Nancy Martin's Blog, page 30

What Would you Like on Your Birthday Cake?

They say it's your birthday,

It's my birthday, too, yeah!

Not my favorite Beatles song, but I have this really sweet memory connected to it. Many years ago, I returned to my dorm room after having a birthday dinner with my boyfriend, and as I was putting away my things, I heard that song coming from the room of one of my suitemates. It took me a while to realize my friends were playing it (over and over, because I wasn't catching on) for me, and I walked into their room to find nineteen candles blazing on a cake shaped (sort of) like  a guitar, which I played at the time.

Thus started my fascination with birthday cakes and since today actually is my birthday, I hope you'll indulge me as I share some special cakes I found on the web. Some make me drool, others make me retch. Either way, they're fun to look at!

Starting in a literary vein (no pun intended), here are a couple of  clever Twilight cakes from a Squidoo blog.

 

(You can find more Miss Catty Cakes here. )

Got any three-year-old girls in the house? My three-year-old granddaughter came home from preschool the other day and announced she's going to marry Justin Bieber, a statement that left my stepdaughter kind of shaken. I mean three? My stepdaughter says she's picked up this Bieber Fever from some older girls at preschool, meaning the five-year-olds. Anyway, here are a couple of JB cakes for your entertainment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(More Bieber Baked Goods here.)

 I'm a big Taco Bell fan. I even owe one of my novel ideas to Taco Bell, since it came from a conversation I overheard while munching a burrito. But since I'm now on a low sodium diet, my TB days may be over. Sugar, however, is not sodium! So this cake may be as close as I can get to a taco these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And speaking of a burrito? (This one's filled with carrot cake).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now for some classier cakes. I can't relate to these at all, since I could care less about shoes and purses, but I bet they'll float some of your boats. The top two are from Piece-of-Cake bakery, which is not far from where I live in North Carolina. I know who I'm calling for the next intriguing cake I need. (And yes, the shoe is edible for those of you with a fetish).

   

 

This purse above is from Sweet Treats by Jen and every bit of it, too,  is edible.

 

For the drummers: 

                                                                                                      

  From Scrum Diddly Cakes. I would LOVE to meet Olivia. I bet she's an interesting kid!

 

 

 

 

 

Any Angry Bird addicts out there? This dad made an edible Angry Birds game for his son's birthday. What a guy!

 

Whew! Some creative people out there! Since I'm writing this post a few days before my birthday, I'm not sure what my cake will be like. I'm on deadline, however, so I have a feeling my cake will look something like this:

 

But hopefully after a day on the computer, I'll get a chance to do this:

 
So how about you? If someone made a birthday cake just for you right now, what would it look like?

 

What Drives Men Wild

 

By Elaine Viets

Lose those lacy garters, ladies. Nix the sheer nighties and deep-six the stiletto heels.

Here's what you need to do to attract a man . . . Shake your assets and watch the love light in his eyes. Show him your juicy paycheck and well-developed pension.

That was the conclusion of the Women, Money & Power study commissioned by the Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.

Do you still believe men are turned off by women with big assets? How old school.

Clingy gold diggers are as quaint as high-button shoes nowadays – and about as attractive.

Most men "find financially independent women sexy," the Allianz study says. That's not a simple male majority (or is that simple majority of males?). The survey says 96 percent of men are attracted to self-sufficient women.

The baby doll who depends on her sugar daddy to keep her in diamonds has been dumped.

 

What turns men on now?

A woman's "ability to take care of herself." At least that's the guys told Sherri Brown, a managing partner of Cali Pearl Corp. "Successful men are attracted to women that are smart, strong and are aggressively seeking to be financially independent," one man e-mailed Brown.

"Ladies, don't be afraid to grab the financial reins," she advises. "It's sexy."

We women need to do more to enhance our sex appeal. And we should start young.

Most parents do not discuss the facts about the bulls and the bears with their daughters. They do not tell young women when they need a condominium. Female financial education is scantier than a stripper's wardrobe.  More than 90 percent of women feel financially insecure, the survey said. A bag lady can't bag a good man.

It makes sense that men would want a financially secure female.  It takes the pressure off them. They don't have to kill themselves to keep her in Ferraris and Jimmy Choos. A hot mama can buy her own hot cars and sexy shoes.

The survey also explains something that has puzzled me for years.

When I was a reporter, I interviewed a receptionist at a St. Louis massage parlor called Beaver Lodge. That Beaver Lodge is no longer in business, but there must be a million more places with that wink-wink name.

 
 
The women who worked at the massage parlor wore costumes. These included the standards: a French maid, a harem dancer, a police officer, a girl in black lingerie, and a hooker in high leather boots. (The French maid pictured here did NOT work there. That model lives a blameless life.)

But one costume outsold all these. This woman's outfit was a real turn-on for the customers.

Know what it was?

She dressed like an executive. She wore a plain business suit and a sensible blouse.

I've pondered her popularity ever since. Back then, I thought men wanted her because they enjoyed humiliating their female bosses.

Now I've decided there's another reason. The guys lusted for that street look  – Wall Street.

 

 

 

Paper Crane

by Nancy Martin    

The closest I've ever come to dying was in cold, fast moving water.

