Favorite Old Dogs: A Tribute to Mandy

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“Heaven’s the place where all the dogs you’ve loved come to greet you.”
                                                                                           Unknown Author

One of the most difficult things any pet owner has to deal with is the loss of a beloved pet. When we get a pet, whether from a rescue shelter or from a reputable breeder, we should make a commitment to be there for the duration of its life. Nothing appalls and angers me more than the despicable people who turn old, senior dogs and cats into a shelter just because they are old. Dogs are not throw-aways like some kind of worn-out stuffed toy! Old dogs are just like old people. They suffer from arthritis and various aches and pains; they may develop chronic diseases; the hearing and the eyesight may dim; and sometimes incontinence shows up! That adorable puppy grows into the sleek, mature adult who then morphs gradually into the senior with a white muzzle.

My Stick!!

The decision of whether or not to euthanize a pet is truly the most awesome decision a pet owner will ever have to face. I deliberately use the term awesome, not in the trite, banal way it is used today, “You look awesome!” “That outfit is awesome!” Rather, I use it with the true definition of the word, meaning full of reverence, awe, and wonder. The question that haunts us is how will I know when it is “time”? There is no simple, easy answer for that question. Basically, it comes down to objectively determining the pet’s quality of life. Can she get up and walk by herself? Is she still eating and drinking? Does she still seem to be enjoying life or is she slowly withdrawing from the things she once enjoyed?

I worked as a Hospice nurse for several years and saw way too many deaths. What I have seen, both with human patients and with our pets, is a calm acceptance of death and a waiting for the end to come. With my human patients, all we could do was try to ease their pain and wait until it was their time to cross over to the Other Side. With our pets we can help them over that insurmountable border, something we cannot do for our human loved ones. This is such a huge responsibility!

Is dinner ready yet?

Sadly, last Friday we faced this heart-breaking decision with Mandy, one of our two Irish Setters. She was a beautiful girl; her Mom and Dad were both Grand Champions. The breeder tried to convince us to show her, but that wasn’t a life we wanted for her or for us. You may recall that in October 2016 I wrote a piece about her health issues in “Blind Dogs See with Their Hearts.” Her diabetes had remained in fairly good control, but the huge benign tumor in her leg finally grew too severe and impaired her ability to walk on her own. Now, we were more than willing to continue helping her get up and move about, but I think she just gave up and was ready to go. She stopped eating and was barely drinking. Being a nurse, I could see the signs of the body shutting down. So, with heavy hearts, we arranged for her to go to the Rainbow Bridge.

Our veterinarian came to the house. He was very caring and compassionate. She passed peacefully with no pain and didn’t even wake up during that final injection. After she was gone, he took her body with him to be cremated for us. Once they were gone, the three of us, her “sister,” Caley, Bill, and I were all in a state of grief and distress. Dogs know and understand when the life force leaves the body. You can tell that the other dog realizes that her lifelong buddy is gone. Saturday was also a tough day for all of us, our first full day without her. You find yourself second-guessing your decision. Should we have waited longer? Would she have gotten better? Even though you know the answer is no, you beat yourself up with all the what-ifs. I certainly didn’t want her to be in pain and suffer, but it was so very hard to let her leave!

Want me to put the clothes into the dryer!

Each day gets a little easier. We have made an extra effort to take Caley for more walks and outings with lots of extra treats. Then, when you least expect it, some little something reminds you of her, and the tears well up again. On Monday I was walking around, upstairs and downstairs, taking up the little scent discs that helped her navigate around the house. As I peeled them off of furniture and walls, thinking we don’t need these any more, my heart cracked a bit more! All of us who have lost a deeply loved pet have had moments like this, that sudden heart-wrenching memory of the little one who is no longer there with us.

I think each pet we lose to death takes a little piece of our heart along with it. I firmly believe that we will all be reunited one day, and all of those little pieces of our hearts will again be made whole. That may be why I like the analogy of the Rainbow Bridge so much. What could be more wonderful than being greeted by our loving pets, now healed and youthful again, when we too cross over that final Bridge!

Those Malamutes have nothing on me!

Well-meaning friends and relatives ask “When are you going to get another dog?” “You should get another one.” There is something about the loss of a dear pet that reminds us of our own mortality, especially as we get older. What if I should die before my pet? To me that is a totally distressing thought! When my Mother was close to death, her one over-riding concern was for the welfare of her two cats that she was leaving behind. Once my sister and I had them safely adopted into new forever homes, it was as if she breathed a sigh of relief and gave herself permission to move on to the next chapter. 

Mandy
2006 – 2018

Good-bye, little Mandy. To paraphrase Shakespeare a bit,

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet Princess,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

 

 

 

©Eclectic Grandma, 2018

What Happened to Spring?

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This is definitely the year of the winter that wasn’t and the spring that isn’t!  Today is May 3, and it snowed all day.  Now the fog in the backyard looks like a scene out of “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”  The snow is starting to come down again.  Last night the weatherman said we could get 5 to 10 inches overnight and even more today.  Now wait a minute; what happened to spring?  We’re probably due for a couple more good snows this month.  I think for my next career I’ll be a weatherman, or weatherwoman as the case may be.  Of course, if I want to be totally PC, I would have to be a weather person.  What other job can you have where you can be wrong half the time and still keep your job?

