerably cooler sympathy she tells her tales about the Doles, the Richards,
the Binghams, the Gibsons and the Thurstons. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The differences
between the “small fishes” and the “large and unfamiliar fishes” were profound.
An expansive people comfortable with sensuality vs. a Puritan people pretty
much uncomfortable with everything. A deep love of nature for its own sake vs.
an attitude that natural resources exist solely to be exploited for the benefit
of man. A society willing to ask its members to chip in when monetary resources
are needed vs., in Vowel’s words, “upper class white guys…exceedingly touchy
about taxation.” Vowel depicts all of the clashes with engaging scenes, often
filled with drama and almost always ending in tragedy for the “small fishes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Along the way
Vowel also shares some surprising (at least for me) information. The first
newspaper west of the Rockies was published in Hawaii (though it lasted only
one year). The British government supported Hawaiian independence and welcomed
Hawaiian royalty to London. A private missionary school, founded in 1839 by Juliette
and Amos Cooke (who had not gone to college) so “the children of chiefs will be
taught,” was sending its graduates off to Williams and Harvard <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by 1868. Punahou became a world-class school
and still sends its graduates off to the mainland, including one Barack Obama,
who went on to Occidental College and then Harvard Law School.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">If you happen to
share Vowel’s politics, this book will be a delight. If you happen to lean more
to the right, but have been known to happily spend a long evening with a highly
opinionated but also highly intelligent friend, someone you consider a worthy adversary
who regales you with entertaining and enlightening stories, this book will also
be a delight. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-69415849984788465222015-07-09T18:37:00.000-07:002015-07-12T15:27:06.229-07:00Have a Nice Trip<style>
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<span lang="EN-US">Last Saturday
morning I fell down and broke my crown.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">Well, I didn’t
really break it, but I certainly gave it some rough treatment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">I had gotten up
early to check Weather.com. When could I work in my run? The forecast the
evening before had been gloomy, threatening rain all day. I hadn’t run in the
rain for decades, choosing as I advanced in years to wimp out and use a
treadmill. But this time I had no choice: the HealthPlex,
with its trusty treadmill, was closed for its annual three-day mega-maintenance
and facility projects weekend. Weather.com told me I was in luck: 0% chance of
rain between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., my usual running time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">At 7 a.m., I
strapped on my Garmin watch, headed down the street … and heard raindrops
patter in the leaves overhead. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I kept
walking. After five minutes I started my usual slow lope. Down Blackthorn Road
I went, and the raindrops came a little faster. I decided to persevere. The
temperature was mild and it wasn’t exactly pouring. I continued my trot, left
on Green Valley Road, right on Providence Road, and then right again onto the
old concrete walking path that had been laid down 80 years ago between two yards
to connect Providence Road to Dogwood Lane.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">The next thing I
knew that concrete path was rising up to meet me. This was no Irish blessing. I
saw the sidewalk coming with the green lawn beside it and had just enough time
to put out my hands and think, “Aim for the grass and roll.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">It half worked. I
felt the right side of my head bounce off the concrete and I was on my back on the
grass. Interesting sensation that – one’s head bouncing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">I lay there for a moment.
I hadn’t seen stars, but I felt a “sensation” on my forehead that I was pretty
sure was the inception of a goose egg. I drew a couple deep breaths and stood
up to take stock. Two scraped knees, the left one oozing blood, the right one
closer to dripping. Two scraped palms, the left one slightly abraded, the right
one gouged with blood leaking along the edges. And that interesting sensation
on my forehead.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">I took some more
deep breaths and started the ten-minute walk back home. At the intersection of
Providence and Green Valley, I greeted one gentleman walking his dog, who gave
me a strange look. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The man, not the
dog, though I can’t swear to that.) I put the unbloodied fingers of my left
hand up to my face and pulled away with some sticky red stuff. I kept my head
down for the rest of the walk home to avoid more greetings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">When I came in the
kitchen door, Jon looked up from his paper and said, “That was a quick three
miles.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">“I took a tumble.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">“Oh. I thought you
stopped because of the rain.” And he went back to his paper.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">No use crying if
no one notices, so I didn’t cry. I inspected. I already had a good idea of the
condition of my knees and hands, but the face was fresh territory. Having
caught the edge of the sidewalk, I had scratches along the brow bone above my
right eye, now very tender, scrapes high on my right cheekbone, giving me a
rough-and-tumble action hero(ine) look, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and a sprinkling of bright red pockmarks along
the right side of my nose (from pieces of loose gravel?). I did my best at
mopping up.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">After disposing of
the damp and bloodied paper towels, I grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the
freezer to hold against my pate. It was only then that the adrenaline drained
right out of my body, leaving me dripping with sweat and feeling lightheaded.
Jon sprang into action, fetching for me the magic elixir for all ills: a glass
of ginger ale.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">An hour or so of
holding a pack of peas against your face can get pretty tedious, and I had done
only three or four minutes of my run. I went back out to finish, but this time
to the local college track, and Jon came with me. It was either that, he said,
or he was going to make me wear a helmet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">Three days later
the major reminders of the fall are: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">(1) A swollen top
joint of the pinky finger on my right hand, which I apparently jammed when I
landed but which also apparently kept my head from hitting any harder than it
did (well done, pinky finger) but now hurts like the dickens (and does anyone
even know what a dickens is?). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">(2) An intriguing
black eye that isn’t swollen but looks exactly as though I have gone wild with deep
purple eyeliner and eye shadow from my eye lashes right up into my eyebrow. (An
office colleague commented that the color looked good on me.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">It could have been
worse. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">I do not know what
triggered the fall. I’ve run that same route, padded along that same path for
seven years, two to three times a week, April through October. Perhaps I was
just too focused on being so proud of myself for running in the rain just like
I used to do 30 years ago. (Clearly a physical manifestation of the proverb.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">I do know that I
had not gone up a hill. </span></div>
Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-75276466716201809852014-11-11T12:37:00.000-08:002014-11-11T12:41:27.659-08:00Death to the Moth<style>
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<span lang="EN-US">Oh that Virgina
Woolf. Such a sentimental softie. There she is in a room of her own, sitting at
her writing desk but obviously procrastinating by looking out the window. (I
procrastinate by doing the laundry.) The scenery before her provides exquisite
pastoral beauty of a September day in the English countryside: fields being ploughed,
birds swooping to and fro, horses gamboling about. Yet she gives all her
attention to a moth fluttering at her windowpane, seemingly “content with life”
before it keels over, and she is “conscious of a queer feeling of pity for
him.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Well, I don’t have
much pity for the moth fluttering around my kitchen. The pantry moth, the
Indian mealmoth, the </span><span class="xbe"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Plodia interpunctella</span></span><span lang="EN-US">. If only our moth seemed to be just “content with life.” Our moth
isn’t content unless it gets into every box of Triscuits, every partially used package
of baking walnuts, every minuscule crevice of a bag of flour. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">And while the moth
might be as diminutive as the one that charmed our Ginny, it is definitely not
frail. It zips around the kitchen, surviving a certain death blow between two
hands clapping, eluding the grey cat who leaps to bat at it with outstretched
paws, and cannily avoiding all of the traps, with their alluring red squares and
sticky surfaces, that have been placed strategically up high, down low, and any
place in between that we have seen the moth alight.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">At the end of her musings,
Woolf admires her now dead moth, “most decently and uncomplainingly composed.”
If only our moth would be so decent as to die off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if one of us manages to squash the thing
against the wall, we know what lurks in the corners of the cabinets. We know it
has left behind its eggs, and like the offspring of the Alien of sci-fi horror
filmdom, those eggs will grow into </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">larvae, then into pupa
and finally to adulthood</span><span lang="EN-US">. We may be lulled into a short
period when we think we have escaped the torment, when we can open a bag of
granola without groaning “Oh </span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US">gross!” But no, there
they are again, and our only recourse is to take <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything </i>out of the cupboards; to throw away masses of what had
been perfectly good cereal and crackers, nuts and other nibbles; and then to
wash down the shelves and any containers that had been on those shelves.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US"></span><span lang="EN-US">So Woolf
rhapsodizes about her moth: “as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a
thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.”</span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US">I don’t know about
day moths in rural Sussex, England, but pantry moths in suburban southeastern
Pennsylvania are nothing but pests.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91d/chapter1.html">Cf.
Virginia Woolf, “The Death of the Moth,” 1942</a></span></div>
Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-50526945530519692732014-10-23T18:18:00.000-07:002014-11-03T15:31:37.901-08:00Happy Halloween<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US">Yes, it’s
decorative gourd season again. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US">Halloween is
nearly upon us. But you wouldn’t know it from our house. Outside, no pumpkins,
no mums, just baskets of impatiens still hanging on with some periwinkle petals.
The front door does not boast a bundle of dried corncobs. Inside, the same
empty ceramic bowl has sat in the middle of the dining room table since the
poinsettias were retired in January. No cornucopia overflows with fall’s
bounty. I won’t even be here the evening of October 31 (although Jon may have
to dole out some treats). Without kids in the house, Halloween has become a
non-event.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US">But when the kids
were young, Halloween definitely was an event. In fact, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i> event that heralded the beginning of the holiday season. At the
first chilly night, the family went into seasonal overdrive. Off to Linvilla
Orchards for piles of pumpkins, pots of yellow and orange mums, and a bale of
straw to be turned into stuffing for our “fall tableau”: we each would contribute a worn
shirt and pair of pants to be stuffed. The straw-stuffed bodies would be
propped up on a bench in the yard and topped with pumpkins for heads. Voila! Mom
and Dad and Jay and Annie in scarecrow form. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US">The heart of
Halloween, though, was costume-planning. Well before the nights turned cold,
sometimes at the first sign of summer's fading, husband Jon and daughter Annie
would go into caucus over their costumes. Jon was not a big fan of
trick-or-treating, but he joined in Annie’s planning with good-hearted gusto (and
also with the hope that he might get a couple Oh Henry candy bars out of it for
his trouble). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These costumes weren’t
purchased at a Halloween pop-up store at the mall. These costumes were made by
hand by Annie and Jon (mostly Jon) and were eagerly anticipated each year by
the households they visited on their rounds. One year Annie was a maiden from Camelot
who traveled with her own Merlin, she in flowing medieval wear and he majestic
in long cape and outsized wizard’s hat. Another year, Annie was a Southern
belle and Jon her charming beau. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US">As Annie got
older, the costumes evolved from cute to clever, like the time they went as “Coke
with a Straw.” Annie wore a silver cylinder of poster board with accurate Coke
graphics, and Jon made a flexible tube by basting a series of hula-hoops into
sheets painted with red stripes. This contraption was then worn in such a way
that he could make it bow at just the right place for a bendy straw. And there
was the time they went as “Partly Sunny.” Annie wore grey sweat-pants and -shirt
with bunches of white balloons somehow attached to the sweatshirt so that she
looked like a walking cumulus cloud. Jon fashioned a mask of yellow rays
flaring from around his head, like the pictures of Old Sol in children’s books.
Strapped around his head beamed a kind of miner’s lamp. As they walked through
the neighborhood, there was no doubt that the day was sunny with some clouds.
They always came home with bags bulging with sugared booty – and if Annie was
happy and there was an Oh Henry in one of those bags, it was all worth it to
Jon.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US">Many harvest
moons have passed. Both kids are out of college and out of the house. Less than
two months ago we were all together for Labor Day weekend, just about the time
that Jon and Annie used to get down to serious Halloween costume business. Sitting
out on the deck, Jon smiled and said to Annie, “So, what should we go as for
Halloween this year?” Annie turned a pitying eye on her father and replied, “Oh,
Pops. I never liked doing all that Halloween costume stuff. I only did it because
it was so important to you.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US">Now, there’s a taste of O.
Henry for Jon.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-49038970231654950662014-04-27T20:21:00.000-07:002014-04-28T18:21:12.454-07:00Watered Down Coleridge<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Water, water, every
where, </i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>And all the boards did
shrink</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">“I thought I should let you know before you got home. When I
came in this morning I found a hole in your hall ceiling and a pile of plaster
pieces on your hall rug, which is also soaking wet.” So ran our cat-sitter’s
voicemail message that I picked up while we were driving back from July Fourth
weekend on the Cape in the middle of the hottest summer ever. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">After a flurry of phone calls from the car, our plumber guy
and our home-repair guy pulled into the driveway minutes after we did. Plumber
Guy figured out what happened first. The condensation draining tube from the central
air conditioner’s condenser on the third floor had gotten clogged and backed up
into the overflow pan. The sensor that should have sensed water in the pan and should
have shut down the air conditioner did not sense the danger because the pan had
cracked. The air conditioner ran and the water drained down inside two stories
of walls to end up saturating the hall ceiling, which gave way, landing in a
sodden mess on the hall carpet. Plumber Guy expressed surprise at the problem.