Mind you, I'm a very strong swimmer.  Even now, I swim several times a week, and because I'm particularly--uh--buoyant, I'm pretty sure I could last a long time in open water, barring hungry beasties. I can float for hours, maybe days. As a lifeguard, I rescued people who were much bigger and panickier than me. (Although, truth be told, most of the time my fellow lifeguards and I dashed into shallow water to pick up toddlers who had fallen facedown while Mom or Dad's attention strayed.)  I love boating of all kinds. Snorkeling is one of my greatest pleasures. I wouldn't mind being reborn as a sea otter.

I'd be completely confident in water if I hadn't nearly drowned many years ago in a fast-moving creek where the water temperature was---this is the crucial detail--only 64 degrees. I can still feel the slam of my heart valves as the cold shock penetrated by body. In seconds, my muscles froze, hardly able to propel me through the strong current to dry land. If I'd stayed in that water for another half minute, I'm certain my heart would have stopped dead. I'd have been swept over the nearby rocks and maybe held in the current created by water steadily flowing over a damn.

So I'm cautious about where I go swimming. I know the power of moving water. It doesn't take much motion to make a seemingly mild current impossible to escape. A rip tide? Just the thought gives me a panicky feeling.

Have you had a near death experience?

As you can imagine, I'm especially sick when I see the horrifying video footage of the tsunami in Japan on Friday.

 

Watch how fast the water rises. How quickly it carries whole trucks down the street.  Eventually, buildings are swept away, too. The violence is hard to comprehend.

My own experience tells me that anyone who died in that water didn't suffer long.

Radiation, though, is another story.

Over the weekend, a friend suggested we remember the people of Japan by making a paper crane.  Here are directions:

 

The Origami paper crane is a traditional Japanese symbol for peace, good luck and good health.  If you make a thousand paper cranes, I understand, you may be granted a wish.  Let's get started, shall we?

 

 

Stray Love

By Sarah

As a parent of teenagers - especially a kid in college hundreds of miles away - it is the 3 a.m. phone call I've learned to dread. But recently I discovered that the 3 p.m. knock on the door can be just as life altering.

It happened last week as I was holed up in our library/TV room, the one with the red walls and sloped ceiling, concentrating on the revisions to my YA novel. It was snowy and rainy and not the day to be out and about rescuing dogs, but that's what my neighbor was doing when she knocked on the door to my garage with a stray basset in the back of her Subaru.

Fred, my own basset, was barking his head off when I answered.

"I thought maybe he was yours," she began. Then, seeing Fred, she frowned and said, "Well, I guess no."

This poor basset, a red and white, long-eared, sad eyed (then again, don't they all?), middle-aged fellow had been found about a mile from my house on a dirt road without a collar.  e was shaking so hard his teeth were clattering, though you have to watch it with this breed. Bassets are expert con men.

Not everyone is psychologically equipped to own a basset. A basset will pretend to step outside for a breath of fresh air and...show up in Detroit. He will feign deep sleep and, when you leave the room, leap onto the counter, steal a cookie, hide it in his mouth and snore when you return. They complain constantly in sounds akin to a real language. They smell. They drool. They covet pepperoni and will kick you off your own couch. 

Which was why I told her I'd take this guy until the owner was found. It was the least I could do, seeing as how her only experience was with retrievers.

There was no doubt in my mind that the owner would call within days, if not hours. It was an older dog, obviously a pet, who got along well with the cats. (Though they, I'm sure, would beg to differ.) His coat was smooth. He was accustomed to lying on furniture. No mongrel he.

And, yet, no one came. My neighbor and I called everyone - the local vets, the town clerks, the constables, the humane societies. I even left messages at Agway. I drove him around town and showed him off, put a couple of notices in our on-line community newsletter. Nothing. No one had ever seen this dog before which, in Vermont, is really saying something.

Which means, of course, that "Walter" - as in the hit children's book series, Walter the Farting Dog - is ours.

The name is not by coincidence.

Charlie was the one who applied the full-court press, not Anna or Sam. When we woke  to Walter's accidents in the basement, Charlie cleaned up the mess even though dog defecation is one thing he cannot stomach. When Walter whined and howled all night in the basement next to Fred who slept peacefully, Charlie built a mega crate so Walter would feel more secure. And when I, fed up, on deadline, demanded Walter be taken to the shelter, it was Charlie who came to his defense.

Just a few more days, Charlie said. If Walter continues to whine or poop in the house, we will take him to the humane society. Walter continued to whine, though his bathroom habits have greatly improved.

Still, he is far from perfect. He begs with big black eyes. He howls at night. But we've passed the tipping point and the idea of him being led away, once more, to a strange place, to cages and other dogs with behavioral issues especially after poor Walter had been abandoned by his own masters, was too much to bear.

We're stuck.

So, I've got an appointment at the vet and a new collar and leash. I'll have him licensed up by the deadline of April 1 (Fred's birthday) and then we'll really be committed.

Is this a mistake? Have I been hoodwinked? Have you ever taken in a stray and regretted it and, if so, what happens then?

All I know is that on Sunday night, as a light snow fell outside, Fred and Walter were asleep by the fire and snoring softly, their full bellies rising and falling in unison. Charlie and I were watching All Creatures Great and Small and I was knitting. 

