Tag: homelife

LAKE MACBRIDE— A winter byproduct of an active local food life is several dozen jars of soup and soup stock in the pantry and refrigerator. Curried lentil, root vegetable, kale and carrot, leftover chili, and many others. With summer abundance, leafy green vegetables (turnip greens especially) are suited for soup making and several large stock pots get canned as excess vegetables and garden seconds appear in the kitchen. Soup will serve as dinner on many nights during the long end of year holiday season, and through the first spring harvest.

Most nights between Christmas and New Years we watch a movie with our supper. This year I got out bankers boxes of VHS movies we collected, when that was the current technology, and hooked up the player. Last night it was “Sense and Sensibility” directed by Ang Lee. After a number of years, I am beginning to understand that the story is about more than Mrs. Dashwood marrying off her daughters. Others we watched are “It’s a Wonderful Life” directed by Frank Capra, “Christmas in Connecticut” directed by Peter Godfrey, and a version of “The Nutcracker,” with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland, directed by Tony Charmoli. This morning I viewed Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery,” one of the first narrative films, made in 1903. It’s online here and if you haven’t seen the 12-minute film you should.

Once our video-cassette player wears out, I’m not sure what we might do. They continue to be sold and we used to keep an extra one in the house, but no more. When we reach the creek, if ever, we’ll cross that bridge.

There is an open question about a diversity of technology over the long term. Will we be able to open *.jpg and *.bmp files in 20 years? What about Microsoft Outlook files where tens of thousands of emails are stored? Will Amazon.com and their Kindle files persist? There is too much life to be lived to worry about that now. Presumably, we’ll go with the flow, and break out the old technology to access them like we do with the VHS tapes. Like in so many ways, we are in this together as a society, and as is currently said on the Internet, these are first world problems.

It is a simple pleasure to find the boxes of tapes in storage, set up the machine and pick one each night to watch with family. It is part of a workingman’s life, subject to change. Technology and popular culture are the least of our worries as we go on living in the post-Reagan society.

LAKE MACBRIDE— The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve have become a quiet time of reflection over the years. Queen Elizabeth agrees that “we all need to get the balance right between action and reflection.” Nonetheless, there is not much action here in Big Grove among the holidays. Taking front stage is reflection about music and other media experienced through the years, including these ten memorable concerts.

August 27, 1966 — Herman’s Hermits at Municipal Stadium, Davenport, Iowa.

April 3, 1970 — Van Morrison at Fillmore East, New York, New York.

March 20, 1971 — Grateful Dead at the University of Iowa Field House, Iowa City, Iowa.

April 24, 1971 — Laura Nyro at the University of Iowa Field House, Iowa City, Iowa.

February 20, 1973 — Ravi Shankar at Sinclair Auditorium Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

February 24, 1973 — Grateful Dead at the University of Iowa Field House, Iowa City, Iowa.

July 22, 1974 — Johnny Cash at John O’Donnell Stadium, Davenport, Iowa.

July 27, 1974 — Eric Clapton at Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, Davenport, Iowa.

April 25, 1975 — Jefferson Starship at University of Iowa Field House, Iowa City, Iowa.

March 25, 1983 — B.B. King at the Col Ballroom, Davenport, Iowa.

August 28, 1992 — Sharon, Lois and Bram at the Star Plaza Theatre, Merrillville, Indiana.

October 24, 2006 — Sir Elton John at the Cow Palace, Daly City, California.

November 4, 2012 — Bruce Springsteen on Locust Street, Des Moines, Iowa.

Merry Christmas. May there be peace on Earth, especially in South Sudan.

LAKE MACBRIDE— Sixteen degrees below zero on Christmas Eve morning and the furnace just ignited. The Internet connection is down, but there is phone service to connect us to the world as the coffee steams and the laptop glows along with the colored lights of our decorated Christmas tree. The sound of the dishwasher creates noise that muffles the outside. Now the water softener cycles, adding to the score. And then the furnace turns off, having warmed the thermostat to 60. It seems quiet as memory reminds me it should be this day, despite the symphony of sight, sound and touch.

