In Praise of Men

I am really too lazy to be a feminist. Yet I have been guilty from time to time of making a few derogatory remarks about men. I am thinking of a couple from our church that worked faithfully in our Columbia Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen. I felt that the husband wasn’t as thoughtful of his wife as he should be. She had a fulltime job in the MU library, while he, having just finished his Ph.D. in history, was teaching an on line course part time. Sunday evenings when she had been cooking all day for Loaves and Fishes, I knew she must be dead on her feet. Every chance I had, I’d encourage her to go home if we had enough other workers. However, one evening after her husband lifted an unusually heavy hot pan of chicken casserole out of the oven and on to the stove top, I felt a surge of gratitude and said, “What a joy it is to have a man in the kitchen!” Then I turned to his wife and said, “You notice I never try to send him home early.” True, besides having someone to lift heavy pans, we liked to have a man in the soup kitchen, in case (for example) one of our customers became unruly (and this happened only very occasionally.)

Which brings me to Youssef. My mother actually frowned on bragging about one’s husband or family, for that matter, as bad manners. But maybe I don’t I brag on Youssef enough; one should brag on one’s spouse occasionally, don’t you think? So…. here I go.

I do all the driving, and my husband is always ready to help. I used to tell him that I didn’t need a co-pilot in the car; even now his cautions are not always well taken, but I have to admit, later, that his admonitions are timely.

Every morning he makes our bed. Sometimes he makes it so quickly that
I don’t have time to remind him that this is the day I wash the sheets. Well, changing sheets can always be put off one more day.

Youssef cooks. I am not into labor-intensive cooking. Youssef is quicker than I am and likes to cook Mediterranean cuisine. This means a lot of tomato sauce. Kansas cooking, especially vegetables, did not include tomato sauce, at least when I was a girl, but when Y makes it, it is very good.

He also makes molahaya (called jew’s mallow here, but I’ve never seen it used), a vegetable with the slimy consistency of boiled okra (which I ate and loved as a child). It looks like green soup to be eaten with rice or flat bread and is made with lots of garlic. In Egypt, I could hear the cook in the apartment below us pound garlic and salt together for the molahaya every Friday morning. The fragrance of the garlic would permeate the entire apartment house. After Friday prayers this family of grandparents, children and grandchildren would gather for dinner, and this was one of the favorite dishes.

Youssef and I have made stuffed grape leaves together; me under protest, because, as I mentioned, I don’t care for labor-intensive cooking. Youssef makes the stuffing. I help roll the stuffing into small packets of grape leaf - very time consuming. In Egypt the cooks from several family apartments would come to help roll the grape leaves. Youssef and I worked for a year after returning from Egypt, to get the recipe right. It is so labor-intensive, we haven’t made it since Youssef had chemo. Maybe it’s about time we made it again, since that is a very popular dish with guests..

Growing tomatoes is a challenge Youssef accepts every spring. Every spring we plant tomatoes in various places in the yard and even in planters on the deck. Every year, because of excessive rain, or nibbling deer, we harvest- well, at least two tomatoes. This year he is going to try the hanging tomato plant. Perhaps he’ll get lucky.

Youssef can reach things up high, close up the house at night, feed the cats and clean the cat litter. Yes, it’s great to have a man around the house, especially when it’s Youssef. ( By the by, he’s handsome, too. )

And that’s my praise of men.

Books #1

I’ve read three books lately. They’re not necessarily favorite books, but they are representative of what I enjoy reading.  I hope to pique the interest of any readers of this blog.

A Rambling Fancy, in the footsteps of Jane Austen, by Caroline Sanderson

The title taken from a quote by Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, is a travel/chat that takes the reader around parts of England known to Jane Austen and immortalized in both her books and letters. As most of my friends know, I am a staunch Jane Austen fan as well as an Anglophile, and rambler of the English countryside. Sanderson takes us through Steventon, Bath, Lyme Regis, Chawton, London, Winchester, and other Austen haunts sharing her copious knowledge of Austen’s letters and biographers, especially those in her family. The beauty of the English countryside is always present at each location. How it makes me yearn to be in England, any place, any time of year.

“But Missouri is beautiful, too,” I tell myself, and perhaps British visitors think that England has nothing on the United States in the way of beauty. The United States has stunning national parks comparable to any beautiful place in the world. Right here in Columbia and across Missouri we have the Katy Trail for biking and walking that follows the Missouri River.

