Bridges

I can’t seem to pass or cross a bridge without taking a picture. I been looking at the pictures of bridges I’ve taken over years of travel.

During July of 1985 Youssef, Sharif and I took a month long foray through England and Wales. We rented a car in Bristol (Youssef’s mother lived north of Bristol in a little village called Henbury) and I drove the three of us through Wales and the Lake District. I can’t believe now that I was ever so brave. We spent one night at the Woodlands Hotel near Devil’s Bridge in Wales. I remember lying on the soft bed in the evening light (it stays light very late during the British summer) watching sheep grazing on the hill from our window as the sun broke through the rain clouds.  I listened to the plaintive clatter of sheep bells, thinking, “Heaven!”  Monks built the first and the prettiest bridge over the Mynach River Ravine between 1075 and 1200, but two ‘modern’ bridges have been built over that. I have a couple of postcards of the bridge from l985, but I found this super picture of Devil’s Bridge on the Internet.

When Sharif was going to Maclester College we would drive him to St. Paul (1988 and 1989) and spend at least one night in Wabasha, Minnesota. A wonderful bridge there built in 1926 had a circular approach. It was too big to focus in the camera frame, but I took this picture of the curve of supporting legs.

 The new bridge was dedicated in 1988, and I snapped this photo of the sunset through the pillars. The old bridge has since been torn down.

The next photo was taken in 1992 of a Nile River bridge, barrage and dam just north of Cairo. These structures control the flow and diversion of Nile water for irrigation in the delta.

About 2000, March, I joined a Bristol University art tour going to Florence and Venice, Italy. Here is the River Arno in Florence with bridges as seen from the Uffizi Gallery in the evening dim light.

In Venice there is the Rialto Bridge
on the Grand Canal



and a different
kind of bridge over the Piazza San
Marco when it rains, which is often.

I love this old trestle bridge over Perche Creek on the KATY Trail just west of Columbia.

The KATY Trail used to be Kansas Atchison Topeka Railroad, but when it fell into disuse Missouri claimed it to create a biking and walking trail that stretches most of the way across the state. There was a lot of resistance to it at first, but the trail has been a boom to small towns catering to bikers with repair and rentals, restaurants, B&B's and antique shops.

I met the same British instructor’s art tour in New York in 2002. Here is a bridge in Central Park,

 and the Brooklyn Bridge. Love that little American flag fluttering in the wind.   It looks little!

 March of 2006, Youssef and I flew to Nagoya, Japan to see Sharif, Sachiyo, and Liam (age 2). It was too early for the cherry blossoms, but there were plum blossoms.

The Aatsuta-jingu Shinto shrine, one of the most important in Japan, is said to house the sacred sword, one of the three regalia given to the ancestors of the imperial family by a goddess.
Only certain members of the imperial family can see the sword, but, nevermind, this bridge brings with it a feeling of beauty and peace.

In 2008 two stalwart Jane Austen Society members joined Youssef (our chaperon) and me in donating/delivering six volumes of Austen novels from our society to the high school libraries of Centralia and Harrisburg. Then we drove north to see the Union Covered Bridge built in 1871.
Notice the Burr-arch truss named for the architect, Theodore Burr.  He is sometimes called the father of American bridge building.

 I took several pictures of the bridge, but this Internet photo, by Galen R. Frysinger, is so much better.

I don’t love all bridges, however.  I remember when Youssef drove us over the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado many years ago, I hid my head in my lap. I was sure that the bridge, built in 1929, had waited, lo, those forty odd years to unravel, collapse and cast us into the depths, when we, our family, reached the center point of the span. Somehow it didn’t happen. Photo off the Internet.

Birthday Week

My 71st birthday was May 10th and I always make it a point to celebrate for at least a week. Celebrations started Saturday night, May 8th, when Whitney and Marjory ( my brother and sister-in-law) asked the family: Youssef, me, Mary Sue and her friend Howard, to dinner. We had a lovely meal of brisket and asparagus tenderized just right - sprinkled with sliced almonds, Youssef insisted on buying the cake that I ordered: Bascom-Robbins’ pralines and cream on white cake. I knew exactly what I wanted. Howard took the picture on the right.  My sister and I do look kind of alike here.  We also look like we are dying to sit down.

Sunday, I received a Mother’s Day gift from Wade. A bonsai magenta bougainvillea. Wade tried to send me one last year, but the container arrived broken. That very same day he sent me daisies in a darling little ceramic colander, courtesy of FDS. I use and treasure it to this day. “What’s with Wade and bougainvilleas?” my husband asks.


Monday, my actual birthday, I received several cards from my friends and relations including a card from my cousin-in-law (A first – as she says she never remembers birthdays. I was so flattered!), and email cards from two dear friends. What a pleasure. I also celebrated by attending a docent appreciation luncheon given by the MU Museum of Art and Archaeology. Youssef took me to dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s. We had a coupon. If that sounds tacky, it’s not. We had a good time.

I had told Sharif I wanted to hear from him on Sunday or Monday. He tried to contact us via Skype on Monday, but of course we were out. He tried, and that’s what counts. Tuesday evening, Wade called from California, so Zachary and Cody could sing ‘Happy Birthday to You.”  Lovely.

Wednesday, I went out to lunch with four friends from church. We drove to Rocheport, an old river town about 15 minutes away that is now an art and antiques center. A number of people from Columbia have retired and moved there. We ate at Abigail's, a restaurant named after the proprietors’ daughter. The husband waits tables and the wife cooks. It’s kind of a throw back to the yuppie restaurants of the 80’s, where the waiter acts like he’s doing you a favor to let you in. I love the rustic ambiance of the decor. You always see people you know there from Columbia. I had a wonderful salad of crab and shrimp on greens. It was hard to choose from the menu, but I try not to always order the same thing (apple pancake and brie on greens) We all shared a to-die-for chocolate raspberry pie, and spent another hour browsing through some antique shops.

During the rest of the week, I depleted our bank account buying bedding plants and annuals, saying to myself, ‘This is my birthday present, and this is for my birthday.” The week is up now; sadly, I need to rein in my impulses.

Nice hanging basket, right?  I bought that, too.

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.