Last week, I returned from a business trip on Wednesday night and told my husband that it was time to make some hummingbird nectar.  He told me that it was too early, but I said no, I have a feeling they’ll be here soon.  Sure enough, I made the hummingbird solution and put it in the refrigerator to cool.  The very next morning, I heard the distinctive whirring sound of hummingbird wings.  Hurriedly, I filled the feeder and hung it out on the deck.  There she was, happily sipping on her morning meal!

By the way, do you know how to make up the yummy solution for them?  Use a three to one ratio of water to sugar; in other words, one cup of sugar to three cups of water.  Heat to a simmer, just enough to totally dissolve the sugar.  There is no need for a full boil.  Once they figure out where the feeders are, you can actually move to a four to one ratio, but I confess that I indulge them and stick with the 3:1 all season!  Please, no red food coloring!  It is bad for them (and for us as well).  They’ll find the feeders!

On one memorable occasion, my sweet hubby mixed up some hummingbird solution while I was out of town.  I said to use a 3:1 ratio.  Unfortunately I did not specify that the 3 was water, and the 1 was the sugar.  He told me on the phone that it looked a little “thick.”  After a little further discussion, we determined what the problem was.  A little more hot water for a little more dilution soon corrected the problem!

People generally refer to the hummingbirds that we see in the summer months here in Colorado as ruby-throated hummingbirds, but in reality, the ruby-throats are rarely found in Colorado.  The ones we have are broad-tailed hummingbirds.  Like the ruby-throats, they have a red patch on the throat.  Now, I’m not quite enough of an ornithologist to details all the differences; I’ll  leave that to the experts!

A few years ago, on a trip to Curaçao in the Caribbean, we saw numerous brilliant royal blue and green hummingbirds whirling around everywhere.  I enjoy birdwatching in an amateur sort of way.  As best I can tell, what we saw were blue-tail emerald hummingbirds, but I certainly would not swear to that!

OK, back to the Rockies!  It snowed all day today, resulting in our biggest snow of the year, almost 20 inches.  This is that heavy wet, sticky spring snow, the kind that grabs your skis if you’re on the slopes and that your car doesn’t like to turn in.  The refrain you hear repeatedly around here, both from the newscasters and your friends and neighbors is that we need the moisture.  I can certainly accept that, but at the same time, I am ready to see my aspen trees show a few leaves and to see those first green shoots of the columbine and various other wild flowers.  At the same time, I really don’t mind these late spring snows.  They quickly melt away, and before long we’ll be enjoying those long, warm summer days!

©Eclectic Grandma, 2018

The Demise of the King’s English

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OK, I admit it; I am a grammar snob, a spelling snob, a pronunciation snob, and a vocabulary snob. A couple of years ago I did a short blog about some of my pet peeves. My top choice then was the constant misuse of its and it’s, closely followed by the butchering of the first person pronoun! For some reason people just don’t seem to understand when to use I, me, or myself. “John and myself went to the store.” “The snow fell on John and myself.” I fear a false sense of humility scares people away from using I or me; perhaps they think myself is more modest? Sadly, I still continue to be irked by those two instance of misuse. I could also get into the correct use of those pesky past participles, but that might be an entire blog in itself.

I also find that the headlines along the bottom of the screen during newscasts are fraught with errors. Those little banners used to done with a device called a character generator; no doubt they are all computer generated today. The spelling errors are amazing. I am not sure whether the stations have an undereducated bunch of journalism interns doing them or if perhaps they are letting a fourth grade Boy Scout troop do them (with apologies to the Scouts!). I also get weary with all the crazy governmental abbreviations such as POTUS, FLOTUS, SCOTUS, SOTU, and so on. I would prefer to see them written out in full, but I can accept that space is limited. Could they just refer to the President or the First Lady? I think we know that they are referring to the US President or First Lady.

I would never presume to say that I never make mistakes, but I do keep a Webster’s College Dictionary, a Super Thesaurus, and Brian’s Common Errors in English Usage right there on my desk to double-check myself from time to time. (Note the proper use of myself in this instance!). Since I am somewhat of a language nerd, I even have to use proper punctuation and spelling on my text messages. You won’t see me using U R for you are, etc.

Whatever you do, don’t trust the spelling and grammar checks on Microsoft and Apple! I’d like to have most of those little computer geeks in English class for a few weeks or months. Even Word Press which is what this blog is written with, can drive me crazy from time to time. When you are ready to post a blog, Word Press does an automatic spell check and “sort” of a grammar check. My favorite is “complex expression.” Well, I’m not trying to write at a fourth or fifth grade level. Then there is “passive voice.” Certainly we don’t want to use the passive voice too often, but there are times where it is warranted. The list goes on!

When our sons were still in school, they would often bring home notes from their teachers. In all honesty, I never knew whether to reply to the note or grab my red pen and correct it. No wonder many young people don’t have good language skills; their teachers don’t either. Just as we teach our children not to talk with their mouth full or to keep their elbows off the table during meals, we also need to help them learn proper language skills. On a side note, I am pleased to say that both our sons do have excellent written and spoken language skills; of course, they never had a chance to do otherwise I suppose!