It is beautiful any day of the year. I have walked and biked it with and without friends and love it. Yet one rarely finds oneself alone on the trail or in our breath-taking national parks. And I want the solitude of nature. (I suppose growing up on the ranch, walking along the Arkansas River in the cottonwoods – now dead and gone- or riding a horse in the sandhills made me value solitude.) In England one only has to take the Bagderline Bus out of town and (because of the ancient law of the right of way) follow roads and trails through hills, woods, farms, pastures and small villages. 

Sometimes a farmhouse will have a tearoom/garden where the walker can rest,  drink tea, to say nothing of eating a scone, and villages have pubs and small stores that sell oh so creamy ice cream.

There is something about this experience that is like stepping into a storybook.






How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, by Thomas Cahill.
I love history, especially European history. Cahill discusses the classical world of Greece and Rome and compares it with the burgeoning barbarian world pressing on its borders. Fascinating. Finally, he explains the rise of the Irish monastic system across Europe with its emphasis on collecting, copying and dispersing books, even classical manuscripts at a time when public literacy was practically zero. And it is short, only 220 pages.

Finally, Agatha Christie’s Postern of Fate. I was discussing with one of my friends, can’t remember whom, the leisurely way that British authors write. American authors, especially mystery writers, don’t waste time; they get right to the point. British authors spend more time developing characters and situations with detail, detail, detail. In Postern of Fate, published in 1973 (I didn’t realize until I checked the copyright date that Christie was still living in 1973.) Christie develops the plot by carefully chronicling the conversations of the retired husband and wife.

Have you ever noticed that the villains of British mystery stories tend to be pretentious social climbers, not of the gentry, while American mystery story villains are often wealthy corporate bosses, spoiled rich kids, or some remnant of the leisure class? Can’t say if this assertion holds true for Postern of Fate, because I confess that I haven’t finished it yet.

Treasure Hunting at the Art Museum

One of the ways, as a retired teacher, I try to make myself useful to society is to work as a docent at the University of Missouri Art and Archaeology Museum.  I love taking small groups of children/students on tours through the museum.  Tours vary.  There are flashlight tours where we darken the room and each child has a flashlight and a list of items (written or pictured) to find on their own (with whatever help they need).  There are General Highlights Tours where we touch on a variety of artifacts and exhibits.  We have Missouri History Tours, especially for fourth graders, who routinely study Missouri history as part of their curriculum, and so on.

Here you see me discussing the story of Laokoon and his sons (yes, the Trojan priest and his sons are being crushed by snakes) with a young 'art student' in the Cast Gallery.

Last week I led a ‘treasure hunt’ for a small group of home-schooled children…about 8 kids between 7 and 12. We started out with the usual admonitions about touching, running and loud voices. Then we gave each child a set of small artifact/item pictures glued on Popsicle sticks. We sat together at first discussing the meaning of treasure. The kids were excited; I was inspired. We directed them to wander through the rooms hunting the treasures in a rather loose group. When an artifact or item was ‘found,’ we’d discuss it with individuals or with small groups.

The Antenalope, a nearly life-sized deer-like sculpture made from old TV consoles, radios, a hand-cranked telephone, and a gramophone speaker for a tail, is endlessly fascinating for kids. I told them about the hand cranked telephone we had in our rural ranch house when I was a kid.

They were also thrilled with a small elephant-headed statue of the Hindu God, Ganesha. They knew the slightly gruesome story of his ‘birth,’ because one of the mothers was a yoga teacher.  Ganesha was born to the goddess, Parvati when his father, Shiva (Lord of Destruction/Creation), was away on a trip.  When Shiva returned he saw this stranger in the house and cut off his head.  Parvati  insisted that Shiva restore Ganesha to life.  So the first living animal Shiva saw was an elephant.  He sliced off the elephant's head and gave it to Ganesha, who was then restored to life.
At the end of the tour we sat down together on and around a bench.  One of the 7 year-old boys climbed aboard my lap.  Oh how that warmed this old grandmother's heart!

Growing Up/Growing Older

Growing Up/Growing Old
Growing old is something like growing into to adolescence. The body goes through radical and surprising changes. We have been told that these changes are going to happen, but you don’t quite believe it will happen to you. I watch the process of growing old with the something of the same horrified fascination that I watched myself grow into adolescence. I was not thrilled at age 11 to be developing into a woman. I was ahead of my friends. I was slightly overweight. I wasn’t ready to leave childhood. Now I’m not ready to leave middle age. In my 50’s, I examined the creping of the skin of my arm and thinking, “This isn’t me, this isn’t me.” Yes, it was and yes it is.