It might, just possibly, have been the fulfillment of a lifelong fantasy. Even if it was rather smelly.

Sarah 

 

 

My Most Embarrassing Moment

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

If you're one of theose people who likes to know the end first--I do, I admit--I can tell you this  story ends up just dandy. It's kind of a love story.

And, snappy headline aside, it's not really my MOST embarrassing moment, which has to do with someone's wife who I decided must be his mother, but that's another story for another day.

But, as usual, I digress.

This one happened on Valentine's Day, the one that's just past, and that's important. (Remember I said it's a love story.)  And it has all kinds of other themes, like not jumping to conclusions, and not getting too angry too quickly, how misunderstandings can occur, and the dangers of being addicted to email. And true love. It's very Saki, actually.

So.

I was riding along in the back seat of our news car, pretty happy. My producer was in the front, since she alleges she gets car sick--right, I've never seen it happen, but for years she's insisted on the front, so fine, so there I am in the back. My photographer drives. He's a guy, they drive. I think it's a union thing.

But I'm pretty comfortable in the back.There's a holder for lattes, and I can spread out my purse and tote bag and have a little mobile office. The 'little mobile office' got a lot cooler when I got my notebook computer and aircard. That brilliant little invention gives me wireless EVERYWHERE,  how, I don't know, but I love it.

So I'm in the backseat, doing my email, sneaking in a Facebook entry or two, thinkin'--this is pretty great. I can get my stuff accomplished, and it's so efficient, and I love technology. 

Suddenly. The aircard stops working. I feel the email-withdrawal prickle at the back of my neck, but I think, oh, its probably something about towers or satellites or sunspots, however it works. So I reboot, start over. Nothing.  Try it again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Then, worse and worse. It begins to ask for passwords. Passwords? It doesn't need a stinkin' password. It demands passwords and access codes and downloads and all kinds of stuff I don't know what means. And I know how the aircard is supposed to work--plug it it, it works.   This one--all of a sudden--doesn't.

So. First mistake. I call customer service. Shall I just skip the ordeal? I'm trapped in an impenetrable maze of phone tree where I'm supposed to remember to push 5 or whatever , while I listen to the other options which might be--but never are--more appropriate.

 Suffice it to say that it ends with me saying: This is the WORST customer service I ever had, I don't even know why you call it service. Then I said-- embarrassed and knowing I was WAY too cranky and besides there are two people in the front seat hearing every word--I know it's not your fault but my AIR CARD doesn't work, and I can't figure out why.

Did you pay your bill? The guy asks. AUGH. YES YES I PAID THE BILL. Which I had.

Huh, he says.  Sounds like it's broken.

BROKEN?

So, happily , we are right by a store that sells these things, I don't want to say the name but let's call it Merizon.  I say to my photographer--hang on. I'm just gonna run into the Merizon store. I go in.  Show 'em the problem. The say: did you pay your bill?

YES!!! I say. I PAID THE BILL. The AIRCARD IS BROKEN. Can't you see??

YOU HAVE TO FIX IT BECAUSE I NEED MY EMAIL.

I am really mad. Way way too mad. But now I am on a mad roll. Which is not helped when the clerk says--I think you need tech support. I say--aren't YOU tech support??? They say no, you have to call.

CALL?

So back in the car, I call the special tech support number.

MY AIRCARD DOESNT WORK. IT WANTS PASSWORDS. WHY WHY WHY?  is along the lines of what I was saying.

The guy pauses, and says, huh. Were you just in the Merizon store? A  little while ago?

Yes, I say.

Well, he says, I see that on your record. And when you went in there, they turned off your aircard. 

What? What? What? NO, they didn't, I say. (Can you hear the dismissive sarcasm here?) They didn't do anything but ask me if I paid the bill. WHICH I DID. They don't even have enough information to turn it off. No, that didn't happen.  It was off BEFORE I went into the store. Are you kidding me?

Etc etc.

Well, the guys says. Someone turned off your aircard. What can I say?

What can you say??? I'm afraid I was a little shrill. You can tell me why the heck someone is in my ACCOUNT and--

Ma'am? the guy says. His voice is kind of quiet. Um. Did you buy an iPad today? 

BUY AN IPAD?? No, I did NOT buy an--oh.

Silence. I think about the conversation I had with my husband in the car this morning. And a few--more than a few--other times. About how I'd really love an iPad. Not that I need one, I always added, but it would just be--so nice. And I know his Merizon account is the same as my Merizon account.

And now I see what happened.

If my husband bought an iPad, I tentatively begin, would that turn off my aircard?

Oh, yes, the guy says. You wouldn't need both things.

I burst out laughing. OH, my gosh, I said. My husband bought me an iPad for Valentine's Day! As a surprise!

 

Yes, the guy said. It looks like that's what happened. He was in a Merizon store about an hour ago. I didn't want to ruin the suprise, he said. But you were so--upset...

I'm howling with laughter. I'm roaring with laughter. Mary and Kurt in the front seat are unabashedly eavesdropping now.  (Instead of pretending not to listen as their colleague went off on a tirade.)