I think that the rise and fall of civilizations and languages may well go hand in hand. When Rome fell, ultimately so did Latin as a spoken and written language. Except for a few misguided souls like me, most people didn’t study Latin for years or read Virgil’s Aeneid in the original Latin. As civilizations became more advanced, language went from the rudimentary, “Me want food” or “Fire hot,” to Plato’s Dialogues and the magical words of Shakespeare.

When we look at the English language, we see the evolution from the old Germanic based Anglo-Saxon; think of the epic poem Beowulf in its original form. Unless you too have had the pain of studying Old English, you probably couldn’t read a word of it! From there we find Middle English; think of the wonderful lyrics of Geoffrey Chaucer. While you might not get everything, you could probably get the gist of it. Spelling was pretty freeform in those days as well!

In early Modern English, you find the wonderful works of Shakespeare and Marlow and some of my favorites, the Cavalier Poets! I suspect that in terms of the evolution of the English language, we may have peaked in the late 19th and early 20th century and be on the downward spiral now. Of course, the British look askance at American English usage, and the Americans haven’t figured out why the British can’t spell “Department of Defence” properly!

The rise of all of our electronic devices and toys probably contributes to a decline in language skills as well, and don’t even get me started on not teaching cursive writing in schools! When I was in the doctorate program in English at a major US University, the chairman of the English Department, who looked like a character out of a Dickens novel, wrote only with a black fountain pen in an almost perfect-looking calligraphy sort of script. The poor man is probably rolling in his grave over the inability of young people even to write the King’s English, let alone use it properly!

As you can probably surmise, I love language and words. Few things are more satisfying than actually expressing your thoughts and creativity with the written word. I hope everyone can share in the enjoyment of the written word at some point. Now, I must wrap up this little discourse. My four-legged red-haired assistant is telling me that it is time to switch from writing to opening a can of dogfood!

©Eclectic Grandma, 2018

A Few More Museums!

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Last week I talked a bit about my favorite “Big Four” of museums in the world, the British Museum, the Louvre, the Egyptian Museum, and the Vatican Museum. Today I want to revisit some lesser known, but still great museums in Egypt, Paris, Kuwait, London, and Washington, DC. How’s that for a variety of locales?

I suspect that most of you have not had the opportunity to visit Kuwait, so I’ll start with the Tareq Rajab Museum of Islāmic Art in Kuwait.

Night View of Tareq Rajab Museum

Tareq was the first Minister of Kuwait. He and his British born wife, Jehan Welborne, amassed one of the largest collections of Persian and Islāmic art in the world, including gold, silver, pearls, armor, early editions of the Koran, and many, many other artifacts. This privately owned museum houses this outstanding collection. An interesting note is that during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the staff hastily packed up and or hid the various artifacts. Part of the museum is underground, in a series of climate controlled rooms. The stairs leading down to these underground rooms were filled in with dirt and covered over with rubbish, leaving the Iraqi Army unaware of the treasures that lay beneath their very feet. After the war was over, the stairs were dug out, and everything was restored to its proper place and display.

Interior View Tareq Rajab Museum

While we are looking at the Middle East, I have to also mention the Roman-Grecco Museum in Alexandria, Egypt. You probably know of Alexandria through its two most famous citizens, Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt and founded it, and the Pharaoh Cleopatra, best known for seducing both Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony! Even today in Alexandria it is not at all uncommon to see people with red hair and blue or green eyes, reminding us of that long ago Macedonian army. While not as grand and huge as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Roman-Grecco Museum has a wonderful collection of well displayed artifacts from the Pharaonic, Roman, and Greek eras in Egyptian history. The gardens have multiple busts of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. There are also many images of Cleopatra throughout the Museum. Despite her reputation as a femme fatale, she was not thought to have been overly beautiful, but she apparently had quite a way with men!

Roman-Grecco Museum, Alexandria, Egypt

Close to the Museum there is an old Roman amphitheater and baths. I have to mention this site as we thoroughly enjoyed getting to see it. You can just wander around these ruins on your own. The whole site would be an OSHA nightmare here in the US, no railings or safety measures anywhere!

Roman Amphitheater

One of the interesting things for me was noting that all of the seats were numbered (in Roman numerals but of course!) so that everyone knew where his assigned seat was, just like going to the theater today!

Those of you who know me well know that I love the medieval and Elizabethan periods, so my next two selections should not come as a surprise.

Musee du Moyen Age, Paris

In Paris the Musée du Moyen Age, also known as the Musée du Cluny, houses a wonderful collection of medieval art, jewelry, stained glass, and tapestries. The building itself was built in the 15th Century and was originally part of the Abbey du Cluny. A nice side benefit of visiting here is that it is off the beaten path so not nearly as overrun with tourists as the Louvre and some of the other more famous sites! Another favorite of mine from the Middle Ages has to be the Tower of London. As you can probably gather, I am definitely a history and literature buff.

The Tower of London houses the collection of the Royal Jewels as well as the Royal Armoury.

Tower of London

It is not a museum per se but houses other museums within it. When I stood in the spot where Ann Boleyn had been beheaded, I had chills. On a lighter note, when we visited the Royal Armory within the Tower complex, there was a full suit of armor that had belonged to Henry VIII. Now Henry was a large man, both tall and heavy. The suit of armor had what was the Elizabethans politely called a cod piece or else he wanted to, umm, enhance his manhood, so to speak. There were two little boys about 10 or 11 looking at the armor.  They were speaking in a foreign language, an eastern European one I think, and were pointing and giggling.  You didn’t have to speak the language to understand full well what they were saying!