We expressed surprise at Plumber Guy: he was the one who had installed
everything eight years before and had been doing the plumbing in the house ever
since. Plumber Guy put in a new overflow pan and charged us $500. Home-Repair
Guy cleaned the wound in the ceiling, with plastic for a bandage, and didn’t
come back until Thanksgiving to re-plaster. One bright spot: the hardwood
floorboards threatened to warp, but then changed their minds.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>And the coming wind
did roar more loud...</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>And the rain poured
down from one black cloud.</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Two months later we again arrived home from a Cape weekend
to another water event, this time in our TV room: a waterfall cascading down
the inside of the window and a shower sprinkling from now visible seams in the
ceiling adjoining the window. A freak storm (part of which we had driven
through) had dumped four inches of rain in less than an hour. The drainage of
the flat roof over the TV room could not cope. So in came the water, leaving
behind a 2’x3’ section of ceiling a mottled mustard shade. We did not call Plumber
Guy, nor did we call Home-Repair Guy. The mottled mustard remains.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The ice was here, the
ice was there,</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The ice was all
around.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">In January – yes, when we arrived home from a New Year’s
visit to the Cape – we found a frozen facade coating the fieldstone that is the
<i>outside </i>wall of our house. After
several weeks of head-scratching and consulting with various experts, it was Home-Repair
Guy’s turn to solve the mystery: the old pipe to bring water from the third
floor bathroom, which had been installed several generations back with no
insulation up the inside of the exterior, had cracked under the onslaught of
arctic temperatures. Water escaped once more down two stories and this time found
crevices to come out and pour down the outside wall.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Given that all three of these wet messes were discovered on
returns from the Cape, you might think if we just didn’t go to the Cape, our
water worries would be over.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">But no…</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">In March I noticed puddles and pools around the base of our
gas heater – and we hadn’t been to the Cape for two months! The water dripped
from a narrow copper pipe suspended from a jungle gym of pipes and valves that make
up the transportation system for our gas heater and radiators. It was Plumber Guy’s turn again. He diagnosed
a faulty water tank and replaced it. Yet the puddles and pools not only
remained, the drip graduated to a steady trickle. Plumber Guy came back and
re-diagnosed the problem: a faulty lever on one of the valves. He replaced
that. (I know, with all this replacing, we should also think about replacing Plumber
Guy.) </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">And yet there is no relief. Two weeks ago the water company
began an “upgrade,” replacing all the pipes underneath our road. Of course,
there was some malfunction (although at least not at our house this time), and
a small river rushed down the street. The water company chose to repair the
problem at 2:00 a.m., with the glare of the work lights, the grinding of the
drill through pavement, and the shouts of the various workers encouraging each
other, making for an interesting sleep environment.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I have had enough. Tomorrow I’m sending around an email to
the neighbors: “Okay, which one of you did in the albatross?”</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Water, water every where…</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-20786352508826514542012-09-16T08:30:00.002-07:002012-09-16T08:34:42.439-07:00To the greater glory…<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I go to church to sing.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> There it is. I know I will be struck by lightning. For our family, God does not work in mysterious ways at all. Nope. He acts quickly and clearly. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Example: My mother and my grandmother (her mother-in-law) were never very fond of each other. My father’s sudden death at age 54 left my mother, in her grieving and upended state, to be the one to keep a daily eye on my grandmother since my father’s sister lived 1,000 miles away in Florida. My mother religiously visited Grandma, who lived only minutes up the street from us. This was hardship duty, but she did it without a whimper. I was in college at the time and what I heard most often was how much my mother admired (not to say coveted) one of Grandma’s china lamps. After 3½ years, at the age of 82, my grandmother died in her sleep. My aunt came up from Florida, the estate was settled, my grandmother’s house was dismantled, and my aunt was fine with my mother taking the china lamp. By this time, I was home following graduation and my mother enlisted me to drive while she cradled the base of the lamp in her lap, with the lampshade, protected by a blanket, sitting safely behind us on the back seat. Not having decided yet the best placement for the lamp, my mother put it down in the basement on the floor so that there was no danger of its falling off a table. Less than two weeks later, a freak storm of nearly hurricane intensity sprang up and a mighty gust of wind blew open the cellar door. SMASH went the lamp. My mother told this story in a matter of fact way: it was not mysterious at all that God would frown on her taking possession of this coveted lamp once owned by a woman <i>she did not like</i>. A devout Episcopalian, my mother understood the message immediately and had no hard feelings toward God.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Now back to me and church…</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I have been singing Episcopal hymns in Episcopal churches since I was old enough to stay “up” in church for the service instead of going “down” to the undercroft (read “basement”) for story time. And for decades I was singing from the choir stalls. Choirs, especially good choirs, are regularly reminded that they are <i>not performing</i>. Choir music is part of the service. No applause, no encores, no “bravos.” (Even if you happen to have done a fine job as soprano soloist in Schubert’s “Mass in G Major.”)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> But that was okay. During those decades, concurrent with singing in church, I had other singing opportunities that were <i>performances</i>. Applause welcome. (Plus any individual words of praise.). At Hollidaysburg Junior High I starred in the 9<sup>th</sup> grade operetta, “The Man from Venus.” In high school, the Baldwin Trio were featured at chorus concerts. (See “<a href="http://in999wordsorless.blogspot.com/2011/07/harry-goes-to-hollywood.html" target="_blank">Harry Goes to Hollywood</a>.”) In college, my rendition of “When I’m 64” was preserved for posterity in the first recording of my women’s a cappella group. As an adult, I sang with a number of organizations, from 150-member volunteer choruses that performed Verdi’s “Requiem” with the Philadelphia Orchestra to a 16-member professional chamber choir that performed Thomas Tallis in local churches.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Once our children were </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">both old enough to stay “up” in church</span></span>, I stopped singing in the choir. I had all those other singing outlets and I wanted to sit in the pew with my family. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> About 13 years ago, I gave up even my extracurricular singing. Kids’ school events and our work schedules were just too tight to jam in any rehearsals. My only outlet for singing was from the pew on Sunday mornings--and that is <i>not performing</i>. I confess that sometimes I would get carried away, especially at Christmas, as I knew by heart all the fancy descants which I would then belt out with gusto. This led to embarrassment on the part of my children, but also, often enough, to someone turning to me and saying, “My, you have such a lovely voice.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Then the kids grew up. Going to church on Sunday has become less compelling then doing the crossword puzzle.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> However, when we were last up on the Cape driving to dinner in a new area, Jon pointed: “Look, there’s an Episcopal church!” He had struck a chord. I had been feeling like I was missing something. So the Sunday before Labor Day I went off to church. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Seating no more than 125 souls, the</span></span> building was a small jewel, with white-washed walls, dark wood beams, and brilliant stained glass windows. And they had a great music program. At the 10:00 a.m. service I was so happy to be chanting the liturgy and singing the Navy Hymn and “Come, Labor On” (hymns, coincidentally, from my father’s 1970 funeral that still make me tear up). When the service concluded, two people sped toward me, one still in her choir robe.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> “I heard you from the choir stall. Next time you are here, please come join us.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> “Oh, that’s what I was going to say! You should be in the choir!’”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> And from the trim gray-haired woman in the seersucker suit who had been sitting in front of me, “My, you have such a lovely voice.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Ah. That’s what I’d been missing. Adulation…of me!</span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I am a vainglorious creature, and fully expect to be a pile of ashes momentarily.</span></span> Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-16534137252233697112012-09-03T06:30:00.000-07:002012-09-03T06:30:04.410-07:00Blue Moon<style>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">August 31, 2012: Cape Cod, MA</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The end of August really annoys me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s not so much that September is around the corner and the next step means back to school. Although I do work for a university, I’m on an administrator’s schedule, so September is no different for me than July. And I genuinely enjoy the changing of the seasons. It’s just that the end of August is so sudden about it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Consider the transition from fall to winter. When does that happen? No set time. There can be snow on Halloween and t-shirt running weather on Christmas. The leaves take forever to come down. Week after week of raking. The township makes leaf pick-ups from November 1 through December 10. There’s a gradual building up to the holiday madness from September on; the winter solstice doesn’t take anyone by surprise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And consider February. I’ve always thought that February gets a bum rap as the dreariest month. In fact, February has as many daylight hours as October. It’s just that nobody notices. And the first snowdrops come up in February to make way for crocuses in March. All giving us time to prepare for April and the early forsythia and daffodils before there are even any leaves on the trees. So when did winter end?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In late April we might put in the screens on the side porch and get out a couple of chairs. Three weeks later we might retrieve the grill from the garage, then wait another week before planting the impatiens. And we can even wait another week or so before we buy the hanging baskets for the front doorway. Summer comes that gradually.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the end of August slams into summer like a hurricane making landfall. No subtlety about it. Almost overnight the world seems to go from daylight and birds chirping at 5:00 to dark silence as late as 6:00 a.m. In my morning run, I’m loping past the tidy landscapes of Plush Mill Road when I smell it: the pungent odor of decaying leaves. The impatiens that were perky just a few weeks ago now look sallow, with snubbed nodes on their stems instead of incipient buds. Recognizing the inevitable, I’m tempted to stop my rounds of watering. Why bother? Can’t stop the decline now!</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLHu3VU5qAX2JcbOu7PGmdHh84gi2UE21MOUpAc8LXFve7mqS_kGI5iiOy3v0qd5jKyDm3ALzMqcjSktbxcNPnR1y3y-1Yzto_edZdUeVAb2xWQpsMCuq7H-P6DqKsqvNb4vKok9ifx9s9/s1600/DSC00072.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLHu3VU5qAX2JcbOu7PGmdHh84gi2UE21MOUpAc8LXFve7mqS_kGI5iiOy3v0qd5jKyDm3ALzMqcjSktbxcNPnR1y3y-1Yzto_edZdUeVAb2xWQpsMCuq7H-P6DqKsqvNb4vKok9ifx9s9/s200/DSC00072.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6YPL8rEeRSewEtY2HWKAPQinFXwziibD0nbDmJaxIfa2Qxej0CeNkhI6g7JKiL8qSWlrx4Swla_OMqqCOO8qvQfrG0jcF_VeOkdtjTduiN-Gj2nm6Aou7-YkWw-0bQfAue3qToRZq0khR/s1600/DSC00073.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6YPL8rEeRSewEtY2HWKAPQinFXwziibD0nbDmJaxIfa2Qxej0CeNkhI6g7JKiL8qSWlrx4Swla_OMqqCOO8qvQfrG0jcF_VeOkdtjTduiN-Gj2nm6Aou7-YkWw-0bQfAue3qToRZq0khR/s200/DSC00073.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Take the last couple days. </span></span></span></span>We arrived on the Cape Thursday afternoon, having left only 10 days before. The end of August had done its damage here as well. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our planters and baskets of flowers that had thrived all summer through extended absences and benign neglect now look like props for the Addams Family, dead stems collapsed over the sides of their containers. Our neighbors returned to Albany only a week ago, yet their black-eyed-Susans that had reigned in glorious sunny gold for three months now stand stiff with nothing left but charred tops. Although the thermometer said it was 82°, an undercurrent of chill raised the hair on my forearms and Jon wanted to know if he could build a fire. The scrub trees edging the pond are pock-marked with leaves the color of dried blood, and at our favorite farm stand pumpkins are pushing aside the peaches. There is no more reading on the deck until 7:30 p.m. -- we can’t see the pages of our books. And we have to turn on the lights to eat dinner.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All of this change in 10 days.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In defiance of the end of August bearing down on us, tonight, August 31, Jon and I put a steak on the grill, boiled up some corn, and had a salad with native tomatoes. Afterwards we walked down to the landing of the pond. The breeze was now soft and the moon was shining so brightly that the water shimmered silver and we could see our shadows.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The moon wasn’t really blue, but we were. Good-bye, summer. </span></span><br />