Okay, I say to the guy. I see what happened now. Okay. Um, thank you.

And just to make the whole thing even more memorable:

"Ma'am?" the customer service guy finally says. "When you get the iPad tonight? You should act surprised."

 And we all lived happiPadly ever after.

 

My Photogenic Memory

By Cornelia Read

I spent my forty-eighth birthday at my Aunt Julie's house in Vermont, which was really lovely after the ice storm.

She took my daughter and me out to a deeply fabulous dinner on my last night of being forty seven, of which my favorite part was a dessert called "late-night breakfast," which consisted of a perfect small piece of custardy French toast, a drizzle of grade B Vermont maple syrup, and a small scoop of buttermilk and bacon ice cream to top it off.

I have secretly renamed this dish A La Recherches du Pain Perdu. Because I'm nerdy like that.

I also got to do another deeply nerdy thing--scan old family photos into my computer. I have an absolute fetish for scenes from my childhood, and from my family's life before I was born. Part of this is just that I can't believe how Merchant-Ivory a lot of it was, and part of it is that I'm still stuck in "WTF happened to these people?" mode, much of the time.

There are a lot of albums scattered throughout the famiglia that chronicle amazing shit, and many (if not most, in the earlier years) are taken by pretty great photographers, in terms of portraiture. I can get lost in them for hours.

I was immediately struck by the opening paragraphs of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, as it sums up so many of these images from my own family, and my response to their poignance:

There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh. The table is situated, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, in the hall, in front of a huge open fire of logs.... In the photograph Aunt Sadie's face appears strangely round, her hair strangely fluffy, and her clothes strangely dowdy, but it is unmistakably she who sits there with Robin, in oceans of lace, lolling on her knee. She seems uncertain what to do with his head, and the presence of Nanny waiting to take him away is felt though not seen. The other children, between Louisa's eleven and Matt's two years, sit round the table in party dresses or frilly bibs, holding cups or mugs according to age, all of them gazing at the camera with large eyes opened wide by the flash, and all looking as if butter would not melt in their pursed-up mouths. There they are, held like flies in the amber of that moment--click goes the camera and on goes life; the minutes, the days, the years, the decades, taking them further and further from that happiness and promise of youth, from the hopes Aunt Sadie must have had for them, and from the dreams they dreamed for themselves. I often think there is nothing quite so poignantly sad as old family groups. [bolding mine.]

I have about ten scrapbooks in storage in California, and wish I had them here to cull from to illustrate this post, but you can probably get a pretty decent idea from a few of the pictures I just scanned in Vermont, and some I have on my computer.

I'll start with some really old shit from my dad's side, just for background:

These are my great-grandparents on Dad's side: William Augustus Read and Caroline Seaman Read. Both born in Brooklyn, the century before last. He founded an investment bank that came to be known as Dillon Read. I want her hat.

Here's an earlier portrait of great-grandmother Caroline with their daughter, Carol (who would have been my great aunt, except I think she died in a car crash in Paris in the Twenties):

This is where my great-grandmother lived, later in life:

Here are childhood shots of my grandfather, also William Augustus Read, and his twin brother Curtis Seaman Read:

They had lots of costumes... sailor, cossack... whatever. Not sure whether or not they played "pogrom." Wouldn't be surprised.

Here's a circa WWI shot of (left to right) Grandaddy Read, Great-Uncle Bartow, Great-Grandmother Read, Great-Uncle Curtis, and Great-Uncle Dunc:

 The four of them were naval aviators, among the first Americans to go to war in World War I. Grandaddy's twin brother died at Dunkerque.

If you add Grandaddy's face to my grandmother Edith Fabyan Read's in this painting:

You pretty much get what my father Frederick H. Read looked like. Here he is with his mom at Three Star Camp in the Adirondacks when he was a kid:

Here's some more of Grandmama and Grandaddy Read at Camp, earlier in the century. I like the one of them dancing on the porch, and the fur coat their friend is wearing. The lower left is, I think, Grandmama at the peak of a hike I took with Dad and friends two summers ago--probably some ninety years after this shot was taken of her. Kind of cool.

Now I'm going to do some shots of Mom's family, to show the evolution of her face:

this is Great-Great Grandfather Isaac Smith, Great-Great Grandmother Cornelia Parrish Ludlam Smith (my namesake, or am I hers?) and their daughter Rita, on Centre Island in Oyster Bay, New York--late 1890s?

Rita looks oddly like Mom... and Mom's father, my grandfather Thurston Huntting Smith.

Centre Island is in the middle of this map, between the B and the A. It used to be the family farm, ten generations ago. They grew apples, made bricks, and probably ate a lot of oysters. Then my Great-Grandfather Herbert (Rita's brother) discovered banking.

 \

The Smith-Ludlam graveyard is there--first stone is from 1698, the latest installed is my mother's, even though she's not dead yet. We're weird that way.

Here's Cornelia with three of her grandchildren:

Left to right: Herbert Ludlam Smith jr., a girl whose name I don't remember (Cousin Cadee?), and Poppop, otherwise known as Thurston--Mom's father. See how he kind of looks like Rita?