Henry VIII’s Armor

As I look as my “Big Four” and my “Minor Four,” I am sad to say that I really haven’t included any US museums on my list of favorites. We in the US do have the various museums in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and I hope every American gets to see all of these. Over the years I have visited all of them, but I have to say that they don’t excite me quite like some of the others do.  I do think the Air and Space Museum is certainly worth a visit as is the Holocaust Museum. The National Portrait Gallery is most impressive, but I have to admit that art galleries are not my very favorite.  I prefer the more historical types of museums, especially if they have lots of old artifacts and mummies!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2018

Great Museums of the World

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I am really fortunate to have been able to visit some of the world’s greatest museums.  The “Big Four” that come to mind for me are the British Museum in London, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Louvre in Paris, and the Vatican Museum in Rome.  I would have to rank these four as the top museums in the world, although I realize that not everyone may concur with my opinion.  Let me comment briefly on each of them in ascending order of my own personal favorites.

The Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

The Vatican Museum is truly amazing!  If you have the opportunity to visit there, it is well worth it to pay a little extra for a private tour guide.  The crowds are horrendous!   I must admit that there may have been a few too many tapestries for my taste, but still an interesting visit.  Perhaps my favorite stop on the whole tour was the renowned Sistine Chapel, with its famous ceiling painted by Michelangelo from 1508 to 1512.  I can certainly see why it took him four long and tortuous years to complete it.  I probably shouldn’t say this, but I somehow expected the Chapel to be a little larger and grander than it was, but I guess that is often the case.  Our guide, who had a wicked sense of humor, did tell us that one of the figures descending into Hell on one of the panels depicted a particular Cardinal that Michelangelo disliked.  My favorite panel is the famous one known as “The Creation of Adam,” which shows the hand of God reaching down to Adam.

The Glass Pyramid at the Louvre

Next on my little museum tour is the Louvre in Paris.  This is the largest art museum in the world.  For our visit to the Louvre, we didn’t go the tour guide route; we opted to go by ourselves, armed with a detailed map and a list of the key items that we really wanted to see.  You could easily spend days and days in the Louvre, but since we didn’t have that much time, we just made the most of it.  I suspect everyone is familiar with the iconic glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre.  Underneath that pyramid is the central starting point for the various wings of the huge Louvre Palace.  Like the Vatican, it was packed with tourists of all nationalities.

We managed to see our list of the most famous pieces, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.  Probably everyone has seen her famous smile.  The actual painting is really quite small; my husband remarked that he expected it to be larger.  It actually only measures about 30″ by 21″, so not a huge painting.  When we saw the Mona Lisa, there were what seemed like thousands of Japanese tourists there, all armed with selfie sticks and taking endless selfies of themselves standing next to the Mona Lisa.  Now that was the picture I should have taken–that sea of selfie sticks!

Mona Lisa Enjoying the Selfies

Moving on from Paris, my next favorite museum is the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, more properly called the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.  I have always had a deep interest in archaeology and ancient Egypt.  We visited the Museum in the early 2000’s.  Sadly, it was broken into during the Egyptian uprisings in 2011 with some damage to artifacts and some thefts.  I have to admit that I am glad that we got to see it when we did; I don’t know if I would choose to return to Egypt these days!  Probably everyone has seen the movie, “The Mummy” with the great exterior shots of the Egyptian Museum.  That is exactly what it looks like.

When we visited, the crowds were primarily focused on the King Tutankhamun exhibits and the room with the royal mummies and disregarded most of the rest of the museum.   Once you got away from the crowds and found some of the older displays, you pretty well had the whole place to yourself.  I don’t think some of the display cabinets had been opened or dusted since the items were originally put in them.  Faded placards written on old typewriters and handwritten captions in French and English revealed much of the French and British presence in Egypt in earlier centuries.

Exterior of the Egyptian Museum

In one case we saw a well-preserved hunting dog; his hair looked as if he were still alive.  Except for the King Tut and the Royal Mummies exhibits, the building was not air-conditioned and was open to Cairo’s horribly polluted air.  At one point I started to take a picture of some old stone sarcophagi, and a museum guard told me not to take picture due to my flash.  As if the flash on my camera could be any worse than all the automobile exhaust pollution pouring in through the open windows!  The sad thing with the Egyptian Museum is that so many of the artifacts are not on display or even catalogued for that matter.  I can only hope that the present leadership in Egypt can somehow appreciate and preserve the wonderful ancient treasures of their country.

Now for my number one favorite museum!  It has to be the British Museum in London.  This outstanding museum has a bit of everything, from the famed Rosetta Stone to the Elgin Marbles.  It has an amazing collection of Egyptian artifacts as well the Elgin Marble from the Parthenon in Greece and numerous Roman objects and old Viking relics from the Sutton Hoo excavations.  The entire collection reflects what a world power the British Empire was for so many years. At one point I used to think it was sad that the treasures from so many countries ended up in museums in England or France.  Then having seen the lack of preservation and regard in some of these locales, I think it is a blessing that these artifacts are being so carefully preserved and cared for outside of their native countries.