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Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-43394947043859831172012-08-28T19:00:00.001-07:002012-08-28T19:00:01.007-07:00Vexatious Security<div style="font-family: inherit;"><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b>I have just gotten back to sleep after my usual middle-aged late night walk-about when my cell phone rings. Only half conscious, I’m thinking it’s awfully late for “Rachel the Automaton Voice” to be calling from Oregon to assure me that there’s nothing amiss with my credit card, but boy does she have a deal for me. The phone now in my hand, I see that it is 2:23 a.m. and the caller is Vector Security.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> I am on my feet and wide awake. “Yes?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “This is Vector Security. We are getting a burglar alarm from your house. Are you at home?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “No, I’m not at home.” (I am on Cape Cod, 350 miles away from home.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Would you like us to call the police?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> For some reason I take a second to silently review that Jon is in the Adirondacks with his siblings, Annie is in Seattle with her college roommate, and Jay is unlikely to have traveled from Brooklyn to arrive home at 2:23 in the morning.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “Yes, please call the police. Will I get a follow-up?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “If the police find anything, they’ll call us and we’ll call you back.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Well, so long sleep! I sit straight up in bed for a full hour, spending the first 30 minutes getting my heart rate back to normal. At 3:23 I figure I’m not going to hear anything, so I turn out the light.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> While driving home the next day I call Vector Security. Did they really not hear anything, as I was not eager to walk into a ransacked house?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “No, we heard nothing from the police.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “What sensor sent you the alarm?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> “The right living room exterior door.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Ah. The usual suspect.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> We have not had good luck with our security system. In our old house, the converted livestock barn, we had nine, yes nine, “exterior doors” on three levels. None of the doors had locks and we had no alarm system. We lived there for 16 years, and the only breaches were in-laws who sometimes wandered through the kitchen when we weren’t expecting them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> When we moved to our current house, our insurance company not only insisted on covering us at two times the purchase price (“We have to go with replacement cost!”) but also insisted on a central station alarm system.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The previous owners had used Vector Security, and the remnants of the system were still in the house. So we called Vector. They sent a salesman who was exceedingly proud of his literary name. To protect the guilty, I won’t give his real name, but it was the equivalent of “Shelley Melville.” He told us that we would need all new sensors (doors, movement and fire) throughout the house, to the tune of thousands of dollars. Luckily Joe the technician said that “Shelley” was nuts. Joe replaced a couple sensors, added a few new ones, and reactivated what remained.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The system was intimidating. The User’s Manual was (and still is) 120 pages long. The main panel has three rows of seven buttons each. The “fobs” for turning the system on and off from a key chain have a complicated pattern of how many times to press which icon for what outcome. We never turned the darn system on. We did lock the doors, though, since having the ability to do so was such an interesting novelty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Election Day 2007. Jon and I are heading home early from our respective offices in PA and NJ so that we can all vote together as a family for local school board representatives. I’m 20 minutes from home when Annie calls. She has arrived home from school (she was still in high school at the time) to find the kitchen door bashed in.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> We had been robbed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The only thing the thief took was Annie’s jewelry box, which was worth more in sentiment than cents. But we were stunned.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> As for the local constabulary, Annie could only marvel at their tramping and shouting through the house with flashlights at 4:00 in the afternoon, slamming doors and talking to the cats, while looking for the perpetrator(s). The lead detective was also puzzled by our quixotic housekeeping: Jay’s TV on the guestroom bed, for example. But they were especially censorious about the fact that we hadn’t had the alarm turned on. They didn’t recover Annie’s jewelry box, but they did give us a lengthy lecture.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> So we began using the alarm system. And so began the false alarms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> June of 2009. Jon and I both had our cell phones off so we didn’t even know it had happened until we got home and listened to all the voicemail messages. We also got a nasty note from our township office threatening fines for false alarms. (How this squared with the lecture about always turning on the alarm system I do not know.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The summer of 2011. Jon and I were heading into Philadelphia, looking forward to a movie at the Ritz Five and a light supper afterward at Zahav, when my cellphone rang: Vector Security. Burglary alarm.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> My heart racing, I tell Jon to turn around (well, get off north I-95 and then back on south I-95) and head for home. The police are still there. They could find nothing. They said, with some disdain, that the cats must have set off a motion alarm. But we hadn’t turned on the motion alarms. Vector said it was the right living room exterior door.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> And now the alarm has interrupted vacation rest instead of movie-going. (Plus, earlier in the summer Annie had arrived home to find that the panel buttons wouldn’t work to turn off the alarm. When she couldn’t tell Vector the password the local constabulary arrived at the house again. They and Annie were old friends by now.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> So something is wrong. I’ve called Vector to come out and check the whole system. Who will they send?</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Joe or “Shelley”?</span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-80108817794193982462012-04-02T13:15:00.006-07:002012-04-03T17:52:20.976-07:00From the Back Seat<div style="font-family: inherit;"><style>
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</style></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Jon and I first met in 1980, we uncovered some uncanny childhood coincidences—in spite of the fact that his father was a Philadelphia lawyer raising his family 25 miles north of the city and my father was a doctor delivering babies in the Altoona Hospital halfway between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh and raising his family in Hollidaysburg. Perhaps most astonishing, Jon and I figured out that we could have crossed paths at the Grand Canyon in the summer of 1962. How many East Coast fathers decided that the summer of ’62 was the time to take a family trip across the country?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">There were differences. Leaving the older sisters at home, Jon’s mother drove Jon and his brother in the family station wagon to Taos, NM, where his father met them after taking the train. (The Broadway Limited to Chicago before changing trains.) They spent most of their extended trip at campsites or rustic ranches. They even walked down into the Grand Canyon and the next morning rode mules back up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not for us the “roughing it” version. My parents packed all four kids and four weeks of suitcases for hotels and motels into our white four-door Sedan de Ville. My brothers were 17 and 14; I was nine and my sister was seven. Since brother #1 was practically a grown-up, he shared the driving with my mother and father. To have any chance at extended peace, it would not work to have the 14-year-old brother in the back seat with his two elementary school sisters. So through complicated calculations that kept some configuration of grown-ups and brother#2 in the front seat as much as possible, my sister and I saw the U.S.A. not in a Chevrolet but from the back seat of a Cadillac.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">And what do I remember from that trip? The first morning we left very early, driving to Bedford to get on the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading west. Our goal was a motel on the outskirts of Chicago. My dad, an avid golfer, talked about a PGA tournament due to start that same morning. Not long after the comment, we could see in front and above us a walkway over the turnpike. Sure enough, overhead and through the mist appeared a number of men in pastel pants on that walkway, followed by lackeys lugging golf clubs. It was almost too good to be true. (Jon tells me that it must have been the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh, Jack Nicklaus’ first win.)</span><style>
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The car clocked mile after mile, every AM radio station in the country playing Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You” or the spooky space music of “Telstar.” Through the back windows we saw abattoirs, buffalo, and twisters, things as alien to us as pagodas, volcanoes, and windmills. Billboards were our reading material. (We never visited anything that started with “World’s Largest…” nor did our pleas result in a stop anywhere that ended with “Caverns.”) But we did hit more highlights than I can list. In addition to the Grand Canyon (where I may have passed my future husband in a gift shop?), we saw the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. We stayed overnight in Las Vegas, where the temperature was 107° and we went to a grand hotel to see Victor Borge, who made us laugh while he played the piano. We toured Beverly Hills and Fisherman’s Wharf. We visited Knots Berry Farm, and at Disney Land I was allowed to go on the scary rides with my brothers, as long as I could keep up with them. (To this day, I walk very, very fast.) We saw Lincoln’s home in Springfield, IL, and Route 66’s home in Springfield, MO. We gazed in awe at the Hoover Dam and we crossed Lake Michigan on a ferry. (The trip was so rough I still avoid ferries— and as a result have never set foot on Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Over the course of four weeks surprisingly few things went wrong, although we each had our difficult moments. My dad found a Rotary Club lunch to go to in San Francisco, where the president of the club mispronounced my dad’s name when introducing visitors. (No mean feat that, mispronouncing “Taylor.”) When we were in Jackson Hole, WY, my mother had an unhappy time on a trail ride when she would kick her horse as she also pulled back on the reins, saying “Whoa!” (The horse probably had an unhappy time as well.) At the same stop, brother #1 went to a “hoe-down” at the Lodge and the girl he had his eye on danced with someone else. Brother #2 left his prescription sunglasses on the roof of the car when we stopped to take pictures in the Badlands and for the remainder of the trip had to wear clip-ons over his regular glasses. (Not cool.) Because my mother liked to buy us matching outfits, on several occasions I had to put up with people mistaking me for my sister’s twin. (Also not cool: I was 21 months older!) And my sister was never allowed to pick the radio station.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nevertheless, we arrived back home</span><span style="font-size: large;"> without much incident</span><span style="font-size: large;"> in mid July, and summer settled back to normal, with swimming during the day and catching fireflies in a glass jar after dinner. The trip out West became a collection of photographs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">That was 50 years ago. Impossible.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-79798086408516073582012-03-25T16:20:00.000-07:002012-09-01T12:13:29.083-07:00Swanning Around<style>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have no memory of ever seeing a real live swan when I was growing up. Swans existed only in books and music. And they were always something out of the ordinary in those books and music. In fact, swans were so out of the main stream for me that I didn’t even understand the significance of “The Ugly Duckling” when I first heard it. I don’t know who was reading it to me, but she must have had dim hopes for my intellectual development when she came to the end of the story with the words, “He looked at his reflection in the pond and saw that he was… A SWAN.” I sat there dumb, uncomprehending and unmoved. She had to show me the pictures of how cute the little ducklings were and how dull the little protagonist of the story, until the last page, when he was now a glorious specimen, glowing brilliant white with elegant curves and clearly far superior to all the brown ducks paddling about in the pond. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Later on I read the story of Leda and the Swan. Now the swan was not only gorgeous but also powerful and liked to get his own way (to put it politely). This myth gave a whole new meaning to “swanning around.” About the same time, “Swan Lake” introduced me to female swans. While they may not have been powerful, they had come into being through magic. So I got to my 20<sup>th</sup> year with only myth and magic associated with swans.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The summer before my senior year in college I went to England for the first time as part of a summer program geared to English majors and hosted by Trinity College, Oxford. I saw live swans for the first time. I might as well have been seeing unicorns; swans still seemed that unreal. Of course there would be swans and unicorns in England, which was (and, if I am honest, still is) the magic kingdom for me. Kings and queens. Castles and moats. Sherwood Forest. They’re all there! As for swans, in England they are royal in addition to being magical. The Queen annually counts her swans at the July Swan Upping ceremony. Twelve years later, when Jon and I did our first trip to England together, we stayed at the Swan Inn in Bibury, in the heart of the Cotswolds. At the Swan Inn, which is right at the junction of the B4425 and the county lane going up to Ablington Grove, we could look out our window to see swans gliding around in the River Coln. But that wasn’t real either, because we had clearly been dropped into a Constable painting, or a postcard, the long, low dwellings dripping with honey, the green swards the color of smoky emeralds. Soon we were back at Heathrow, heading home. (Note: There is nothing magical about the mess at Heathrow.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then…last year we had a stroke of good fortune, and we purchased a small cottage on Cape Cod, our vacation destination on and off for 30+ years. The cottage is on a narrow dirt lane that runs between two ponds before dead-ending into a summer camp for city kids. The first weekend that we owned the cottage I walked down to the nearer pond with one of our new neighbors and—there they were. A family of swans just meandering about the pond. Our pond! Our swans! I was dumbstruck and stared and stared at the magnificent mother and father, with their trail of “ugly ducklings” close behind, gliding next to the shoreline, heading our way. I didn’t even need binoculars!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We’ve now been going up to the cottage for nearly a year and I’ve learned that there are swans all over the place on Cape Cod. How I missed that for the previous 30 years, I do not know. If you Google “swans, Cape Cod,” you get 2.8 million search results. I am not kidding. Just within a 6-mile radius of our cottage we came upon Swan Lake and Swan River. There is even a Swan Inn. In its February 24 issue, "The Cape Codder" ran a front-page photo of two grown swans literally necking, looking silly, while their nearly grown cygnet stood behind them, looking embarrassed. (Typical teenager.) And I have learned that swans can be a royal pain in the neck, especially if you are trying to take a swim and they think you’ve gotten a little too close to their territory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nevertheless, when I walk down to our pond’s overgrown landing early in the morning and the mist is still rising and all is quiet and I see gliding along the far shore “our” swans – they are still magical to me.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIKvCbPbY3K-nKhdCJ-H-ZJyKOG7CY-vuS7HwlTbLb08JTDsbmPXA1wEOTirGfMtKPapuUqjvvDj1p3Laya7ob8b3LGpYdsl_NP_EVo9GMsU9eELdJ3gfFIahKgdoFkqfplKXUV4dbICaF/s1600/DSC00063.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIKvCbPbY3K-nKhdCJ-H-ZJyKOG7CY-vuS7HwlTbLb08JTDsbmPXA1wEOTirGfMtKPapuUqjvvDj1p3Laya7ob8b3LGpYdsl_NP_EVo9GMsU9eELdJ3gfFIahKgdoFkqfplKXUV4dbICaF/s400/DSC00063.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swans, at summer's end...</td></tr>
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Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-31438656714233987092012-03-15T12:15:00.007-07:002012-03-23T12:35:06.069-07:00Recitals<div style="font-family: inherit;"><style>
