Vernalruminations

 LANGUAGE LESSONS      It’s months now since I blogged about my constant companion, Brioche.   Constant until I abandoned her for three weeks while I floated down the Rhine on a Viking river boat called TIALFI.   We flew with her in a carrier so she could spend those weeks with my son and his family in South Carolina where she discovered that there is more to life than accompanying a lady of advanced years who is by nature sedentary, either reading a book or typing away on a computer, or playing the piano.When my daughter-in-law gave her a bath she dried her with the vacuum cleaner, a real first for Brioche!      They tell me she waited at the front door for me to appear for the better part of the first couple of days, but after that my sense of it is that she reveled in this new lively household with four adults (two of them aged 16 and 18 but the two boys and their father measure six feet or close to it), two cats, both of whom outweighed...

  SLOW, QUICK, QUICK: The Many Paths of Ballroom Dancers I haven’t blogged in a long time.   In the past few months every time I went to the computer it was to work on a major project that I began back in 2015 and then set aside a couple of years later when I discovered Angela Macke’s amazing tea farm in Northern Michigan and a light went on in my head saying, “There’s a story here.” And then, realizing I already knew other wonderful women involved in different aspects of the food world in Norther Michigan, I said, “I think there’s a book here.” And there was.   Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women in Food and Farming was published in 2020, not the best time for promoting it since all the bookstore readings had to be cancelled, but nonetheless a book that found many positive reviews and I hope many happy readers. But before I got sidetracked into the wonderful oral histories of those twenty Michigan women I had begun the project of interviewing ballroom dancers, p...

  There was a moment when I was standing on the platform at Grand Central having just missed the train I needed, doors shutting as I came down the stairs, seeing the sign that it would be 19 minutes until the next train, and for that moment I wondered why I wasn’t in my own living room, in front of a blazing fire, a libation to hand, lots of CDs of baroque music to choose from. But once I was in Alice Tully with the Chamber Music Society players performing, I had no further doubts.   Only the cellist and harpsichordist are seated. All the other musicians, strings, winds, brass remain standing, leaning into each other as the music suggests or demands. This is the Christmas season, and baroque music is  rich in counterpoint, otherwise defined as conversation between and among the instruments. I love it. New York has many holiday traditions: the Rockettes at Radio City; the magnificent tree at Rockefeller Plaza accompanied by the skaters; lavishly decorated windows in the ...

  Messing around in boats Seems like this summer that means bailing rather than sailing, three little boats awash with rain water needing emptying over and over, a repetitive domestic chore like folding laundry or emptying the dishwasher.   Decades ago I delegated bailing boats to my three kids; decades later to my two resident grandsons.   Bribes in those days were easy, homemade cookies warm from the oven or maybe a trip to Moomers for the ice cream President Biden enjoyed on his visit last week. I used to dislike bailing.   I also disliked emptying dishwashers.   I was happy to fill the dishwasher as a way of cleaning up the kitchen surfaces, but I always got the children or someone else to do the emptying, just as I got children to bail the boats. Oddly, now, I enjoy sitting in the dinghy or in one or the other of the two sunfish and dipping the bucket over and over into the accumulated rain and emptying it into the lake.   Much of my life in reti...

  THE ADVENTURES OF BRIOCHE: CHAPTER TWO   In this sad and difficult year of deaths and distancing, rescue shelters across the country have emptied and breeders had more demand than they could supply for canine or feline companions to help deal with the unprecedented isolation and losses. Brioche was born in July and yes, I decided last spring to seek out a puppy to accompany me in this year of the quarantine and then, most likely, for the rest of my life. A mere 3 pounds when she joined me in September not quite yet 8 weeks old, Brioche now weighs in at a whopping 8 lbs. and has reached the advanced age of 7 months.  Although I was raised in a family with many dogs and always had a dog (and sometimes a litter of puppies) while I was raising my own children, once my nest was empty and work was fulltime and often required lots of travel, I gave up on living with a dog and for many years starting in the late 80s had cats instead. But now after a hiatus of almost 40 ye...

THE BOOK OF BRIOCHE It all began in March when we first wore masks and stayed home and saw no one except on zoom and even avoided grocery stores.  Neighbors were no longer neighbors. I said I wanted a puppy and a dear friend quickly sent me an adorable, huggable toy puppy.  I put him on face book and far-flung friends sent suggestions for names from France and even from Kyrgyzstan. But by then Governor Cuomo had started his daily briefings. I watched them, relied on them, took comfort from his insistence on FACTS, even when those facts were devastating.  So this little pup was named Mario in honor of Cuomo’s father and predecessor as governor (I had revered Mario Cuomo during my tenure at Lehman College in the Bronx) but nicknamed Merry.  And Merry took up residence in my study, on the couch where I watch TV, and eventually rode in my car the long drive out to Long Lake and Traverse City.  But by then I had decided to REALLY get a puppy, only it had to be a bl...