Being of English and Scottish heritage myself as well as a student of English literature for many, many years, I also loved seeing the original manuscripts and folios of so many famous works of literature that I have loved through the years. There you have it, my top four museums to visit and enjoy!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2018

 

The Christmas Tree Revisited

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In honor of the Christmas holidays, I am once again reflecting on our childhood Christmases!

Of all memories stored away in our brains, what can be more special and wonderful than memories of our childhood Christmases? I grew up in Texas in the fifties, two unrelated but equally spectacular feats. My parents moved us, me and my little sister, to Texas from Long Island when I was seven. We were the dreaded (and often fighting) word—YANKEES!     As I grew older and more mature, or perhaps as I began to acquire somewhat of a Texas drawl, the Yankee comments began to dwindle, and I actually began to identify myself as a Texan. Children are very amazing when it comes to fitting in.

My parents made all holidays special ones, but at Christmas they really pulled out all the stops. Across the brown, dusty lawns and homes of Dallas, outside lights, decorations, and Christmas trees went up the day after Thanksgiving and returned to their boxes in the attic the day after Christmas, with the now dried out and shedding fir lying on the curb awaiting the trash pickup. My family was different. They looked at the rush to put trees up with disdain as if Christmas itself were being compromised. In keeping with my parents’ German and English heritage, our tree went up on Christmas Eve and stayed up at least until twelfth night, and often longer. In fact, the sudden arrival of the Christmas Tree was accomplished not by Mom and Daddy, but by the Big Man himself. Yes, our tree was decorated by Santa!

Imagine if you can, the excitement and wonder of a small child heading off to bed on Christmas Eve with a naked fir tree sitting in the living room and awaking to a fully decorated tree with presents and toys surrounding it. Another slight difference with our southern neighbors was the lavishness of the tree itself. Decorating the tree was not a casual hanging a few ornaments and lights, it was a work of art right up there with the Sistine Chapel—and often taking nearly as long to accomplish! Today, as a dedicated lover of Christmas, I compromise between the two traditions; we generally put up our trees Thanksgiving weekend and leave them up until around mid January. Of course, my artificial trees need no water and don’t shed needles all over the carpets. In keeping with today’s more elaborate decorating approaches, we have a “traditional” tree and a southwest tree, not the single lovely focal point of my childhood.

Selecting the tree was a feat unto itself. A week or two before Christmas, the four of us would make the rounds of what seemed to be every Christmas tree lot in Dallas looking for the tallest and fullest tree to be found. Luckily our old rented farmhouse had tall ceilings; even so our tree usually appeared to have grown right into the ceiling, so we never had the tradition of a star or angle topping the tree; they would have had to sit in lonely splendor in the attic! After traipsing around multiple tree lots, my sister and I grew progressively less picky. Not my father; the search continued until we found the perfect tree or rather the almost perfect tree. Since Nature herself could not seem to produce quite the tree Daddy envisioned, she had to be helped along.  Once he selected the main tree, he would select another less perfect specimen of the same variety as the first. At last we headed home with our hard found booty

Once we arrived at home, the trunks of both trees—the full bosomy one and her scrawnier little sister—were trimmed off a little, and they were left to stand in buckets of water outside the house, not in ordinary buckets of water, mind you, but in a concoction of sugar water and other secret ingredients known only to my father.  A day or two before Christmas, we began the ritual of getting ready to decorate the tree. The prime tree was brought into the house first, placed in the stand, and then put upon a device known as the platform. The platform was a 4 x 8 foot sheet of plywood which rested upon four 12” sawhorses. The tree was then placed in the center of the platform with its top branches trying their best to break through the ceiling. Grudgingly, Daddy would trim minimal branches from the top, just to allow the tree to stand upright with the top branches spreading out around the ceiling.

Next both Mother and Daddy would examine the tree critically, noting every place where a more aesthetic Mother Nature should have placed a branch.  What she couldn’t do properly, Daddy could!  Armed with a drill, he drilled holes into every spot what a more competent Mother Nature would have put a bough.  Then the other little tree’s branches were cut off and inserted into the holes in the trunk until voilá, the perfect tree emerged!  The remaining branches from the second tree were used to decorate the mantle over the fireplace and make countless other kinds of Christmas centerpieces and decorations.

Now, the lights could be put on before Santa came to finish the job.  With his busy schedule on Christmas Eve, I suspect he appreciated the help.  In those days there were no little twinkle lights or LED’s.  It was strictly the strings of old screw-in bulbs. Even the lights were a production at our house!  I don’t know how many strings of lights the average household in Texas used in those days, but take that number and triple or quadruple it, and you begin to get the idea.  Lights on the tree, now it was time to rearrange the bulbs by color.  “Harve, there are two red ones right next to each other,” my Mother would say of “We need a green one over there,” and on and on.  At long last the light bulbs were arranged and rearranged to their satisfaction.  Suzanne and I didn’t take a very active part in the lighting process; we were just happy to lie on the floor and gaze rapturously at the tree which was slowly being transformed into an object of wonder and delight.