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</style></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I had a good piano lesson on Monday.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, a piano lesson. I have been playing the piano since kindergarten, when I would pick out nursery tunes by ear. One of my most vivid kindergarten memories—next to the time I ate the crayoned cut-outs of fruit that we made—was the day a very large blind man came to our classroom and played “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” I am not being politically correct when I say that his size was inconsequential. What awed me was that he sat there at the old upright piano in the basement of the small Methodist Church with his tawny dog sitting next to him and he played big chords without mistakes and he couldn’t even see the keyboard. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I started piano lessons in 1<sup>st</sup> grade with Miss Leighty. Not only had she taught my older brother, she had also taught my father. (My grandmother liked to say that “the Taylors put Alma Leighty on the map.” I don’t know what map that was.) I took piano lessons with Miss Leighty for nine years, up until I went away to school. Every year was a roller coaster for Miss Leighty and me. I hated to practice, and week after week Miss Leighty graciously hid her disappointment about what I had not accomplished. Then Spring would come, bringing the annual certifications by some national musicians’ organization followed closely by her pupils’ recitals. Would I get through them? The certifications involved proving that I had mastered the appropriate levels of technique, arpeggios and the like. The recitals meant performing a piece of music.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">A harbinger of term papers to come, at the last minute I would work like mad and pull off an A-/B+ production. Good enough for the little pins the certification organization awarded (tiny gold-plated pianos I still have in an old jewelry box) and the applause from the parents gathered in Miss Leighty’s living room. Of those recitals I can recall only one piece, the last one: Carl Sinding’s “Rustle of Spring.” Much more clear is the reward after each recital: We (my father, mother, little sister and I; my two older brothers were excused from attending the recital) would go to Seward’s Drugstore on the way home and I could order a chocolate soda.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">And then I was the one with children. It must be the curse of parents that they perpetrate upon their children the very things that they themselves had dreaded as children. We insisted that both Jay and Annie take some kind of music lesson. After a disastrous try at piano, Jay took up guitar lessons. Annie took up piano lessons. After several false starts for Annie with less than satisfactory teachers, we found Miss Priscilla. Annie settled in contentedly—practicing only 24 hours before each lesson. Like mother, like daughter. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizl63RxqijHu0qYfRxG-pfitbgiB9I5GBa9qQdbRTdpOIGh46BiMT-C8PpReEDrk9uKTmTZRXj6fIviDm5r5fhT1U-xbpmWjLEwGNzI867De7aSszg_Ze3Ov7pAyz_EoPSJCXCh1TZp9-0/s1600/Recitals.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizl63RxqijHu0qYfRxG-pfitbgiB9I5GBa9qQdbRTdpOIGh46BiMT-C8PpReEDrk9uKTmTZRXj6fIviDm5r5fhT1U-xbpmWjLEwGNzI867De7aSszg_Ze3Ov7pAyz_EoPSJCXCh1TZp9-0/s320/Recitals.jpg" width="209" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Annie at 11, looking pleased</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Of course, there were recitals. How to reward the effort of recitals became a question. Stopping at a drugstore for chocolate sodas wasn’t going to work. For one thing, you can’t get a chocolate soda at a drugstore anymore. Not to mention that anyone can get a metallic-tasting chocolate soda anytime at a fast-food emporium—an opportunity that (blessedly) did not exist in 1960’s Hollidaysburg, PA. So I watched. For Annie, I saw parents bringing bouquets. And that’s what I did. I’d sneak away the morning of the recital to buy a lovely bunch of flowers, which we would hide in the car. Once at the recital location we’d get Annie situated, then I’d again sneak out to the car to collect the flowers to present at the end of the program. She always seemed pleased.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">For Jay it was a different story. He was learning electric guitar that, in sharp contrast to his sister and mother, he practiced diligently. His teacher was in a band. Recitals featured “Sweet Home, Alabama.” He was a boy. We went through a couple recitals when the reward was that he could pick what we ate for dinner. I finally did hit on an equivalent of flowers. For his last two recitals, I wrapped up a family-sized bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese chips (Jay’s favorite) and presented them like a bouquet at the end of the recitals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now for the past three or four years I have been taking piano lessons from Annie’s teacher, Miss Priscilla. My lessons are every two weeks, and I am doing much better than when I was a kid: I actually practice three or four times between lessons. I recently nailed Chopin’s Prelude in B minor (Opus 28, No. 6). I grinned like a maniac when Miss Priscilla praised me, and I almost said, “I could do this one for the recital!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">There aren’t any recitals for 59-year-old piano students. But that’s okay, I guess. Anyway, where would Jon take me to get a chocolate soda?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTTIvLGQRu8BmO4xONLkPSlGzilWiMUeNBd79w5Cy81N1B9r03_fgvIOGFdrSUcwck-q9neSVtImJ1bmdcZrqvniRbK2tJZc74ThMv7mxiF-nU9WaxTrFyI0PsLhp9FPdsVhyJ-yJ0kTow/s1600/piano.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTTIvLGQRu8BmO4xONLkPSlGzilWiMUeNBd79w5Cy81N1B9r03_fgvIOGFdrSUcwck-q9neSVtImJ1bmdcZrqvniRbK2tJZc74ThMv7mxiF-nU9WaxTrFyI0PsLhp9FPdsVhyJ-yJ0kTow/s320/piano.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mendelssohn's next...</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-77444480774933329182012-03-02T15:15:00.004-08:002012-03-02T15:17:13.440-08:00Unmovable Objects<div style="font-family: inherit;"><style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not long ago an envelope appeared in our mailbox from a realtor. It was addressed by hand—really by hand, not “by hand” by a machine. The writer identified herself as a local agent working with clients in search of a “special home” in our neighborhood. She designated the preferred streets and noted the desired square footage, the hoped for excellent condition, “nice back yard and unique character.” Gosh. What a coincidence! Their “special home” description sounded just like our house! (Especially the part where she allowed that if the house had “unique character” but wasn’t in excellent condition the clients would feel comfortable making moderate updates.) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I recognized this maneuver, as years ago my sister-in-law wrangled her dream house by going straight to the owners, who initially had had no thought of selling. (My brother and his wife have now been living in that house for over 25 years.) I confess that I was flattered that someone might want our house that much; it confirmed that I was an excellent judge of houses! Moreover, it was heartening, in this vale of depressed housing prices after having purchased our house at the peak of the market in 2005, to see the proposed price range. The offer would be very attractive-- if we had any interest in selling.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">But we don’t have any interest in selling. More accurately, we don’t have any interest in moving. At least, I don’t. The last time we moved it almost did me in. And I thought we had been so organized. I had even contracted with a “moving manager,” someone who specialized primarily in helping “older folks" downsize from their rambling piles in Chestnut Hill into their new cottages in Main Line retirement communities. Our situation wasn’t quite like that, of course, but I gauged that I was going to feel the same trauma level. She sent her minions to help us pack up 225 cartons of books and unnumbered boxes of our mix-and-match glassware and the various sets of Wedgewood and Lenox handed down to us from various branches of our families. Everything she scheduled went off as planned. But I made a significant tactical error: I left too many odds and ends behind to deal with after the main move. We didn’t have a deadline to get out of the old house, so I thought, “Why push it if we don’t have to?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, you push it so that everything gets done in the old house at the same time that you are ready to settle in and recuperate from the move in your new house. So there we were, one toe still in our former home, with kitchen drawers filled with rubber bands and paper clips, shoeboxes full of loose photos, clothes trees with two out of three legs toppled onto empty bedroom floors, and more. All in a house of dust once hidden but now painfully apparent and inducing sneezes and itchy eyes. For four long weeks after our move, every day, after work and on the weekends, we went back and forth between the houses, loading things out of the old place into the back of the Jeep and hauling them over to the new place. Finally, in a fit of desperate exhaustion, we rented a dumpster and just started throwing things away. We swore we had learned our lesson about stuff.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: right;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">We have now been in our current house 6½ years. The 225 cartons of books are still in the garage, and down in the basement we have box after box of old vinyl records, Annie’s artwork from lower school, files of W-2’s going back to Jon’s and my college years. A fine film of dust covers gym bags containing Jay’s lacrosse gear from upper school, which he last used in 2003. Under the ping-pong table is a duffel with roller blades and kneepads purchased for a 2001 trip to Key West. (Neither ever came in contact with asphalt—in Florida or elsewhere.) Against a crumbling wall lean towers of stereo equipment so old that the components are a turntable, tape deck, and tuner. A T8200 Vision Fitness treadmill, purchased in 1999 and broken since 2009, blocks the way to the old bureau whose drawers house VCR tapes of Disney movies. There’s no way we could move with all that stuff down there.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoFaKPisbhTlufYSf8QpOsNbPi7sXmomw1qt6RovAUvRWPjAOnjrOp5r2E9A8R47edjW4yeX9KrioA1c12H77BrALJNvYO88mnsi2FvFWN2bU3l98HGU5UKYnNpaPYYlWqSd_O3HyQqYvZ/s1600/basementv2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoFaKPisbhTlufYSf8QpOsNbPi7sXmomw1qt6RovAUvRWPjAOnjrOp5r2E9A8R47edjW4yeX9KrioA1c12H77BrALJNvYO88mnsi2FvFWN2bU3l98HGU5UKYnNpaPYYlWqSd_O3HyQqYvZ/s200/basementv2.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scary stuff</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Last fall we were visiting with my brother and his wife when, over drinks, she turned to him and wailed, “Don’t you dare die before I do! I couldn’t possibly clean out the basement by myself!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I know just how she feels.</span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-77708043472353213662012-01-19T06:24:00.000-08:002012-01-19T06:24:30.134-08:00My New Year's Countdown<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><style>
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</style><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thursday, January 5:</span></b> A dingy day, a dull gray that just won’t lift. To break the gloom I go into the living room to plug in the lights on the Christmas tree and into the dining room to plug in the lights that lace through the pine roping draped over the hutch. Only two more days (and counting) that the lights will be up, so might as well take advantage of it. The first floor comes to life, and I take a couple minutes to count up all the things that “had to be done” to create the holidays… </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">...starting the day after Thanksgiving with making the Christmas pudding with 17 ingredients. Then December is upon us. We get 120 copies of our Christmas photo to go into the cards that I don’t get around to sending until December 20. I spend 60 minutes at the computer ordering food gifts from Williams-Sonoma for four families. (It takes so long because I can never remember my “log in credentials” from one year to the next and can’t use Express Check-out and have to recreate the recipient list all over again.) Off to Wedgewood Nurseries for two large poinsettias for the front windows, eight small poinsettias for the dining room table and two mantels, and three wreaths. On the way back, pick up more boxes of 100-bulb strands of Christmas lights since the August hurricane flooded the basement and we lost some decorations. A week later we pick out the tree. It goes up for seven days without decorating so that the cats can get acclimated to it. Annie gets home and we decorate the tree – an exercise that takes hours in itself: in fact, the 2½ hours of Handel’s <i>Messiah</i>, all three parts. Part I is devoted to the lights; Part II to determining the correct placement of the 30-year-old strands of gold beads and musical notes and clef signs (“Hallelujah”); and Part III to the glass ornaments, cardboard cutouts of the kings and queens of England, miniature scrolls with scores of carols, and any sparkling non-breakable balls to fill in the empty spaces. (Jay tops off the tree with our angel when he arrives home for Christmas weekend.) Handel winds things up with “Worthy is the Lamb” and we plunk down on the couch with glasses of wine to admire our handiwork. Worthy is the tree.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">Then the three traditional holiday dinners. On December 18 it’s Chicken Marbella for 12 for our former neighbors. On December 23 Boeuf Bourguignon for 12 for a longstanding group of friends and family. On December 25 roast goose and Brussels sprouts for the four of us.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">I’ve made myself cranky again by thinking of all the hours spent on all of the above, and I go back up to my office to get in a better mood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Friday, January 6: </span></b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">But we’re not done yet. It’s Twelfth Night and I am off to fetch the galette des Roi – Kings’ Cake. We are not French or even of French extraction. Nor do we observe Epiphany in any liturgical way. But when Jay and Annie were little they had a babysitter from France who introduced us to the puff pastry with almond paste and to the tradition of the little plastic trinket embedded in the cake. Whoever gets the piece with the trinket gets to wear the cardboard crown that comes in the box! So of course that became one more item that “had to be done” as part of the holidays. In contrast to yesterday, today is beautiful, a lovely day for the 20-minute drive to the authentic French pastry shop where I plunk down $17.00 for an eight-inch cake. During the drive, my mind frets over the things that we had left undone this year. We ran out of time for Annie to visit her childhood piano teacher. I baked only two batches of chocolate chip cookies, never getting around to a batch of peanut butter cookies. And I completely forgot about making the hot buttered wine. I guess the list could have been worse.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Saturday, January 7: </span></b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">Two more things that have to be done. The easy one is baking a pan of monkeybread to snack on while we do the hard one: “un-decorating” the house. Start time is 2:30. For this chore we need some hard, thumping music to keep us moving and our tradition is the soundtrack of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Starlight Express.” We turn up the volume to 11 and away we go. Off come the outdoor lights; down come the wreaths; </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">out go the small poinsettias to the compost</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">. The Dickensian figures get packed in plastic boxes for the attic; the fake pine roping entwined through the bannister spindles gets jammed into a big plastic bag for the basement. And the tree? The cats have already helped us by knocking ornaments off the lowest 18 inches. Off comes everything else in the opposite order of the decorating. (We discover that Good Queen Bess is missing in action.) Annie and I pack up the empty liquor boxes with all the strings of lights. Jon drags the tree out to the curb. We do a quick sweep of the dry needles. “Starlight Express” has seen the light at the end of the tunnel and the hall clock chimes 4:00. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">90 minutes. 90 minutes to undo how many hours of work? Two hours later we wave good-bye to Annie as she walks off to the commuter rail station on her way into Philadelphia for a friend’s birthday party. She’ll go back to school straight from there on Sunday. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sunday, January 8: </span></b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">The only traces of the holidays are the two big poinsettias in the front windows. They are still in such good shape I didn’t have the heart to chuck them onto the compost pile. The house is quiet. The old year is over.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">Happy New Year.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVEdIAniOQWF4DPx-a2z6riVKrakYxU7WWMb0r5x_A4z7q4gqaranjC8T60kkhtqir1yQyJK4DwyRJkx-Gd_eynEbjzF7FtOERaC2RC5jqEnaAzo1EgPgvJW5yPMG16U43Ms2OZb1Oj66r/s1600/Pointsettia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVEdIAniOQWF4DPx-a2z6riVKrakYxU7WWMb0r5x_A4z7q4gqaranjC8T60kkhtqir1yQyJK4DwyRJkx-Gd_eynEbjzF7FtOERaC2RC5jqEnaAzo1EgPgvJW5yPMG16U43Ms2OZb1Oj66r/s400/Pointsettia.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">January 2012</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