Here's Poppop in 1968, the day of Aunt Julie's wedding:

For compare and contrast, here's a picture of Mom with Ansel Adams (my first-ever boss, when I was twelve. He used to pay me and my sisters a buck an hour to answer his phone when he and his wife went out to dinner.):

Doesn't she look like Thurston, except with hair and her own teeth?

Mom is a babe. Here she is in 1960, at her sister's deb party on Centre Island:

This is my grandmother Ruth Mooney Smith, that same night:

Aunt Julie said Mudder's dress was gorgeous--with lots of floaty stuff on it. It's kind of weird to see both her and Mom with cigarettes, as I don't remember either of them when they smoked. That chandelier is in Mom's house in California, now.

Here's a picture of Mom and Dad at Aunt Julie's 21st birthday dinner at The Plaza, in New York:

Mom was not actually crosseyed. I think the Plaza photographer did some weird retouching, here.

So, if you mix these two together, you get me. Here's a picture taken by the diaper man in Jericho, NY, around 1966. I am very happy in this picture. It's pretty much the last picture of me before everyone lost their minds in 1967 and life got weird. And then a lot weirder:

Mom and Dad split up in 1967, and we went to Oahu, sans Dad. He later said that every picture of me Mom sent him after that looked like someone was holding me hostage. I figure I was just depressed. Though occasionally my generally dark view of the universe came across as imperiousness, on film:

I had recently turned five, in this shot. Apparently I already knew how to raise an eyebrow. In this case, I figure what I'm thinking is "great. Mom's new boyfriend is taking my picture. How weird is this?" (And I look a lot like Dad does in that picture with his mother. Probably because his best friend had just died a short while earlier. In front of him. On fire. Not the same day, or anything. But like, within a month.)

Here's a picture of me, Mom, my sister Freya, and the new boyfriend, sitting in "The Meadow" on top of Mount Tantalus on Oahu:

There were some hippies up there, too, with a transistor radio. They smoked a joint with Mom and Michael, and this was right about the first time I ever heard The Doors do "Light My Fire." On the radio the hippies brought.

The Meadow was awesome. You had to hike up through groves of really tall bamboo and guava trees to get there.

Michael became our first stepfather. He was a Democrat, which turned out to be a good thing for my political consciousness.

He was pretty cool with us, most of the time. Here he is playing with Freya:

 That was our backyard on Portlock Road on Oahu--right on the beach, with an awesome view of Diamond Head. The house was made of two officer's cottages someone had bought at auction in Pearl Harbor and then stuck together, so there were windows opening into closets and stuff. I loved it.

Here's Mom on the lanai, looking slightly less straight out of Mad Men, if still kind of preppy-tropical:

Then we moved back to New York, for a little while. Mom rented an old converted stables on Mill Hill Road right near Oyster Bay. I had started kindergarten in Hawaii, then transferred to kindergarten at The Theodore Roosevelt School in Oy Bay. I finished the year at River School in Carmel, California. Which may explain why I'm a little geographically confused.

This is the day of my tenth birthday, in Carmel--1973. I had just gone riding with Mom's new boyfriend Christopher's mother, Tiger (on the right, in a very snappy hacking jacket and jodphurs):

That's me, on the left. Mom is next, aged 35. Christopher is 17. Tiger later told me she had wanted me to marry Christopher, which is entirely too European for me, but I did have a huge crush on him when I was little.

We were, yes, getting a little bohemian generally by this point.

But here's a picture of Dad, sometime later:

Actually that's September of 1988, and I'm getting married. So, I really pretty much look like a Read without a lot of Smith, when you get right down to it. Especially around the nose and eyebrows. Okay, and the mouth, and the cheekbones, with Grandaddy's hair color.

This was also taken on Centre Island, at my Smith grandparents' house, known as "Upper Orchard." Because it's where earlier generations used to grow some of their apples. Dad was none too pleased to have been called back to what he continually referred to as "the scene of the crime" for that entire weekend. He could be a real pain in the ass. On the other hand, he showed up, despite massive protest.

If memory serves, this is around the time he stopped living alone in his VW camper in Malibu, because he'd met my soon-to-be-stepmom. Who is cool.

Here we are in happier times, back before he and Mom split up. This is also on Oyster Bay, I think on a boat called Bandicoot, circa 1967:

I think he looked way better without the sideburns, though he would have begged to differ.

Here's Mom in the cemetery on Centre Island, three summers ago:

Here's her gravestone:

Here's Cornelia the First's:

And here's Dad, two summers ago in the Adirondacks:

We all think that deer looks like an alien. You're supposed to stick branches in the things sticking out of its head.

Here's Dad in his uniform for the Postal Service, in Malibu. Long way from the Stock Exchange, but he was much happier for a long time:

 

Here is Dad in an earlier uniform--USMC, circa 1958. Sorry about the crappy quality, I took a shot of this with my phone instead of scanning it:

Here's his license plate, which I think is excellent, even though most people on the Pacific Coast Highway probably thought he was a crazed librarian:

Here's me with one of his earlier cars:

And here's me in 1971, having just picked a bouquet of wildflowers for my second-grade teacher at River School, Mrs. Boys. This was the year I wrote an essay about Angela Davis and the Christmas carpet bombing in Vietnam. I was eight.