I remember when my mother used to tell me (she was a few years older than I am now) about how she was suffering the odd aches and pains of early Parkinson’s disease. I wasn’t very sympathetic, because I didn’t want to believe that she was growing old. That she was succumbing to illness. “ Oh, mother,” I would say, “You are just suffering now what the rest of us have suffered all our lives.” I often wish I could call my mother and talk to her about these mysterious changes I am experiencing. I feel I need my mother more than ever. In some way, I feel closer to her than ever. I understand more about her, and her memory comforts and inspires me.

I am letting my hair grow out. I figure that I can always color it again if I don’t like the gray. I am interested in just what the color of my hair really is. It looks like a sort of iron gray. Hmmm, we shall see. My brother has bright white hair and looks quite handsome. Mary Sue still dyes hers and looks younger than I do, still beautiful, although she is seven years older.

Around Columbia

After weeks, no, months of grousing about the grim, rainy, overcast, cold weather, much to my delight spring has put on a spelendid performance for us in April.  Columbia could be called the Bradford Pear capital of Missouri.  They are a beautiful tree:  first the white blossoms in the spring, beautiful pear shaped green in the summer, and vibrant multicolored in the fall.  However, as they age their branches split off in storms and their perfect tear-drop shape deteriorates as branches become too heavy for the trunk to hold.  The MU ag department is "agin 'im."  We planted two in our back yard, too close to each other, and they obscure the view of our flowering crabs.

Our redbuds have passed their prime, but the dogwoods (Missouri's state tree - and very tempermental as to flowering) are glorious this year.  All except ours: ours is sulking again in the shade.  I took some pictures of our neighbor's dogwoods. 

Finally, I took a photo of another neighbor's lilac.  We never get tired of lilacs, do we?  My lilac bush will never bloom, because it was started from suckers.  My benefactor, who brought the suckers to me failed to mention the none blooming fact to me until the bush was well established.

What's with Cats?

What possible objection can cats have to flowers? Both of our cats seem to think it’s their job to deflower bouquets about the house. I have to set our flower arrangements in odd places: for example, on the upper baker’s shelf where the cats don’t climb or by the kitchen sink. To place a vase of flowers on the buffet, tops of bookcases, or tables is asking for trouble. Occasionally, I unwisely leave the flowers on the dining room table where we admire them while eating. The cats seem to ignore the arrangement; I think they don’t notice. I forget the flowers are on the table, and we go to the grocery store. We come home to find the vase tipped over, water spilled and the flowers strewn across the table.

I put sweet little pansies in a shallow bowl in the hall bathroom to enjoy their little frowny faces, during the washing of hands. Of course we try to keep the bathroom door shut, so the cats can’t get in, but our black cat, Inky - has a particular obsession with pansies. Somehow he slips into the bathroom if we are careless, and pulls those pansies right out of the bowl. What is it with cats, anyway?

Agape Supper

Last night was our Agape Supper at church. I promised to bring split pea soup and to help with preparation.  I also told a good friend of mine that I wouldn't use onions as her digestive system won't tolerate onions.   To compensate for the lack of onions, I followed the Joy of Cooking and added plenty of bay leaves, celery stalks and leaves, thyme, Crazy Salt, butter, etc.  By the time I was ready to go to church the soup was tasty enough, but pretty thick.  So much the easier to carry in the crockpot without spilling in the car, which actually did happen to me a couple of years ago.  Arrived at church at 4:45, meal and liturgy started at 7:00.  I plugged in the soup on the soup table, left it on high, figured I would thin the soup later.    We finished preparations with plenty of time to spare, but I happily talked with women who had seen the program about the Shroud of  Turin on the History Channel.  To check the soup, never crossed my mind.  Mid-liturgy we had our agape meal...supposed to be simple, right?  But we had at least a dozen  soups and many of us were trying to savor each one - as well as many kinds of fruit, nuts and breads.  However, I was shocked at the sight of my split pea soup.  It was beyond thick -crusty around the edge.  I don't think it had one taker, certainly not me.  The first time through, my dear friend could not find my soup and I hoped she wouldn't. She ate her own soup.  The second time through, she insisted on trying mine; I had to point it out to her.  (I followed my dictum to never apologize - or was that Julia Childs' ?)  She told me it was wonderful - and I don't doubt it was, if one could overcome the way it looked - a green casserole, the slices of carrots like multiple eyes. Thank God for friends who love us.  I took the soup home.  Scraped it out of the crockpot, and put it in the refridge to enjoy at leisure.  Maybe there was a method in my madness after all.