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</span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-80234301984458366642011-10-04T23:59:00.000-07:002012-04-24T19:28:58.277-07:00Our Lady of the Dashboard<div style="font-family: inherit;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I like maps. I don’t know when I first became enamored, but my affection was well established by the time I met Jon. During 30 years of marriage I have spent many happy hours in the car, with Jon driving and me navigating from the passenger’s seat, an atlas opened across my knees. During the B.C. years (Before Children), we drove the nearly 1400 miles to Key West with interesting side trips traced out by my finger on the Rand McNally page. We spent three weeks in England driving north to York, west to the Lake District, south to Chester, Shropshire, and the Cotswolds, and then on to Kent before heading to Heathrow. All under the tutelage of <i>Britain on Country Roads</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Later we thought nothing of buckling the kids into their carseats and heading off, map on lap, to Savannah, Disney World, the Blue Ridge Mountains. When Jay and Annie were older we were off to France with <i>Hammond International France Road Atlas</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> packed in my carry-on. Renting a car in Avignon, we tooled around the south of France from the hill towns in the shadow of Mont Ventoux to St. Paul de Vence and back, with many villages in between. That’s not to say we never had an interesting moment or two. On the way from Venasque to Aix-en-Provence we came to a rotary. I knew which small town was our next destination, but there were many spokes off the rotary with many signposts with many long names. Not being quick in French, I couldn’t take in all the names on the first go ‘round. I couldn’t take them all in on the second time ‘round. By the third time ‘round Jay and Annie both looked up from their Gameboys and said, “Why are we going in circles?” By then I had conquered nearly all the place names, and on the fourth spin around I identified the correct signpost and off we sped to L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This was all before GPS gadgets, of course. When our friends started to acquire them, we resisted. We liked our method. But we were eventually worn down. The tipping point was when our friend, an Episcopal minister, spoke of how she had first been dubious, but when her GPS safely guided her through the unknown streets of Brooklyn to deposit her right at her son’s student housing quarters, she became a believer. Son Jay was about to move to Brooklyn, whose streets were unknown to us as well. We got a GPS, and we christened her “Our Lady of the Dashboard.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Her big test was another trip to France – this time a lengthy drive from Aix-en-Provence up to Paris. She did quite well, although we found her French pronunciation <i>trés</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>amusant</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. And she did get a bit tangled up in Lyon, where she sent us back and forth over <u>both</u> rivers before we finally found ourselves in front of our hotel.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sadly, we had too few times to take advantage of her abilities following our trip to France. One morning we got into our respective vehicles to head to work…and found them ransacked. The thieves had passed over the Motorola and iPhone chargers. They weren’t interested in our EZ Pass transponders. They found our spare change small change. They only had eyes for Our Lady of the Dashboard.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We had not been astute enough to purchase her with an American Express Card, so we had no avenue to get reimbursed for our loss. Some time later we bought another GPS gadget—but this time it was a substantially reduced Our Lady of the Dashboard.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">From time to time Jon used Our Lady #2 to get to a client’s headquarters at an unfamiliar location. But her first real test came when we traveled to…yes, Brooklyn, to visit Jay. Unfortunately she did not live up to her predecessor’s achievements. Once we were in Brooklyn proper, she simply shut down. She had no idea where we were or where we should go. We eventually hit upon a GPS version of Restart. But by this time we had found Jay’s apartment using Google maps, had a lovely visit with Jay, and were heading back home to Philadelphia. Our Lady #2 appeared to have gotten herself reoriented. We plugged in the co-ordinates. The next thing we knew, she had us deep within Manhattan. By the time we had caught on to where she had led us, it was too late. Like poor old Macbeth, we were “stepped in so far that, should [we] wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go’er.” Trying to get ourselves out of the red wash of traffic and brake lights to get back to Brooklyn would have taken as long, or longer, than waiting out the inching forward to the Lincoln Tunnel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Several months ago we went to Italy for a family event. We were told it would cost us hundreds to download the software to help Our Lady #2 navigate through Italy, and we were advised to get a GPS when we picked up our rental car at the airport in Rome. Well, in Rome the clerk sneered as he refused to rent us a GPS because we hadn’t reserved it when we reserved the car. A creature of habit, I had a Michelin’s <i>Italy: Tourist and Motoring Atlas</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> with me. We were back to our old ways. Over the course of the trip, the atlas opened on my lap, we wended our way up to Lucca via the coast; we visited Pisa and environs; we did the switchbacks to the Cinque Terre; we made our way east to Florence; and then we headed back to the airport in Rome.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And we didn’t get lost once.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga9nDZH7s8Ja_pK2tWY3bTW9f9elKytdANG2iWixKF62OJI2_3ck4jhKefaoqrdCJtBWp7B-zM-ZTaCjS4eLjL0jeb67NM_U9_I3pBvFKjav8o4mxai6j2NmX7L8Z_q1o970QT-UoAFNWt/s1600/Lucca.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga9nDZH7s8Ja_pK2tWY3bTW9f9elKytdANG2iWixKF62OJI2_3ck4jhKefaoqrdCJtBWp7B-zM-ZTaCjS4eLjL0jeb67NM_U9_I3pBvFKjav8o4mxai6j2NmX7L8Z_q1o970QT-UoAFNWt/s320/Lucca.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Outskirts of Lucca, Tuscany. There is a road there...somewhere.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-17344175982772206392011-09-20T23:59:00.000-07:002011-09-29T17:34:19.748-07:00The Death of a Cat<div style="font-family: inherit;"><style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Gizmo. Gizmatron. Mr. Gizter. Gizzie. Adopted from the local SPCA, Gizzie was a black domestic short-hair cat distinguished only by his shape – 16 pounds precariously balanced on four dainty paws with a triangle for a face – and by his animosity toward strangers and his adoration of his family, marked by his heartfelt “head butts” which served for hugs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0j7ZwIyB6sh93ZLhnNOe_gXiyo3_U5GaZ37hcdjKbojSSIoyGJ5m612ijgvpL0MzjVZt3HmGrGEvKZpqGxe9bPBr2e1vKEJkSDHw8iik7r2xXpNsBKo9f_IL2CZqUFR44lC98XGkI8_Xf/s1600/Gizzie%2526friends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0j7ZwIyB6sh93ZLhnNOe_gXiyo3_U5GaZ37hcdjKbojSSIoyGJ5m612ijgvpL0MzjVZt3HmGrGEvKZpqGxe9bPBr2e1vKEJkSDHw8iik7r2xXpNsBKo9f_IL2CZqUFR44lC98XGkI8_Xf/s200/Gizzie%2526friends.jpg" width="156" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Gizzie, with friends</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;">Gizzie turned 13 in March of this year. You couldn’t tell. He still acted like a kitten, albeit a 16-pound kitten. He’d hunt down and snatch up an old catnip “cigar” that had been pushed around for eight years. All narcotic effect had evaporated, but Gizzie still found it intoxicating and would carry it into our bedroom with a deep-throated, gargled growl that said, “Look what I captured – and you’re not going to take it away from me!” He would leap from the dishwasher counter to the kitchen island with the arc and agility of a Lipizzaner stallion, only to sail to the other side by landing on a scrap of newspaper. He chased his tail, chased our younger cat, chased an errant untied shoelace. If one of us happened to lie down on the couch for a catnap, he would jump on our chest and settle in with a contented purr, not caring that his 16 pounds severely compromised his chosen beloved’s ability to breathe.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In fact, Gizzie spent his life not having to care, because we always cared for him. This was more than just providing Purina cat chow and water. We often had to save him. He was in our family for all of two weeks when he managed to scramble up over the barrier in the room in which he was sequestered, scuttle across the kids’ 2<sup>nd</sup> floor playroom floor and scoot right through the posts of the banister to begin his free fall onto the kitchen tiles below. I happened to be heading up the steps. I put out my right hand and caught him in my palm. Not many months later, we returned from work to hear a plaintive mewling in the kitchen. No kitten in sight, but we traced the sound to a gap between the kitchen wall and a counter top where lodged a heating unit. Gizzie had managed to get himself wedged into the two inches between the heating unit and the wall. I still can’t remember how we got him out of that tight spot, but I think it may have entailed Jon holding on to me while I half lay on the counter with my scrawny arm blindly groping for the kitten.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">As Gizzie grew, he found different tight spots. Not realizing that he had outgrown one of his hiding places, he once got himself under the hutch in the dining room only to find that he could not get himself back out. Caterwauling ensued. In this case, I think it was Jon who was the hero. Then there was the winter that Gizzie managed to get lost in the French drain system that ran under our old farmhouse. Naturally it was after a blizzard and snow was piled high. Again, Gizzie knew that we would rescue him. Once we realized he was missing, I went out and circled the house, calling his name. He answered immediately—from underground. Gizzie’s talkative nature saved him as his cries helped Jon pinpoint where in the French drain system Gizzie was located. Jon pulled out the grill from the closest spot, I called Gizzie, and Gizzie responded by coming within arm-reach of Jon, who hauled him to safety.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Gizzie also had two bouts with a classic neutered male cat malady, a urinary tract blockage. I won’t go into great detail. I will just say that the first time standard procedures were followed. The second time our wonderful vet completely reconstructed Gizzie’s innards, in essence making Gizzie's urinary tract that of a female cat. No more blockages. And then there was the time at the old farmhouse when a fox chased Gizzie up from a pasture. (At 16 pounds, Gizzie presented a mouth-watering morsel.) I was on the back porch and screeched like a fishwife to scare the fox away as Gizzie bounded onto the porch and then sauntered into the house.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">All of these events occurred at our old house. In 2005 we moved to the new house and life with Gizzie became much calmer because he became an “indoor” cat. We settled in, and I thought we would have him around for at least 16, or more, birthdays.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In early August I noticed that Gizzie was not eating with his regular gusto. By mid August I was worried because it looked as though his chest contained bellows working at full force. I took him to the vet. X-rays were taken. Specialists were consulted. This time it was Gizzie's breathing that was compromised. He had tumors in his lungs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">If you were keeping track of the Gizzie events, you would have counted that we had saved him seven times. If I wanted to stretch the truth for literary purposes, I would have invented an eighth episode so that at this point in the essay we would be at nine lives. But I’m not going to invent. At event #8 we were defeated. We could not save Gizzie, or even lengthen his time on this earth. We tried. We got him a super steroid shot. We got him a special prescription to stimulate his appetite. We got him Fancy Feast Gourmet Chicken to accompany the prescription. Nothing worked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">On August 30, our wonderful vet came to the house. Even though Gizzie had spent four days straight on daughter Annie’s bed without budging, even though he next struggled onto our bed for what he could not have known was his last night, even though he could hardly move – </span><span style="font-size: small;">when the vet appeared, </span><span style="font-size: small;">he was still our Gizzie : snarling and biting and ornery with someone who was not family. And then Gizzie was gone.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span> </div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-51159943874996311202011-08-28T12:52:00.000-07:002012-04-24T19:24:29.737-07:00Let There Be Light<div style="font-family: inherit;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I write, Hurricane Irene is “churning up the eastern seaboard.” I borrow the phrase from the Weather Channel personnel, who have been talking at me from the television atop my refrigerator. The media have done a fine job of churning up our anxiety over the past few days. Usually an impending blizzard has them blustering, and usually they miss the forecast by such a wide margin that this could be a case of the boy who cried wolf. I think, though, that this time some wild weather really is threatening. So we have followed instructions and stocked up on bottled water and batteries for flashlights. And this activity has led me to contemplate light.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYxO4Ik3D-a9ALrOx4B7hNk3_-T0ZDCov38tyAV5B7F8CrPQv7ZxUQmWS2cj3VoM2bZizubPN8EReu5wY2FobHizKCKnKd2DSlE96rFMOwg8VQQ7YruPj4DdmZCe3NPoaYKY4xV5gDEJb/s1600/Elephant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYYxO4Ik3D-a9ALrOx4B7hNk3_-T0ZDCov38tyAV5B7F8CrPQv7ZxUQmWS2cj3VoM2bZizubPN8EReu5wY2FobHizKCKnKd2DSlE96rFMOwg8VQQ7YruPj4DdmZCe3NPoaYKY4xV5gDEJb/s200/Elephant.jpg" width="133" /></a></span><span style="font-size: large;">In a world of curtailed carbon footprints and careful energy consumption, and in my specific world of daughter Annie, who is co-president of a student organization known as Greening Princeton, turning on a lamp is a direct hit against Mother Nature. But I love to turn on lamps. Turning on the first lamp of the evening is the moment of transition from day, with its phones and errands and meetings, to evening. Time for a glass of wine or a martini. Time to pick up <i>The Elephant’s Journey</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> by José Saramago. Time to enjoy the slanty light sifting through the copper beech leaves as the sun starts its descent.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But that’s not really why I like to turn on lights. I just like light. To me, nothing speaks more strongly of safe shelter than the glow, warm and golden, of lighted windows. The house I grew up in was always fully illuminated, in spite of my father’s imprecations to turn off the lights when we left a room. Once, when I was 16 and had had my driver’s license for about six months, I had gotten disoriented in a snow squall while driving our battered VW aimlessly around the outskirts of Altoona and environs on a late winter’s afternoon. When I finally turned onto Cypress Street, Hollidaysburg, and saw the windows of our solid brick house shining like beacons from a lighthouse, I was so relieved that I didn’t mind (much) the solid scolding I got from my mother. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On another occasion, when I was a graduate student making ends meet by serving as a resident advisor at a local boarding school and deeply unhappy about a number of things, I was charged with ferrying the girls' field hockey team to an alumna’s home for an InterAc championship celebration. It was a miserable autumn day. A cold, penetrating rain made the streets slick and sullen. I drove up an obscure Main Line lane and pulled into a courtyard. In the dusk, the fieldstone house, with its many-paned windows all lit up, radiated warmth and welcome. I wanted to hop out and follow the girls into the gathering. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Of all the houses that I have lived in, however, the one that excelled at beautifully beaming light was the farmhouse we lived in when our children were growing up. I confess that, if I left the house in broad daylight but knew I would not be returning until after dark, I would go around and turn on all the lights. Few things made me happier than driving up our dirt road and seeing our house all aglow. I was home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We are in a different house now and, with those energy-efficient light bulbs that Annie insists on, the glow is a sickly green. And that is why as soon as Annie goes back to school I replace all the “good energy” light bulbs with good old Sylvania 50-100-150 light bulbs.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Former) home sweet home...</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-44099045561022005412011-08-21T17:43:00.000-07:002011-08-21T17:43:56.728-07:00Bon Voyage, "Bon Appetit"<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am pretty good at saying “good-bye,” with a handful of notable exceptions, but I am very bad at throwing anything out. Not that I’m in danger of being a hoarder. I don’t go out of my way to collect things that then pile up in hallways eventually to fall on top of me, leaving my cats to circle around wondering why they aren’t getting dinner. With some things, though, I just have a hard time letting go. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">This is a fault, and I am not wild about admitting to faults. (Just ask my husband and children.) So I have tried to counter my tendency. Let’s take magazines. And let’s start with the <i>New Yorker</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Like every other </span><i>New Yorker</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> subscriber I have ever known, I had innumerable back issues of the magazine accumulating in a lovely wicker basket, waiting for that day (or day<u>s</u>) when I would get around to catching up on the literate world. What if I missed a classic Updike story? What if I missed the seminal essay on civil disobedience in Kurdistan? And what if I missed a great cartoon? But I came to my senses. I now keep only three months of back issues, and that’s only to have them handy if someone says, “Did you see the piece in the </span><i>New Yorker</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> about the turmoil over the new Archbishop of Canterbury? It was sometime last month…” </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ve become more draconian with other magazines. Out they go when a new one comes in. If I haven’t clipped a decorating tip from <i>Traditional Home</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> in June, then I didn’t want a decorating tip from </span><i>Tradition Home</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> in June. And after reading </span><i>Runner’s World</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> for decades, I know that there are cycles to topics. If I toss out the issue on training for your first marathon, no matter. Marathon training will come around again. Same charts, different graphics. The trickiest, though, was my </span><i>Bon Appetit</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> collection. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">Years of <i>Bon Appetit </i>issues<span style="font-style: normal;"> filled shelves in my kitchen bookcase. In the waning days of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, I came up with a plan. I grouped the issues by month: 10 years of January, 10 years of February, 10 years of March, and so on. I then went through each group to see what to save. Features did not make the cut. Only recipes that sounded yummy, that would not be rejected by my family, and that were within my culinary skill set survived. I clipped those recipes, put them in folders labeled by month, and tossed the tattered remains of the magazines. I even entered each recipe into an Excel file by name of dish and category (appetizer, beef, chicken, and on down the alphabet). Plugging away at this while keeping an eye on several Masterpiece Theatre series got me through all the old magazines in a matter of months. I then had 12 folders of recipes just right for each month of the year. In the front of each file is a list of that month’s recipes, culled by using the filter function on the Excel file. When pondering what to cook in October, I had plenty of ideas just right for that month sitting tidily organized in a folder. I was way ahead of the “eat seasonal” movement. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">The results were mixed. While my family was usually delighted with my reinvigorated attention to delivering delicious dinners, they sometimes got tired of Indian Lamb Chops with Curried Cauliflower in December, Short Ribs Provencale with Crème Fraiche in January, Spring Lamb with Tomato and Herb Vinaigrette in April. Once, my son said wistfully, “Couldn’t we just have chicken in mayo and Italian dressing like the old days?” And when old friends were with new friends in my kitchen, the old friends invariably said, “Kathy, show Linda all your recipe folders!” Sometimes I got the feeling that maybe the fame of my recipe folders bordered on notoriety.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nevertheless, I have followed this system religiously for more than ten years now, and I have no back issues of <i>Bon Appetit</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, </span><i>Food & Wine</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, or the late, lamented </span><i>Gourmet</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> cluttering up my kitchen shelves.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">What I do have is 12 very fat and frayed folders, each with hundreds of recipes that I will never get to if I live to be 112 and cook something new every night.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 200%;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Some August recipes, typos and all</span></td></tr>
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</div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-30001500668163977562011-08-14T14:14:00.000-07:002011-08-14T14:14:22.873-07:00On the Occasion of My Cousin Nancy’s 75th Birthday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">While as adults we have always kept in contact through Christmas cards, my cousin Nancy and I have crossed paths in person only a handful of times that I can remember. This was a result of the unusual age differences on my mother’s side of the family. My mother Jane was 16 years (or so) younger than Nancy’s mother, Kathryn (after whom I am named). When my baby brain was not even conscious of a cousin, Nancy would already have been in college. My first memory of that side of the family features only my aunt and uncle. My parents had taken my younger sister and me on a very long car ride out of Pennsylvania and into strange lands. I remember a great gray building in Washington, DC, which housed the offices of my uncle--certainly a grander building than any in Altoona or Hollidaysburg, so I knew he must be a very important man. And then we drove to an area with tree-lined streets and cozy houses and it was named Something Park. What fun it would be to live in a park! Best of all, in her house my aunt had a dog named Skipper who could play the piano! It was a wonderful trip, filled with marvels--but I don’t remember a cousin being among them.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;">The next memory I have was a time when Nancy’s family visited with the Taylor family at the little place we called “the cottage,” about 40 miles south of our house in Hollidaysburg. I think I have the story right: that the cottage had been owned as a fishing retreat by Uncle Roy, Nancy’s and my great uncle, from whom my father had bought it. By the time of this visit I was in elementary school and Nancy was not only married to a very tall man named Gene but she also had two little girls of her own. This made things even more complicated, with the lines of relationship very blurred. The little girls were younger than my sister and I, but not by that much. Yet they weren’t our first cousins. They weren’t really our second cousins either. But we definitely were related to them! And the person who <i>was</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> my cousin was a grown-up, sitting in the rustic little living room with her husband and chatting away as equals with my parents while the four little girls played Po-Kee-No and Go Fish out on the porch. Not much of a real connection there.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2i3mLUsgkP0uK_2XDILQJCbVsYTqKDp6OD6oOgwR1a_EdMXvoPdMSojczJmNNcdwY0YpgCaoRhN-r-TkrILFBo8OdLii26QG4XNJQ3Kcd2pDAd_XDXXgQfmPyHnQ7zF5ewLhhxqGljtk1/s1600/May+29%252C+1993.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2i3mLUsgkP0uK_2XDILQJCbVsYTqKDp6OD6oOgwR1a_EdMXvoPdMSojczJmNNcdwY0YpgCaoRhN-r-TkrILFBo8OdLii26QG4XNJQ3Kcd2pDAd_XDXXgQfmPyHnQ7zF5ewLhhxqGljtk1/s200/May+29%252C+1993.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jane and Nancy in the center (5/29/93)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;">It was decades later that the real connection was made. In late May of 1993, the Taylor family threw a big weekend party to celebrate the 75<sup>th</sup> birthday of my mother, by then a widow for 23 years. At the time, my husband and I lived on an old farm property of his family. We were able to house all of the guests for the birthday celebration between our place (which had been a livestock barn) and what we called “the main house.” The four children of Jane Taylor were there, with their spouses and offspring--and Nancy was there, too. To have a whole weekend for cousins of all ages to get acquainted and reacquainted was a wonderful luxury. At that point, I was 40 and Nancy was 57 – and miraculously the intervening decades had demolished the age barrier. We found our connection: writing. Specifically, writing from memory. I remember sitting around the green wrought-iron table under a tree, talking through the afternoon and evening about writing and writing classes. Nancy later sent me a lovely gift: a book entitled “Court of Memory” by James McConkey. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;">Now it is Nancy who is celebrating her 75<sup>th</sup> birthday, and I am about the same age she was when we last were together. So much has happened, and so many are no longer with us--including my mother, who had tied us together. Following my mother’s death, Nancy again gave me a lovely gift: a letter in which she shared her memory of my mother as a young woman, barely more than a girl. A glimpse of a side of my mother I could not otherwise have known. And I am so grateful.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;">Happy 75<sup>th</sup> birthday, Cousin Nancy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-12043616822701101242011-07-31T15:43:00.000-07:002011-07-31T15:43:51.498-07:00This Old Face<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Several years ago, I looked in the mirror and a strange face looked back.<span> </span>Sallow and as dry as crepe paper, with wrinkles around the eyes and creases around the mouth. Odd little bumps dotting a bony ridge of nose. </span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">A 50-something face.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">How could I make that face go away? My skincare routine consisted of deodorant soap followed by a slathering of whatever lotion was on sale at the grocery store. Clearly this wasn’t adequate.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">The next day I surveyed the racks at the newsstand and bought a magazine whose cover girl looked more like a covered woman.<span> </span>I began to leaf through the pages…and there was the answer: <b>Two Steps To Youthful Skin. After 2 days, skin will glow with improved luminosity. After 2 weeks, fine lines will disappear. After 2 months, overall complexion will be radiant.</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">I tore the page out of the magazine and went in search of this solution.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Clutching the glossy ad, I ventured into the local department store’s cosmetics department. Chrome and glass gleamed. Glittering green packages seemed to tumble off the counters. Everywhere I turned, 400 choices of lip color, 300 choices of eye color, and 200 complementing shades of blush greeted me.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Where was the product in my ad? I walked around and around, squinting, peering. It wasn’t there. But I had come this far. I wasn't going to leave without a way to get rid of that face in the mirror.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Then the title of a brochure beckoned. <b>Newsome skin is young skin.</b></span><span style="color: black;"> This line of products had a two-step process, too! Only, the first step had three phases. And the second step had a choice of creams, depending on whether you wanted to <i>reverse</i></span><span style="color: black;"> the aging process or just <i>slow it down</i></span><span style="color: black;">. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Which did I want? How far gone was I? I needed professional help. And lo, “Cheryl” appeared before me, in her smart black smock. “What are you looking for?” she asked as she grasped my face and held it to the light for a clinical examination. “Umm…Not too bad.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">"Cheryl" proceeded to pull out pots and tubes and jars and jellies. Moving them around faster than a con man with a shell game, she grouped first two, then three, then one, then four. If this, then that. With that, none of this. This one once a day, but the other twice a week.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Math was not my best subject. “But what about this system?” I pleaded, pointing to the brochure.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">“Oh, I wouldn’t waste my money on <i>that</i></span><span style="color: black;">.” She returned to her configurations.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">I backed away quietly and headed for the exit, with a lingering glance at the counters on either side. I stopped to read one more display, to find that it didn’t address aging skin at all. Only bleeding lipstick. My disappointment must have been palpable, for I heard a gentle voice say, “May I help you?”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Across the aisle, against a backdrop of brown and orange — “The Colours of the Harvest” — was a pleasant young lady (“Karen”), wearing a cream-colored (or is that “creme-coloured”?) blouse with a Peter Pan collar.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">“I’m searching for a system to make my old face go away.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">“Ah, we have the very thing.” </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">She produced a tidy little bag trimmed in green. “In here is our daily three-part system to Purify, Activate and Restore.<span> </span>I can let you have this collection for $22.50 with a purchase of $30.00 or more of other merchandise.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">I quickly bought mascara, lipgloss and some hand cream. I was anxious to get my system home, to put it to work in restoring my youth.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">It worked even faster than “Karen” could have imagined. For as soon as I squirted the first drop of Moisture Intensifier into my hand and smelled that sweet chemical smell, I was twelve years old again.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">That was the year I was interested in make-up. From the pages of <i>Teen Magazine</i></span><span style="color: black;"><span> </span>I had ordered the COMPLETE COSMETIC KIT. Cleansing Crystals. Milky Moisturizer. Firm Foundation. Lilac Lashes. Silky Shadow. Ruby Rouge. Luscious Lipstick. All for $6.99.<span> </span>The package arrived in the Saturday mail and I immediately applied it all. When I went downstairs for dinner, my mother took one look at me and said, “No daughter of mine is living in this house looking like that. Now go wash your face before you come to the table.”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">As I massaged these new lotions into my cheeks, I half-expected to hear my mother’s voice: “Kathy, what are you doing in that bathroom?”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Five days passed in using my new system, and all was quiet. My husband and children didn’t complain about any funny smells. And I believed I could already see a difference in my skin’s texture, elasticity, and color — I mean, colour.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">So if you happen to be in the Philadelphia area and you spy a slightly graying woman surrounded by a luminous halo, that’s just me, radiating with the freshness of youth.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9O53djL-1DvBBtA8-Yag36TzmgszszpVapvqtE2EvAYq4ndFzql7y3FuI5dsu5QqHBy-wqW73T9cRCD5c9JO0GCsH9eQnQ1Vu5u3W-DKY75z0Va3NUBZTrG-Lx5fkmjx9a3Xi9PCyK19Y/s1600/ThisOldFace.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9O53djL-1DvBBtA8-Yag36TzmgszszpVapvqtE2EvAYq4ndFzql7y3FuI5dsu5QqHBy-wqW73T9cRCD5c9JO0GCsH9eQnQ1Vu5u3W-DKY75z0Va3NUBZTrG-Lx5fkmjx9a3Xi9PCyK19Y/s200/ThisOldFace.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This old face...</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span> </div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-76943681789320162772011-07-24T18:00:00.000-07:002011-07-25T07:50:13.630-07:00Great Expectations<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I have always believed in being prepared. And over the years, I've found the best way to be prepared is to buy a book.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Books tell you what to expect. What to expect when you plan a wedding. What to expect when you join a corporation. What to expect when you buy a house.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> What to expect when you become pregnant.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> From the first positive blood test, I methodically worked through chapters and checklists. I was prepared for an April 6, 1986, due date.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> My water broke on February 14, a decidedly unexpected diversion in the middle of a business meeting. Jay arrived 10 hours later and seven weeks early. The books had not prepared me for a number of things.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span">Special Delivery<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">By the Book: Check out the parking regulations for the maternity wing a month before your due date and be sure to keep your car in good working order with plenty of gas in the tank. Several weeks before expected delivery, pack your “hospital bag,” remembering to include your breathing instruction sheet, hard candies for you, and a snack for your coach<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> When my water broke I was on the 37th floor of the Mellon Bank building in downtown Philadelphia. My husband, Jon, was on the 33rd floor of the same building. Our car, however, was 20 miles away, parked in the lot of a commuter train station. We rendezvoused in the express elevator and flagged down a taxi.