Ours is a small family, spread around the country. We have never had a Christmas holiday where we needed to do more than set up a card table or two away from the grown-ups. No card tables needed today. Do people even have card tables any longer? No travel plans, so I took a nap. After waking, the Internet connection was up and so was the sun. A brilliant day to be thankful for our many blessings and to make contact with friends and loved ones. There is more contact in the era of telephones, social media and Skype than previously, especially when it is too cold to go outside unless one is required to do so by work or trade.

Yesterday I made a batch of shortbread cookies― a contribution to holiday treats. Regardless of what we cook at home, Christmas gifts add to the edible bounty, with a fruitcake from Mother and some apple butter from a friend. Having enough to eat has never been a problem in our household, and the festive fare won’t last long. One batch of cookies is enough this year, although since writing the first sentences of this paragraph, I took a bag of rhubarb out of the freezer and made rhubarb crisp for dessert.

This year I left the lump of coal in the bin with other unused Christmas ornaments. It was a joke gift and except for 2013, it has been under our tree every year. Not this year. We’ve all been naughtier than we should and nicer than we thought. No need to joke about it. We just need to be better after this day of rest and quiet.

LAKE MACBRIDE— Snow weighed upon the blue spruce and pin oak trees begging someone to shake it loose so the branches won’t break. That someone is me. It snowed between four and five inches overnight, framing up several hours of outdoors work to add to the plans for decorating the house for Christmas and baking a batch of cookies. Today, with its simple pleasures and honest work, may be one of the best days this year.

Having done my tour of duty on the Salisbury Plain, memories are scant. I stayed at a youth hostel, and made visits to Salisbury, Bath and Stonehenge. Another traveler, who spent the previous few weeks wandering about the moorland of southwest England, invited me to accompany him. I declined. It sounded too much like Iowa, and a bit dreary. I bought a post card at the Stonehenge gift shop and worked my way from the chalky plateau to the chalk cliffs of Dover and then to Calais, where my journal of Salisbury and England was pinched with my backpack after crossing the channel in a hovercraft.

I never looked back on England, and don’t understand the fascination with Stonehenge at the winter solstice. It is an old thing, shrouded in lost history. I’m more thankful that the days start getting longer, and planning for 2014 can begin in earnest.

LAKE MACBRIDE— Vague recollection of Saturday morning trips to downtown Davenport have been haunting me of late. It’s the holiday season, and the stillness of the house leaves a perfect canvas against which memory paints images of days gone by. Trips to the newspaper to pay my paper route bill, a stop at Parker’s Department store to dine on automat food heated under a reddish light bulb, to Petersen’s, Woolworth, W.T. Grant, Hanssen’s Hardware, and a stop at the Source Book Store. The latter being the only business still there, now run by the son of the founder.

There were places to eat. A lunch counter at Woolworth, the Griddle where my grandmother cooked and served lunch, Bishop’s Buffet, The Tea Room, and others, I suppose. Over the course of youth, I tried them all.

There were three movie theaters, the RKO Orpheum, the Capitol and the State. My classmates would go shoplifting in the downtown and then meet up for a $0.35 movie and swap stories, men’s cologne and other plunder. They didn’t view themselves as criminals, and with time, they grew out of it. I didn’t join them for fear I would get caught.

Now my Saturdays are much different. The day began with work proofreading the newspaper, followed by a series of errands. A drive to Oxford to meet up with a farmer, a trip to the orchard to pickup some apples and chat with the staff one last time this year, and a trip to the farm where I worked for news and another chat. It was not retail outlets I sought, but people I knew or wanted to get to know. And that’s the difference in my life today.

After the farm I went to the public library and brought home an armload of books, and a jelly jar full of hot chocolate mix. I cooked a dinner of stir-fried tofu and vegetables served over rice for the two of us. I opened a bottle of wine and had enough to taste it. The beer from summer is all gone.

What if memories of youth had been something other than shopping and going downtown on Saturdays? Why do those memories play now? What I’d rather do is live now, in the world constructed from my new life with practical farmers. In a society where government seems corrupt and bankrupt of morals, and shopping for necessities is all we can afford. Where splurging means buying a new book on Amazon.com, getting a slice of pizza at the gas station, or making holiday cookies at home. The commerce of life seems least interesting to me now.

Yet these memories of Davenport play. I can’t escape them, they are part of me. I’ll let them play against the screen a while more, until leaving the house for a round of Sunday morning work and what new adventures might be found outside of memory.