© 2015, Black Dirt and Sunflowers

Reflections on China

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I’m sitting here in the bar at the airport Hilton in Narita (Tokyo) with a cold glass of chardonnay in hand writing this little post and waiting on a real hamburger and fries for dinner! I’m on the return trip back from a week in Qingdao and Weifang, China. These two cities are not that large by Chinese standards. Qingdao is about 10 million and Weifang is “only” about 9.5 million. Shandong Province, where they are both located, has a population of about 100 million. Just think, one province is one third the size of the US population, and this is not even a tourist sort of area. I don’t think most Americans have any concept of the sheer magnitude of the population in China, over four times the population of the US!

On a side note, when I went through Customs in Japan, I, of course, have to get the Customs agent from you-know-where looking for a big drug bust or something! You have to watch out for those little old American Grandmas! He was most intrigued that I have a Nigerian visa in my passport. “When did you go to Nigeria?” “Well, I haven’t been yet.” Quizzical look. “I’m going later this year.” “Why are you going to Nigeria?” What I said, “I develop hospitals in countries like that.” What I thought, “Good question, beats the f**k out of me!” “Why did you go to China?” “We’re working on some hospital projects in China.” Needless to say, I didn’t even mention that this was my new passport; I had been to Nigeria multiple times on my old passport. No way was I going to open up that line of discussion.

Then he drags out the picture book. You gotta be kidding me! Drugs, “No” (Yeah, two kilos in my dirty underwear!). Guns, “No” (Sure, right there under my moisturizer and my eye cream!). Bunch of other pictures. Not even sure what they were supposed to be, but “No, no, no.” You can’t trust the old grannies, so he had better check my bags. Now the Chinese are wonderful gift givers so my two suitcases are stuffed to the brim. I actually bought the second one at the airport in Qingdao just to get everything stuffed in! (It’s a really cute German-made carry-on, but I digress.) Everything is in just right. It is sort of like a rubric’s cube; it only goes together one way.

I have two Chinese kites for the grandkids in the wonderful, decorated gift boxes and gift bags that the Chinese are known for. Weifang is known as the kite capital of China.  “What’s this?” “A kite for my grandson.” I have two of them, identical boxes and identical bags. “What’s this?” Oh God, here we go again! “That’s a kite for my other grandson.” Well, duh, how did you ever get this job? Finally, he lets me go. I am sure he was disappointed to the tenth degree about not being able to score a bust. I, on the other hand, was thoroughly irked and had to totally do some serious repacking right in the middle of the airport!

Back to China, this is an affluent, booming economy! China’s goal is to become the number one economy in the world, and they are well on the way. Now that they have their economy rolling along, they are actually focusing on the environment, pollution, etc. Some of the things I always note in foreign countries are the automobiles on the road, how new, how old, makes and models. I saw very few old rattletraps. Most of the cars are quite new. There were lots of new Toyotas and Nissans, plus plenty of Mercedes and BMW’s.   Japan must be doing a booming business in China these days. Traffic is about like Los Angeles on a bad day, but on the whole the drivers seem to be more polite than their American counterparts.

Everything is new and bustling with construction cranes everywhere.  Most of the buildings are the same height.  I learned that this is because much of the construction is poured concrete, and maximum number of floors is about 32.  Taller building call for a steel infrastructure.

Every time I have been to China, it has been a non-stop whirlwind of activity. This was trip number six or seven for me. The day starts early, usually 8:00 AM at the latest, with lots of meetings and a group lunch, and ends late every night with a group dinner. Everyone sits at a very large round table with what we would call a lazy susan in the middle. The Chinese are very gracious and hospitable; they love to serve your plate for you. The dishes keep coming and coming. Now if you have been to China, you know that this is not your PF Chang’s sort of Chinese food! I may have to do a whole blog on the food one of these days!

Some of the foods are quite good, like the clams and scallops, the little baby bok choy, the crispy fried pork strips, and the occasional lobster. Other items are, shall we say, not my first choice. That includes chicken feet, various kinds of gristle, and everyone’s favorite palate pleaser, sea cucumber! Even when I am scuba diving, I think sea cucumbers are pretty disgusting, so having one deposited on your plate is a little hard to take, but like a champ I did try a bite. Definitely not my thing! The waitresses always offer forks and knives; luckily I am pretty proficient with chopsticks, which does score you a few kudos!

There are a few other interesting protocols to the dinners, the dumplings are served early in the meal to welcome your guests, and the noodles in broth are served at the end to say a polite good evening. The main fish course, served whole with the head on, signals that the dinner is coming to an end. Dessert is always fresh fruit, especially watermelon. As you might expect, in a country with 1.4 billion people, there are many, many regional cuisines and traditions. One little side note here, I have never been served rice at a Chinese lunch or dinner; it is occasionally on the breakfast buffet but never at dinner. Bread is also not a staple, although there was a pretty tasty regional bread in Qingdao.

Another dangerous and tricky aspect of an authentic Chinese dinner is the toasting. They don’t sip on their wine or beer during the course of the meal as we do. The alcoholic beverage is only consumed during a toast, and then it is “ganbei,” which literally means “dry cup,” sort of the Chinese equivalent of “bottoms up!” Maybe that is why they do so much toasting? Most of the toasting was done with red wine, which was actually quite tasty.. On the last evening, they brought out the local white liquor. One whiff convinced me to stick with the red wine; I can chug that without any problem. I have never actually tasted paint thinner, but that white lightening certainly smelled like it. Just the fumes were enough to make me cough.