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> As I maneuvered over the cracked vinyl seat, Jon gave directions to the doctor’s office and explained why there was some urgency. Chomping down on his cigar and stomping down on his accelerator, the cabbie sent us careering around City Hall Square so fast that the centrifugal force threw me against the door. We made record time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> My doctor confirmed that I was in early labor and called the hospital to alert them that we were on the way. Our taxi was long gone. We walked the three blocks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Once in the labor room, we longed for our props. The only bags that had made the trip were our briefcases. Three files of financial reports and a supply of business cards didn't help much when the contractions were two minutes apart, my mouth felt like an ashtray, and my lower back seemed to have a bowling bowl sitting on my spine. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span">Blissful Bonding</span></b></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">By the Book: Immediately after delivery, the nurse will place your baby on your chest. Notice the deep blue of the infant’s eyes and the strength of the tiny grasp around your own fingers. Later, when you are back in your room, the nurses will wheel in your newborn. In those moments of peace, examine the minute yet perfectly proportioned fingers and toes.</span></i></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Jay’s early arrival ruled out any lingering in the delivery room. Faster than a quarterback could call the signals, Jay was hiked to the nurses, who bound him tightly in a yellow blanket, pulled a blue stocking cap down to his eyebrows, and waved him under my nose before passing him to the NICU staff. He was gone before I could see the color of his hair, let alone the color of his eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Several hours after delivery I found myself gingerly positioned on a doughnut cushion while Jon wheeled me to see our son.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: inherit;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQe_3P036B5clS9VQnZkj1c0onBwIextM2qpcuORyRgGtJe0PWnslH0jpH9XQ6i1a0r0vzPSB4cnxwsam6PXCyMbRyhiNuefvo1r0IQVUGKpq4HGBI-3Jcs6mwn0MHfZ5K-yvOEho8r-RT/s1600/Jay%252C+3+days+old.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQe_3P036B5clS9VQnZkj1c0onBwIextM2qpcuORyRgGtJe0PWnslH0jpH9XQ6i1a0r0vzPSB4cnxwsam6PXCyMbRyhiNuefvo1r0IQVUGKpq4HGBI-3Jcs6mwn0MHfZ5K-yvOEho8r-RT/s200/Jay%252C+3+days+old.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Jay, at 3 days old</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> There through the glass was Jay. Not snugly swaddled, but splayed on a platform with needles dangling from his tiny foot, wires snaking around his tiny chest, and tubes running into his tiny nostrils. Granted, his fingers and toes did look in proportion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span">At Home</span></b></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span">By the Book: To avoid overstimulating the baby and exhausting yourself, limit the number of visitors during the baby’s first weeks. Eliminate trips back and forth to the nursery by setting up a pretty bassinet in the corner of the living room.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Even if we had had visitors, they wouldn’t have found us at home. We spent the first month of Jay’s life wearing out the road to the hospital. We jockeyed for parking spots with the rest of the 7 AM shift. We learned the three different ways to get to the Pediatric Nursery while avoiding the Visitors’ Elevator. We became connoisseurs of the cheese fries in the hospital’s cafeteria.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Receiving guests in the comfort of our living room? Jay received us, but only after we had donned geometric-print hospital gowns and scrubbed up with soap that smelled like Lysol. We did have company in the Nursery: a couple named Tony and Maria murmuring over their daughter Angela. We barely exchanged nods with them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Around the Nursery, machines graphing pulse rates whirred and apnea monitors went off with high-pitched beeps. In the hallway, the intercom system crackled, “Dr. Tomlinson. Dr. Tomlinson. Please report to OR.” At night, Jay slept with a flickering TV screen for a nightlight and, for a lullaby, the all-news radio station.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Determined to have Jay distinguish us from the high decibels and distraction of the hospital, we read to him every evening from one of Jon’s childhood favorites, </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Ozma</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i> </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>of</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i> </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Oz</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span">. I would rock Jay next to his monitor while Jon would read until his throat became dry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: inherit; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX8c4uq-hD_epjc9DFmb2OmpAmc17daoxulkAaWldZKQRSr-o9667-ewfIdNRC5gXm3eCKtK1vTPAqLs9dV-0zsXSRfSTCpoUEr-URar1Rj5oFdQTPGC68P5Q7DHSuWsT1GW-vee5CM71W/s1600/Jayat23.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX8c4uq-hD_epjc9DFmb2OmpAmc17daoxulkAaWldZKQRSr-o9667-ewfIdNRC5gXm3eCKtK1vTPAqLs9dV-0zsXSRfSTCpoUEr-URar1Rj5oFdQTPGC68P5Q7DHSuWsT1GW-vee5CM71W/s200/Jayat23.JPG" width="89" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Jay, at 23 years old</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> One evening the Nursery grew unusually quiet. The monitors seemed inattentive, and the new shift of nurses had not yet turned on the television. Even Tony and Maria had paused in their conversations with Angela. The only sound in the room was Jon’s voice: “Just then, Ozma reentered the room, leading Dorothy by the hand and followed closely by Princess Langwidere.” A bit self-conscious, Jon shut the book.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> “Hey, you can’t stop now!” Tony turned in his chair to face us. “What happens next?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> The four of us pulled our chairs into a circle. As our tiny infants slept in peaceful defiance of lunar charts and Estimated Dates of Confinement, we listened to Jon continue with the next chapter, “Ozma to the Rescue.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> I guess a book came in handy after all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-78901709294684731162011-07-17T15:15:00.000-07:002011-07-17T15:15:53.978-07:00A Horse Is a Horse, Of Course<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> “My kingdom for a horse!” cried Richard III. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Well, I had no kingdom, but I frequently cried for a horse. Cried. Coaxed. Cajoled. I begged Santa for a sorrel pony. I begged my parents for a palomino. Every Christmas. Every birthday. Every year. “Please, puh-leese, could we get a horse?” Answer: “No, the backyard is not zoned for livestock.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Then I got married…and got my own backyard. From the bedroom window I had an unobstructed view of a barn and, just beyond, the fences of three unused pastures. I could get a horse.</span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; font-family: inherit; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJhDrWR9WvQhGOZREvK3ZP3IvWaRcIDUwg0xlWbIbpQ6C6wswxHia22RWlp2r1W0knrAGL7tkNxnsZJ7eaPuqtMmHkX5i6h1YBZbpGYrHGBIUNuqmKTJQDLRr2q3PnJMLXWZvqWHD31K99/s1600/Ollie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJhDrWR9WvQhGOZREvK3ZP3IvWaRcIDUwg0xlWbIbpQ6C6wswxHia22RWlp2r1W0knrAGL7tkNxnsZJ7eaPuqtMmHkX5i6h1YBZbpGYrHGBIUNuqmKTJQDLRr2q3PnJMLXWZvqWHD31K99/s320/Ollie.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ollie, in his prime</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Two months later, I led my new horse, Ollie, out of a rented trailer and introduced him to his new quarters. Ollie, in turn, introduced me to some key facts about horses, things you don’t learn until you actually own one.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Horses aren’t cats. </b></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Cats eat tuna (which at that time cost 25¢ a can and still can be prepared in 60 seconds). Cats don’t mind if you go away for five days, as long as you leave behind a big bowl of Gourmet Kitty Crunch. Cats have litter boxes, measuring 14 inches by 24 inches, which you need to clean once a week.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Horses have stalls, measuring 10 feet by 15 feet, which you need to muck out once a day. When Ollie first arrived, I thought it an adventure to rise at 5:00 a.m., pull on old jeans, slip into my L. L. Bean duck shoes, and head off to the barn. I would watch my breath vaporize in the crisp predawn air and relish the pungent smell of hay, oats, and manure as I pitched the old straw into a wheelbarrow. Then I began to notice that not all dawns are crisp. Some are soggy. I started to skip the mucking out a day here, two days there…five days. Finally, I sensed Ollie’s longing for the fresh air of the open pasture. We stopped using a stall.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Horses aren’t avid readers. </b></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">During my formative years, my shelves bulged with books about horses. <i>Black Beauty</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">. <i>My Friend, Flicka</i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;">. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Misty of Chincoteague</i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;">. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Black Stallion </i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;">series. All dwelled on the tender relationship between horse and owner. The horse would greet the owner with an eager whinny and a warm nuzzle against the nape of the neck. The resulting bond transcended time and place. Even after returning to the Arabian desert, separated from his master for several years and by more than 6,000 miles, the Black Stallion responded immediately to Alec Ramsey’s whistle.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Unfortunately, Ollie wasn’t familiar with this literature. He didn’t know that he was to return my care for him with an affection that should know no bounds. In fact, he didn’t seem to take much interest at all in me or my whistling. Each time I appeared with mash bucket or curry brush in hand, those liquid brown eyes would take on a quizzical look: “What, she’s here again?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Horses aren’t adept at personal grooming. </b></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">A bird can clean its entire body with its beak. Even a five-year-old boy can brush his own hair. Horses have tails…and that’s it. Occasionally they swish these tails against their withers in a half-hearted attempt at dusting, but the rest is up to you. Bathing. Brushing. Combing. Scraping crud out of hooves. Mixing and spraying thick white fly-repellent spray in the summer. Forcing down a dose of cod-liver oil to keep the coat shiny in winter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">And yet, these activities were only glimpses of a greater truth.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Horses aren’t Boy Scouts; they are <u>never</u> prepared. </b></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">It takes four seconds (at most) to snap leash to collar when you take a dog for an afternoon’s walk. It takes 40 minutes to saddle and bridle a horse for a 20-minute trot. Guiding the slithery bit into the horse’s foamy mouth, fingers frantically trying to remain three-dimensional, can take 15 minutes alone. Add to that lugging the saddle from the rack, heaving it over an equine back eight inches above your head, and tugging with all your upper body strength to tighten the girth properly. You’re exhausted before you’ve even put a foot in a stirrup.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">At one point, I thought I would take a shortcut and ride bareback. Within three minutes I had slid off his other side onto the gravel and was lying on <i>my</i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;"> back. Ollie slowly turned his head to look at me, clearly thinking: “What are you doing down there, you fool?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Leading me to grasp the final fact.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Horses aren’t compassionate. </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">I, however, am compassionate. After 18 months of life with Ollie, I read about a local riding school’s therapeutic work with physically disabled children. Compassion welling up inside me, I called the director and offered to donate Ollie to this worthy cause. The director was thrilled and made arrangements to pick up Ollie the following week. As the school’s trailer drove out the lane, I waved good-bye, cheerful in the knowledge that I had done a good deed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now, if only Richard the III had been around…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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</span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-65239416418305546012011-07-07T14:29:00.000-07:002014-02-23T11:12:39.278-08:00Legacy: A Princeton Story<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;">(Previously published, in a slightly different form, in the <i>Princeton Alumni Weekly, </i>Dec 25, 1996.)</span> </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> My six-year-old daughter has put her head on my lap, her pillow made from two programs for Princeton University’s Charter Day Convocation in celebration of its 250th anniversary. The warm October sun and the rise and fall of voices from the podium 100 yards away in front of Nassau Hall have put her to sleep. My ten-year-old son amuses himself by crushing leaves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Jay and Annie are not impressed with thoughts of Princeton in the next millennium. They are tolerating the constriction of the Convocation because they’ve been promised great treats: free Cokes, a Sheryl Crow concert, fireworks. That’s the Princeton they know. The fun Princeton. The place where they come to scream during football games, to play frisbee in Little Courtyard during Reunions, to visit the dinosaur in Guyot after hamburgers and french fries at PJ’s Pancake House. They’re not interested in big numbers like 250 or even that 90 years ago my grandfather, Class of 1910, first arrived at Princeton as a student or that 80 years ago my father, Class of 1939, was born or even that 30 years after my graduation my son might just be arriving. They don’t care that they are part of a continuum, not only the public continuum, but a family continuum as well.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">But I care. I listen to the speakers recalling memories, colonial and current, and I ache for the memories that I don’t have of Princeton. For, though my grandfather and father were there before me, they were both gone by the time I arrived in the fall of 1970. My grandfather had died when I was seven years old. I hadn’t anticipated sharing Princeton with him. I had anticipated sharing Princeton with my father.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> I remember seeing on my father’s desk the envelope, stamped and ready for the mail, in which he had declared his support for coeducation. I remember sorting through the application forms with him. I remember his delight when I had been accepted. Materials started arriving at our house—the course catalog, the Daily Princetonian, the calendar with football games, Parents’ Weekend, Alumni Day. So many chances to be at Princeton together. Further down the years, we would have Reunions together, 1939 and 1974. </span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO8oumWHsIPJpMsKjcJRX98DBBa3U24AAjGiANMyTkH0hvSMYrK-dvnNquzuI-KeKnwgNfjYGUqKh45___GVSs77iBQiAIj-K79_flrrJSrEKZ5EQPjByRTuE4-QlXHAREB44wIIPzRehE/s1600/PrincetonJune1967.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO8oumWHsIPJpMsKjcJRX98DBBa3U24AAjGiANMyTkH0hvSMYrK-dvnNquzuI-KeKnwgNfjYGUqKh45___GVSs77iBQiAIj-K79_flrrJSrEKZ5EQPjByRTuE4-QlXHAREB44wIIPzRehE/s320/PrincetonJune1967.jpg" height="320" width="308" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Princeton Commencement, 1967</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Two weeks after my high school graduation my father died of a heart attack. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">In fact, my father and I were together on Princeton’s campus only twice. The first time was for my older brother’s graduation in 1967. A family photograph shows us all lined up at the bottom of Blair Arch steps. Standing wedged between my mother and my younger sister, I am wearing a boxy beige suit my mother thought appropriate for a short, skinny 14-year-old girl to wear to a college graduation. My bangs are in my eyes and, though I am smiling, I look a bit impatient. At the other end of the group next to my brother, who is wearing his cap and gown, stands my father, beaming. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">The second time that my father and I were on campus was two years later—when he brought me for my interview. That too was an afternoon in October. The day was raw. A cold drizzle had been falling and I felt damp and disoriented. My father wouldn’t come into the Admission Office, but waited outside for me. He said it was important that I do this on my own. I sat trying not to gnaw at my thumbnail until a young man collected me and took me back to a cell furnished with a desk and two chairs. He looked down at my folder, looked up at me, and said with a barely concealed sneer, “So...I see you’re a legacy.” I felt on the defensive. Afterwards I told my father that the interview hadn’t gone well and I wondered, “What’s so bad about being a legacy?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">My dad put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s good to be a legacy. The interviewer probably just had a rotten day and he said the wrong thing.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> We ruled out an Orange Key tour. The drizzle had turned to rain and we had a long drive. Anyway, we would have plenty of time for him to show me around the campus if I got accepted.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">We didn’t have plenty of time. And so my lasting memory of my father at Princeton is like an old photograph. In that late afternoon permeated by shades of gray—the lowering clouds, the stone buildings, the gravel edging the walks around Cannon Green—in front of Clio in his gray overcoat stands my father under an orange-and-black umbrella. He smiles when he sees me come out of West College.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">More than 25 years later I brush a yellow leaf from my daughter’s face as the gold autumn light brings out the amber of Nassau Hall on a day celebrating a five times golden anniversary, and I realize that my father had shared Princeton with me. His classmate Fred Fox kept an eye on me for my four years as a student, inviting me for home-cooked meals at his house in Princeton. His roommate Walter Lord had just recently written to me, enclosing a photograph of my father with his 150-football team. And during the P-Rade my heart pounds and my throat catches as the Class of 1939 goes by: these men knew my father and something of my father’s Princeton life still lives with them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> The interviewer 27 years ago did say the wrong thing, but not quite in the way my father meant. I am not the legacy. Princeton is the legacy my father left to me. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">I hear Reginald Gibbons '69 read the last lines of his poem commissioned for the 250th Anniversary...”my father’s hand,/ which had come from some remote labor to clasp my hand as I said good-bye.” I never got to clasp my father’s hand to say good-bye, but I remember my father’s hand on my shoulder on that other October afternoon.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Yes, it’s good to be a legacy.</span></span></div>
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Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-18748818378583077392011-07-03T17:20:00.000-07:002011-07-15T15:15:49.983-07:00Harry Goes to Hollywood<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">(First published, in a slightly different form, in the <i>Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine</i> Jan 16, 1994.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small; text-transform: uppercase;"> I</span><span style="font-size: small;">t was a bit disconcerting to have my high school boyfriend smiling down from the cover of <i>People</i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;"> magazine as “The Sexiest Man Alive” while I was maneuvering a shopping cart in the checkout line, rummaging for my wallet and grappling with my toddler over the candy display.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My old boyfriend is Harry Hamlin. Although I hadn’t spoken with Harry in more than 20 years, I’d certainly heard about the milestones of his life. Tabloid headlines shouted them at me. “Italian Goddess Has Love-Child with Toga-Clad Co-Star!” “Kusak Quits, Leaves <i>L.A. Law</i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;"> in the Lurch!” “Harried Harry: Nicolette Bolts for Bolton!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I have to say, I didn’t think Harry was happy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> But then again, how could he be? After dating 17-year-old Kathy of Hollidaysburg, PA, president of the Baldwin School Chorus, wouldn’t everything else fall short?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> A chorus concert brought us together. It was the spring of 1970. I was a senior at the Baldwin School (for girls) in Bryn Mawr; Harry was a senior at the Hill School (for boys) in Pottstown.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Between renditions of “Sentimental Journey” and selections from Mendelssohn’s <i>Elijah</i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;">, I had a solo. Alone on the Assembly Room stage, I sang a plaintive piece by Donovan, wearing my chorus-issued straight black skirt and white blouse, with my Martin acoustic guitar slung across my 5-foot-1 frame and my brown hair hanging down my back.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Finding me irresistible, Harry asked me to dance after the concert. From that point on we were together. Well, as together as two kids can be when they attend boarding schools 25 miles apart. We did have the combined rehearsals for the annual spring Humanities Concert, when the Baldwin School Chorus and the Hill School Glee Club performed a choral masterwork.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The campuses of our schools didn’t always confine us. Spring-term weekends were free for seniors—to go home. Harry’s family lived in Pasadena, almost 3,000 miles from the Hill School. Hollidaysburg was only a three-hour drive. Harry came to Hollidaysburg.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Upon first arriving, he presented my mother with a hostess gift: several jars of homemade jams bound up in blue-and-white gingham bows. Satisfied that Harry was a young man of good manners, my mother proceeded to fill him with food. “More leg of lamb, Harry? Kathy, pass Harry the mint sauce. We have plenty of mashed potatoes in the kitchen.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My father, on the other hand, was interested in the intellectual:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My dad: “Tell me, is Dr. Groten still conjugating verbs in sixth-form Latin?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Harry: “Yes, sir.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My dad: “Ah, good. Kathy’s brothers had him. A fine teacher, a fine teacher. And Mr. Brown—have you enjoyed his chemistry classes?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Harry: “I’m sorry, Dr. Taylor. I don’t take chemistry.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My dad: “Too bad. A fine teacher, a fine teacher. I understand you’ll be attending Berkeley. Isn’t that the school with all the hippies?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Harry: “There are some hippies, sir, but I believe they’re a minority.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My dad: “I hope Kathy’s going to show you the Horseshoe Curve. A true feat of engineering.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> After spending weekends with my parents, Harry would surely find any future in-laws disappointing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> If not disappointing, Hollywood would be disturbing after Hollidaysburg. Think of the smog and congestion alone. The 6,000 people who made up the greater Hollidaysburg area didn’t create much of either. Oh, on some days a sour smell that made your eyes water would drift over from the paper mill in Tyrone. And when I was young, traffic leaving Hollidaysburg on Route 36 sometimes got backed up at the train tracks at Bakers Farm Stand. By the time Harry visited, though, the paper mill had been closed down, and Mr. Beegle’s construction company had built the Route 36 Bypass right over the train tracks.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Air travel would have been more pleasant than at L.A. International as well—as long as you didn’t mind that the airport was in the middle of a cornfield and that there was just one gate, one flight a day, to one place: Pittsburgh. The person who took your ticket at the counter would later greet you at the steps of the plane. Sometimes the pilot helped load the luggage. A group effort.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Of course, some things weren’t considered appropriate for groups. Necking, for example. I’d read that Harry had been spotted “necking” in the light booth at an Elton John concert. At least in Hollidaysburg, Harry had some privacy. The light was the flickering late movie, broadcast from WJAC-TV, Channel 6 in Johnstown, and the sole witness was my cat, Sparky, who never reported anything to the papers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0JzK7d8blItljm61cVJISZlmxrIuzG-2QpSL0VPm_GJ34EZzGcNEuYSBh2vI7azq8roV2rWRnHYthX7JsAsYWwjovLMcCEWvNDSLvHCJfhQV8YC2s0gf66VsKJ_ccCAHq4FnjVRIfkYJX/s1600/HillCommencement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0JzK7d8blItljm61cVJISZlmxrIuzG-2QpSL0VPm_GJ34EZzGcNEuYSBh2vI7azq8roV2rWRnHYthX7JsAsYWwjovLMcCEWvNDSLvHCJfhQV8YC2s0gf66VsKJ_ccCAHq4FnjVRIfkYJX/s320/HillCommencement.jpg" width="204" /></a> Then there were Harry’s audiences. I suspected that they didn’t appreciate him as they should.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My introduction to Harry’s dramatic talents came during graduation weekend at the Hill School. On Saturday evening, June 6, 1970, the Dramatics Club presented <i>The Fantasticks</i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;">. Memorial Hall with its dark-paneled walls was packed with parents and guests, faculty and underclassmen, all eager to watch the final production of the Class of 1970.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The lights dimmed and we became silent. The spotlight came up—and there was Harry, the Indian. Around him, sparse furnishings made up the set: a few slat-backed chairs, a clothesline, a large trunk. On this nearly barren stage, Harry and his classmates conjured up a magical performance about The Boy and The Girl and their ripped and rewoven romance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> At the final curtain, the audience rose to its feet in wild applause. I can remember smiling and clapping so hard that my jaw and my hands ached. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">After our graduations, I went back home to Hollidaysburg and planned for college on the East Coast. Harry went back home to Pasadena and planned for college on the West Coast, Our letters and phone calls across country dwindled over the summer—and then we lost touch. Harry went on to star in plays, films, telemovies and an acclaimed series. I, on the other hand, went on to teach <i>Hamlet </i></span><span style="font-size: small; font-style: normal;">to seniors at the Baldwin School (for girls).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Poor Harry.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8646589899677493225.post-26721878520379637452011-06-26T17:10:00.002-07:002012-04-17T16:39:14.737-07:00Strains of Music<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(First published in the <i>Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine</i> Sept 27, 1992)</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The lights in the Academy of Music blink a warning, making the crystal chandeliers sparkle and shimmer. The hall buzzes with sounds. Orchestra members are tuning up. Ushers hurry people down the aisle, while the rest of the audience fusses with wraps and fidgets with programs. Then the lights go out. The maestro steps up to the podium and invites us to rise to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As the final chord fades, my five-year-old son Jay says, “Mommy, can we go home now?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">So begins another season of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s children’s concert series. And so begins another season of leading my son to culturally correct activities.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">The morning itself had begun in moans. “Mom, why can’t I wear my jeans and a T-shirt?” I am trying to locate a sneaker when we hear the bleat of a car horn in the driveway. Jay rushes out to greet his friend Susie, who has leapt from the mini-van to model her floral sweatshirt from the Gap. Susie’s mom herds the stragglers back to the van while I clamber over the collection of Barbie dolls and old gumballs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Finally we are strapped up and making our way toward I-95 for the 30-minute drive to Broad and Locust. With the sounds of kids and KYW swirling around me, I stare out the window at the gray clouds over Tinicum Marsh and recall my own trips to “the orchestra” 30 years ago.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Hollidaysburg, PA, did not have an orchestra. Altoona, the closest city, could muster only a community ensemble. To hear a real symphony orchestra required traveling 100 miles west across the Alleghenies to Pittsburgh. My family did this trip with me once a year, and it was a Special Occasion.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">On the day of the concert, my mother would pick me up from school at noon, for we needed plenty of time to “get dressed.” For me this meant a maroon velveteen dress with embroidered smoking, white anklets, black patent-leather shoes and a small matching bag, into which my mother would tuck a comb and a handkerchief.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">At 4:30 my father would pull into the driveway, gallantly sweep open the car doors, and off we would go to Pittsburgh.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Several hours later, my fingers would grip my father’s hand as we stepped down the aisle. Once securely seated, I would watch the musicians begin to appear from the curtained wings, starkly elegant in black-and-white evening dress. Finally the hall would become still. The conductor would stride onto the stage, acknowledge the audience with a curt nod, raise his baton—and I would be surrounded by Beethoven, full and vibrating, not tinny and flat from the brown box we called the record player. I would almost forget to breathe until intermission.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Jay has never had the rapturous experience of my childhood. For when we arrive the scene at the Academy of Music resembles the gym on the first day of school. Mothers hold on to toddlers with one hand while scanning the crowds for their second-graders. Dads in corduroys and suede bomber jackets try to find the Parquet Circle without having to ask for directions. A little girl cries that her new boat mocs are ruined: “The kid behind me in stepped on the heel and squashed it!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Somehow, the lovely interior of the Academy of Music loses its glow in the daytime, like a movie star without her makeup. Even the orchestra members are no longer out of the ordinary. In their street clothes, they seem like anybody else, a teacher, a neighbor. In fact, we know one of the viola players. “Hi, Mr. Filosa!” Jay shouts and waves as we struggle into our seats with all our gear, including a full supply of raisins, pencils, and drawing paper to help Jay get through the next 60 minutes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Maybe this time will be different. Maybe this time something will grab Jay’s attention. The chorus from one of the magnet schools. The young ballet students from Swarthmore. The ten-year-old pianist from Cherry Hill.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">My daydream evaporates with one look at the seat beside me. Jay isn’t listening to the Brahms. He is hunched over, carefully making a caterpillar out of a string of C’s all around the edge of the program. Then he tries to draw a chipmunk, and I know he would rather be home watching <i>Chip ‘n’ Dale, Rescue Rangers</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. I also know that Jay will like the orchestra only when he’s ready to like the orchestra, if ever.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;">That night at dinner, I tell Jay that he doesn’t have to go to any more orchestra concerts. Our five-year-old veteran of not only the Philadelphia Orchestra but also birthday parties at the zoo, the Academy of Natural Sciences, “play dates” at the Franklin Institute and Christmas at the Brandywine River Museum, puts down his milk. He looks at me, then at his dad, then at me again and says, ”Does that mean we can all stay home and talk together?” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Kathryn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16200620248476131831noreply@blogger.com0