That patch on my sleeve was a gift from a guy I sat next to when my sister and I flew out to California for the first time with our nurse, Elsie Stanton, in 1969. He'd just come back from Vietnam, and we had a fine old time talking on the plane. Sewn onto the jacket's waistband in the back is another one he gave me, that says "U.S. Army" in black stitching on an olive-green ground.

That's right next to an embroidered piece of red felt Dad sent from Switzerland in '71, with lots of edelweiss and stuff on it and the word "Chandolin," which is where he was living with this lady named Martica at the time. When they weren't in the Bahamas.

Next to that is a peace sign. Mom sewed them all on for me, which was wonderful of her.

I still have the jacket. It seems really tiny now, of course:

 

"...There they are, held like flies in the amber of that moment--click goes the camera and on goes life...."

Or, as The Grateful Dead and half the senior yearbook quotes in America would have it, "what a long strange trip it's been."

We'll scatter Dad's ashes in the Adirondacks this summer or next.

His gravestone is ready, too. Just a low, simple width of gray etched with his initials and birthdate. I think his sister had them made for all nine of the siblings.

Grandmama's and Grandaddy's and Uncles Curtis, Roddy, Sandy, David's are in place already, their ashes in the lake.

I'd like to be there too someday. Not too damn soon, though, if I have any choice in the matter.

I mean, these sneakers have a whole lot of wear in them, yet, you know?

Tell me about a photograph that means the world to you...

Aimee LeDuc's Paris

 Who among us wouldn't love to be the chic and wonderful Cara Black?  Let's hear what she's up to in Paris these days, shall we?

Bonjour Ladies,

 

The soft apricot light hits the zinc rooftops at sunset, butter smells emanate from the bakery, the Seine gurgles below, and yellow leaves rustle on the cobblestones. Yes, we're in Paris. A woman of a certain age smiles at the wine sommelier in the bistro and he tops her wine glass, again, no charge 'my compliments, Madame.' A young Parisian hipster opens the door for a grandmother in her 70's and flirts with her. Full on flirting. You walk out the door of your apartment and within a block find a cafe where the owner smiles and says 'Bonjour' and if you've been going there for seven years asks 'the usual?'

 

 C'est la vie - sometimes anyway - in my case when I get to inhabit Aimée Leduc's (my computer security detective's) world. Since my books are set in the mid 90's before Google came into being Aimée still uses dial up, people pay in Francs but do use cell phones. All this requires research, the best part of my job. I've collected Paris phone books from 1995 - a whole suitcase full that my friend was about to throw away - to get the names, streets, the shops and the details right. I consult newspapers - usually Le Monde on microfiche at the university library - of that day to find what was on sale, the world events and traffic jams in Paris. I've visited the morgue - they wear short white rubber boots while hosing down the...you get the idea - spoken with the river police on the Seine about 'floaters' those bodies recovered in the Seine. Gone drinking with the 'flics' cops and over a bottle of wine ask about procedure. And end up listening open mouthed to their stories about the cases they've worked on. Even toured the Crime scene unit at the Prefecture and seen re-enactments of crime scenes, their fingerprint files. Detais, details, details. I record street sounds, conversations on busses, the way the Seine sounds at night. Photograph everything that moves and doesn't. Everything's grist for the mill as I think all the Lipstick Ladies would agree. Right, ladies? Yet to me, a gripping story is about the characters, how crime impacts them, the victim's world. All the police details, the forensics and technology are tools in service to the plot, the characters. Every computer hacker I've had the chance to talk with has said that technology is only as good as the user - social engineering (chatting someone up, flirting, outwitting them) can get you a password, or beyond a computer's firewall much faster than anything else. No system or laboratory is immune from the human element.

 

The story is all about people, creating vivid characters you want to spend time with. Walk with into that cafe and share an expresso, or join you at the bookstalls on the quai. 

     Often like Aimée, and her partner René, a dwarf and computer hacker extraordinaire, I have problems with French bureaucracy. A common complaint among the French. Simple transactions require tons of paperwork, visits to different offices, getting official seals and stamps which can take up a day, a week or a month for something that's quite straightforward in the States. I opened a bank account last November in Paris, well, I thought I did, with La Poste, the post office bank. For that I needed ten Euros, no problem, and a faxed phone bill from my house.

Two months later after receiving no acknowledgment or way into my online account, my friend in Paris called La Poste to find they needed three more forms. But as they say c'est la vie and I wouldn't trade my job for the world.

Thanks for having me ladies,

Cara

  You can order Murder in Passy here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rhubarb Summer

by Barbara O'Neal

My grandmother has been haunting me a little the past couple of weeks. I can almost smell her perfume some days.  A couple of days ago, I even found myself  taking down an old cookbook she gave me when I married, just so I could look at her handwriting. 

Then I realized that I'm starting to garden, puttering around with plans and making lists of companion plantings I want to try.  We have a big project underway this year, and I'm very happy about it.  

My grandmother, Madoline, was not a gardener. In fact, she insisted that she could not keep anything alive, and in terms of houseplants, that would be absolute fact. (She also claimed not to sew, which was probably self-defense in her generation.)