The dinner is over, and I am returned to my hotel where I finally drag my exhausted body into bed and start the entire cycle again the next day.

©2017, Eclectic Grandma

Truth in Advertising

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A couple of years ago I did a blog about some of my pet peeves about people’s grammatical errors, especially usage of the first person pronoun and its versus it’s. Those still drive me crazy, and don’t even get me started on past participles!  One of these days I need to do a whole blog just on the proper usage of past participles, another major source of irritation!  Today, however, I’m going to hit on some of my favorite complaints with manufacturers and their devious tactics.

I recently bought two bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the same brand I’ve bought for a couple of years now.  At first glance the bottles looked about the same but just a little bit different.  As I looked more closely at the bottles, the older bottles held 25.4 fluid ounces each, and the new one held only 21 ounces.  The price?  You guessed it!  The price was the exact same but with a 17% decrease in the quantity.  How often do we see this type of thing at the grocery store or the drugstore?  The price remains the same, but the measure goes down.  I really noticed this tactic a couple of years ago when I was making homemade cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving.   The size of the package of cranberries had gone down, which I didn’t notice at first, so the sauce came out a bit more watery and a little too sweet when I used my old recipe.  Sneaky!

One of my personal sources of irritation is the discrepancy between pillow sizes and the pillow cases you are trying to squeeze them into.  Have you ever bought a nice big and fluffy new pillow and then tried to fit it into the pillow case?  It comes out looking like a sausage stuffed to the brim!  I actually discovered several old pillowcase in the back of the linen closet the other day.  They were a good 4 inches wider than the newer ones I had purchased more recently!  I’m sure saving that little itsy bit of extra fabric was critical to the bottom line of that company.

While I am on the topic of linens, have you bought a new king-sized blanket lately?  King-sized beds are approximately square, but the blankets are always long skinny rectangles.  If you want to tuck in the blanket at the foot of the bed, you barely have enough blanket left on the sides to cover your shoulders.  If you would like to have enough blanket on the sides to cover your shoulders during the night, there is not enough left to tuck in at the foot of the bed.  By morning your poor little feet are freezing, and the blanket is slowly creeping up to the head of the bed trying to suffocate you!.

My all-time favorite peeve these days, however, is the loss of decent pockets in jeans and women’s slacks!  Remember when we actually had pockets that could hold your car keys and your cell phone?  Now the pockets are about 2 inches deep.  They can barely hold a tissue to blow your nose, let along an iPhone!  Yes, I know I could put my phone in the back pocket of my jeans, but I find that uncomfortable.  Plus knowing me, I would probably plop down on the sofa, forgetting the phone in the pocket. Crunch!  There goes another cracked screen!

Closely related to manufacturers in irritation-causing impact are all those awful TV ads.  Once some company comes up with an original approach to advertising, everyone else tries to copy it!  How often do you sit and watch a TV commercial and then turn to person next to you and ask, “What were they advertising?”  And I hate those stupid commercials with the invisible hand drawing the information with a black and white line drawing!  The first one or two of these were clever, but not all of the “me too” versions of them.

Now as you already know, I have two large and very vocal dogs.  All commercials with the sounds of someone’s knocking on a door, doorbells or phones ringing, police sirens, or—better yet—barking dogs should definitely be outlawed!  Have you ever tried to convince two dogs that everything is OK; there is no one at the front door.  It was just the television.  Try telling that to a blind dog with hyper-acute hearing, “But, Mom, I heard it.  I know someone is out there!  Why aren’t you going to the door?  Want me to scare them away for you?”

©The Eclectic Grandma

 

The Haunted TV Box

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Today most of us have multiple television sets, and the vast majority of us receive our TV via satellite or cable.  All of those connected TV’s across the country tend to have some kind of receiver box as well to bring in the various channels.  We actually have four television sets in the house and three of the little black boxes.   Have you noticed how many little lights seem to be on all the time in our homes, even at night?  Everything from our electric toothbrushes, to the digital readout on the clock radio, to the wireless router, and on and on, glows at us in the dark.  They all have their little green, red, yellow, or blue lights glowing at us continuously. No wonder the experts say we are all suffering from varying degrees of sleep interruption.

Late one night last October I was driving home from the airport, returning from a business trip.  Most of the time I try to avoid these late returns, but occasionally it is unavoidable.  Heading back to my house always entails driving dark mountain roads through one canyon or another.  The main hazard is a sudden deer or moose darting out in front of the car.  With a deer, you’re probably OK, but if you should happen to hit a moose, the car and driver will definitely get the worst of it!

Anyway, it was a few days before Halloween, and I had the car radio on to keep me company.  We don’t get good radio reception at the house so about the only time I ever listen to the radio is in the car.  I have to tell you that there are some strange radio programs on late at night!  That night the program was about various types of demonic hauntings of people and houses, along the line of the Amityville horror story.  I’m driving along listening to tales of lights going off and on, shades going up and down, objects moving on their own, etc. It was a little creepy driving through the darkness and hearing these weird stories.