So I don't know what possessed her to grow a garden the summer I was twelve. Maybe it was the slave labor available in me and my three siblings, marooned in the little town of Sedalia during the week while my mother worked. My grandmother was living in a rented farmhouse with an acre or so of land around it, and she got it into her head to plant a garden. 

And not just any garden. It was enormous, with rows and rows of corn and squash and tomatoes and lesser vegetables that have escaped my memory.  We were forced to help weed and water, me more than the others because I was the oldest and also liked my grandmother more than almost anyone on the planet, so more weekends than not, I stayed over. Our family had just moved to a new house in a new neighborhood, and I was lonely there.  Much more fun to read endlessly at my grandmother's house, and hope for an appearance of my uncle Tex, seven years older than me, glamorous and wild and impossibly handsome.  He wrecked a motorcycle at one point that summer, broke his arm and skinned the flesh off several other spots, so was laid up on the couch at his mother's house for a few days.  I was in heaven, fetching him glasses of tea and turning the channel when he wanted me to.  

Anyway, we gardened, my grandmother and I.   The corn sprouted high, and the tomatoes started putting out fruit.  Meanwhile, rhubarb grew to the size of small trucks, and my grandmother, who really didn't can or even freeze food was left with cooking it into every variation of rhurbarb treat you could possibly name.  Rhubarb and strawberry crumble.  Rhubarb and apple crisp. Rhubarb cookies and rhubarb pie and rhubarb stew. 

 

 

Before that summer I kinda liked rhubarb.  It has those big shapely leaves and in my child's mind, it was amazing that something just grew like a weed and you could just eat it for heaven's sake!  When it's raw, it has a sharp, sour bite like pickles and we loved plucking it to pucker our mouths.

But have you ever smelled rhubarb cooking?

It has been many, many years, but I can still put myself at the top of the stairs in that old house and feel surrounded and smothered by the stench of rhubarb baking. It was an odor with depth and power and weight, like a hundred sweaty shirts, like forty-three socks left damp in a locker room.  It almost had a color, a sickly acid yellow green that stained the air and stuck to my skin and was utterly inescapable.

Until I retreated to the garden and the heavenly relief of loamy earth and tomato leaves baking in the sun.  My grandmother's orange cat, Goldy, who adopted her even though she didn't like cats, wound around my ankles and stalked bugs through the corn. Whatever time of day it was, I liked the garden better than the smell of the house.

And that's when I fell in love with gardens, growing things. I can't remember how successful we were.  I'm pretty sure we harvested corn and squash (who could not harvest squash?) and maybe some other things.  I remember day-dreaming about the fallow side yard, another half acre that could be planted with something or another.  Maybe flowers, I thought, because my mother let me plant some bachelor buttons at the new house and they were pretty. 

My grandmother never planted another garden again, but that lone garden of hers provided me with a rich setting for a lost pregnant teen in How to Bake a Perfect Life, when Ramona and her aunt Poppy live in that very house in Sedalia and tend that very garden. Ramona shared a kiss with a boy she had a kiss on, but I never did. 

That accidental garden turned me into a gardener for life.   I'm not particularly talented, but there is something so soft and luscious and rewarding about the alchemy of earth and sun and rain, even hail.  At the end of a long day at the computer, my head is weary of words and it's a relief to wander into the garden and admire a dahlia, shoot a photo of a squash blossom, pluck some weeds. It's color and shape and mood, no words at all.  Novels also take a long time to grow and harvest, so there is a deep satisfaction in planting a seed and watching it sprout, then bear fruit.  Voila!

The one thing I have never done, ever, since that summer is eat so much as one mouthful of rhubarb. This grieves my beloved very much, since he is English and they serve rhubarb all over the place there.  If you are like he is, you might like this recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble I tracked down for you, by Smitten Kitchen, whose photos are so gorgeous that she makes even me want to try it, though my beloved would say there is nowhere near enough crumble on that dish.  

 

 

I also understand that Nancy M has the All Time Best Rhubarb Pie Recipe in the world, her own mother's, so perhaps she will share that, too. 

Are you a fan of rhubarb? Gardens? What makes you think of your grandmother? 

 

Old Boyfriends Never Die; They Just Show Up on Facebook

Old Boyfriends Never Die

By Nancy Pickard

I got dangerously curious the other day and looked up some old boyfriends on the web.  I don't recommend it.  One of them is 73 years old!!  Oh. My. God.  Time doesn't only fly when you're having fun, it also flies when you used to have fun!  Mmm, he was yummy at the time.  Also, he was an older man.  Really, he was much older than I was.  Now he's really an older man.  Not that there's anything wrong with that--except for the shock when somebody who was 36 only yesterday turns out to be 73 today!

Then I looked up another one.  He looks so mature now!  I don't like it.  He was cuter as a callow youth, though I suppose you'd call him distinguished looking now.  But I don't believe a word in his "profile."  He was a funny kind of liar then, and I'll bet he's still one.  By funny, I mean, he'd say things, like, " I was one person away from being selected for the Olympic ski team."  lol!  I was fairly naïve, but even I knew he was fibbing.  Bless my heart, I thought it was cute, and I'd make big eyes and say, "Really?!"  Plus whatever the 1970's equivalent of "wow" was at the time.  Probably, "Neat!"  One time he bragged he was good friends with a certain society girl.  I happened to meet her a few weeks later, and I said, "Joe says he knows you."  And she said, "Who?"  I'm betting he doesn't really belong to that international organization of accountants he says he does now.