Now we have a TV and a box in our bedroom, but we rarely ever turn on the television in the bedroom.  A few nights after getting back from this particular trip, I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that the two little blue lights on the receiver box were on.  I didn’t think too much about it and just turned the box off with the remote control.  With two elderly dogs with weak bladders, getting awakened in the middle of the night is a very frequent occurrence,

Then I started noticing, every time I looked over in the middle of the night, those two little blue lights on the receiver box were on again.  I would once again turn the box off with the remote.  The next time I looked, there they would be, on again.  This was definitely getting stranger and stranger.  This pattern continued, and I was growing more and more puzzled.  Could it be a power surge or interruption?  No, the stove clock and microwave always have to be reset when that occurs so I would definitely know when that had happened.  Could it be some sort of programming change from our satellite company?  No, if that were the case, why wouldn’t the other two boxes also be on from time to time?  The other two boxes are also more advanced with recording capabilities than the basic one in the bedroom, so I would expect that they would be more likely to be getting programming updates.

The on off pattern continued.  Now I was really starting to wonder about the source.  Sometimes the lights would be on in the middle of the night and then off in the morning.  When I woke up during the night, I would take a fast peek at the box out from under the security of the covers.  Lights on?  Lights off?  Finally I figured out the source.  Mystery solved!  It was a purely serendipity find I must admit.  Caley, one of our two Irish girls, likes to lie on the floor in front  of the TV stand.  Now both of our dogs have very nice Orvis dog beds, but half of the time they prefer just to sleep on the floor and perhaps use the dog bed for a pillow.

Ah ha!  Caley was sleeping on the floor with her front legs propped up on the bottom shelf of the TV stand right where the little black box sits.   Apparently those long toenails clicked against the Off-On button.  Blue lights on and blue lights off.  A nice haunting might have been more exciting, but it was a relief to get the on-going mystery solved.  Now the big question is, did she do it intentionally just to spook me out?

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017

 

 

There is no Frigate like a Book

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                                                 There is no Frigate like a Book                                                                                                                       To take us Lands away                                                                                                                          Nor any coursers like a Page                                                                                                                         Of prancing Poetry                                                                                                                                                      Emily Dickinson, 1894                                                                                                    

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about some of my favorite fiction books.  In order to be fair, I should also blog a bit about some of the so-called literary classics.   By the 7th or 8th grade, my friend June and I had read most of the English and American “classics,” along with many of the Russian novels.  Looking first at English literature, I still think Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is one of the best of all time!  Who can ever forget that opening line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”?  Remember the bloodthirsty, infamous Madame DaFarge knitting the names of the victims of the French Revolution into her knitting patterns.  When we were in Paris a couple of years ago, we saw the site where the many guillotine executions took place.  What a sad time in French history.

One of my other favorite English classics is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  I was never too much into her sister, Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre; she always seemed a bit insipid to me.  In American Literature, I always really like Nathaniel Hawthorne!  I have warned you from time to time that I am somewhat strange.  I really like The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.  In fact on my first Master’s Degree I actually did my master’s thesis on Hawthorne.  Who can forget the sad and somewhat mysterious Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter or the cursed Pyncheon family in The House of the Seven Gables?   One of my hobbies is genealogy, and perhaps learning how many of my ancestors lived in both New England and Philadelphia in the 1600’s accounts for some of my interest in the stories of this era in American history.

The House of the Seven Gables, Salem, MA

There are so many great novels in world literature that it is simply impossible to even begin to mention them all!  There is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and on and on!  Incidentally, Conrad was Polish, but he taught himself English by reading newspapers and wrote his novels in English, quite an accomplishment!

I’ve also read, or was forced to read, pretty well all of the famous Russian Novels. Tolstoy’s War and Peace is sort of an interminable bore, but his novel Anna Karina is much better in my opinion.   Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is quite good!  I also like his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, although it is pretty deep.

George Eliot

Oh so many moons ago when I taught high school English, we had a very prescribed curriculum we were expected to follow.  The poor sophomores had to read George Eliot’s novel of Victorian England, Silas Marner.  Now I have to tell you that I hated that novel (and still do, I might add), and really had to psyche myself up to teach it.  If you want to inculcate a love of reading into young people, I’m not sure Silas Marner is quite the way to do it!  My only sympathy for George Eliot, her nom de plume, was that as a woman writing in the mid 1800’s, she couldn’t publish under her own name of Mary Ann Evans, so she had to adopt the more acceptable male pen name.

For my junior students, they had to read Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, a novel of a somewhat cowardly Union soldier during the American Civil War, or the War Between the States, as it is more properly called.  Crane is a bit better than Eliot, but not by much!  I also managed to get myself into hot water with my school principal and the Fort Worth School Board because I also had my junior students ready J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.  Salinger’s novel of teenagers coming of age had way too much bad language and sexual innuendo for conservative Fort Worth in those days!

Maybe that is why getting to teach A Tale of Two Cities to the seniors was such a breath of fresh air to me.  I could actually work with a book that I personally liked and admired!  It had history, adventure, and a memorable cast of characters.

 I started this post with a famous quote from the American poetess, Emily Dickinson.  The wonderful thing about reading is that, no matter what your preferences might be, immersing yourself into a book can literally transport you to a different time and place, without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home!

©The Eclectic Grandma, 2017