But then I looked up my first real boyfriend, who was unbelievably more handsome than I deserved, and he still is handsome!  Also, he was a lovely boy, so nice and romantic, and I'll bet he still is.  So that was good.  I considered "friending" him, but if you were his wife, wouldn't you find that suspicious? I decided to let bygones be bye-gones.

I decided not to look up a couple of others because I don't want to find out what prison they're in.  No, I don't know that for sure, I'm only hoping. 

 I can't look up certain others because I DON'T REMEMBER THEIR NAMES.  This is really disturbing, mostly because it probably means they don't remember my name, either.

The funniest one I found on facebook was a man whom I remember as being the  sexoest creature on God's green and horny earth.  His fatal flaw was that he whined.  Judging by his status updates on his facebook page, he still whines!  This amuses me no end.

The ones I can't seem to find are a couple of adorable ones who got away.  Not that I ever had a chance with them, you understand, but I liked to fantacize that I did.  I want to see what they look like now, but I can't even get close.  I guess those restraining orders really work.

Now I'm nervous that they'll all use that facebook thing to find out "who is looking for" them.  How embarrassing!  I hope they won't recognize my married name.  Or maybe they won't be able to get onto the internet at the Old Codgers' Home.  

Tell the truth:  you've looked up your old boyfriends or girlfriends, too, haven't you? You can't convince me I'm the only one who's ever done this.  What did you find out about them?  Did you get back in contact?  CAN YOU REMEMBER THEIR NAMES?

 

 

 

 

 

Name Your Luxury

Margaret Maron          

Last month, Harley wrote about things we wouldn't want to live without—coffee, chocolates, our laptops, etc.—that second level of "necessities" after we've acquired the basic essentials

For some reason, it got me to thinking of luxuries.  Maybe it was that one-too-many news story about Kuwaiti and Saudi royals who rent whole floors at the Waldorf Astoria to the tune of a quarter-million dollars a week. Or the son of the dictator of Equatorial Guinea who owns mansions in California and recently ordered himself a $380,000,000 yacht while the child mortality rate of his country is one of the highest in the world and the children that do survive drink from and play in cesspools. Or maybe it was reading about Fashion Week in NY and the ads for $1500 shoes and $4000 handbags.  And then there were the Oscars with actresses I've never heard of striding the red carpet in dresses and jewels worth thousands.

I'm too much the bleeding heart liberal to sleep easily at that level of luxury when so many are in need.  Besides, I've never cared much for things per se.  For instance, when I read, all I want is a comfortable chair, lamplight on the pages and some sort of table on which to set a wineglass or a coffee mug.  The table doesn't have to be Chippendale, the lamp and chair can be flea market finds, but those three are what make a good book better.

The same goes for my workspace.  Comfort over luxury.  It's more important that the desk functions comfortably than that it looks good.  I do not covet a $1700 Ethan Allen desk. In fact, my desk is a reworked teacher's desk that I bought at a county surplus sale for $14 thirty years ago.  I built a longer top, shifted one of the drawers to the right, and used the original drawer space to build a pull-out board so that my keyboard's at the right ergonomic level.  Both drawers pull out to support boards that hold the mouse and whatever papers I'm working on.  Even painted white, it's a total eyesore, but it suits me perfectly and I'll never waste money on something more upscale.

 

 Which makes me a self-abnegating candidate for sainthood, right? 

                          [St. Margaret of Scotland]          

 

Not hardly.

To my eternal shame, there are certain over-the-top luxuries I'd cheerfully accept if offered. I have long envied Eleanor Robson, born in 1879, a pretty little English showgirl who wound up marrying Augustus Belmont, Jr. and who morphed into a generous patron of the arts.  She founded the Metropolitan Opera Guild, so you just know she had season tickets and a very good seat for every performance. Her husband founded the IRT subway system and had his own private subway car to get them around town.  He died in 1924, she lived to be 100.

But that's not why I envy her.  No, it's because he also bought her a private railway car with its own bedrooms, galley, and parlor. As she herself said, "A private railroad car is not an acquired taste.  One takes to it immediately." 

My friends and I used to fantasize about renting one to tour the country, stopping at bookstores and libraries along the way to give readings and do signings.  (http://www.overlandtrail.com/private_...) 

 

I'll never have my own Pullman car [sigh], but I do treat myself to smaller luxuries:  cotton cardigans, linen sheets, premium coffee beans, season tickets to the symphony, good ballpoint pens by the box, printed envelopes, DVDs, fresh flowers—the list goes on and on.  Yes, I could do without them and yes, a better person would send the money to a relief fund, but these lift my selfish spirits and give me a little rush of pleasure.

What about you?  What are your guilty luxuries?  Massages? Jewelry? Golf? Silk lingerie? Vintage wines? Expensive soaps?

 

 

What would be your one dream luxury if your fairy godmother's magic wand suddenly began to work?