Vernalruminations

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...

  PACKING UP   I started blogging just one year ago and have no regular pattern or topic, only what seems compelling to me at the moment.  Many of this year's blogs were short tributes to the 20 women in my book. A few like this one were journalistic, what is happening in my own life or in my own reflections or memories. The good thing about a blog is that no one needs to read it and anyone can.  I would love comments from  any of you who do enjoy sharing these ruminations, but that, too, is purely an option, not necessary, not an obligation. Tempus fugit.   That was the topic of one of my earliest blogs thinking back to my parents, and I still share that sense of time passing quickly and I still want to savor life and try to make a difference for others in the way I live the years that remain to me.    So summer is ending, this strange and tense summer of 2020, and I am noting my own migration from one home--my summer home for eight decades now--...

Dear Readers, dear Friends,  Until now I have not used my blog for any political statements with the possible exception of my story of our trip to Brownsville to help feed the asylum seekers.  Although the command to clothe the naked and feed the hungry is biblical, not political. But after the two weeks of DNC and then RNC I had to just this once react and share my feelings.  And you can choose to read it or not.  A blog is like the bottle thrown out on the waves for anyone or no one.  But I had to put it down in words.  HUMPTY DUMPTY “ When I use a word ,” said Humpty Dumpty, “ it means just what I choose it to mean.”   Last night I forced myself to watch the whole tawdry parade.   Somewhere early on—I think around Ben Carson—I grabbed this sweet toy that some of you remember Marti sent me when the quarantining started.   I needed something soft to clutch for comfort. Lies and more lies, lies repeated over and over, their insane mantra....

  The lake was still and inviting this morning when I took out the Old Town canoe to paddle over to Round Island, site of many memories. I started this blog just a year ago here on Long Lake where I’ve spent part or all of every summer for the past eight decades.   I was indeed “ruminating,” chewing over so many memories from my childhood, memories of my parents—especially my mother who brought us here—my four big sisters who taught me everything about swimming and rowing and diving and fishing, even about cooking, although I just watched and consumed and was for many years kept out of the kitchen. We had electricity and running water and indoor toilets, but only one tub reserved for my mother and me, no shower. My sisters had to bathe and wash their hair in the lake, and did so without complaining because Long Lake, unlike Lake Michigan, was never icy cold once you got past mid-June. In 2020 of course, Lake Michigan is no longer cold. Back then in my childhood we had a ca...

  NORTHERN HARVEST: TWENTY MICHIGAN WOMEN IN FOOD AND FARMING https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/northern-harvest   ROSE HOLLANDER’S STORY Born in the Bronx of German heritage, Rose was familiar with different aspects of the food business from early childhood.   When her family moved to Woodstock, Rose, at age twelve, helped with making pastries in an Italian restaurant.  Years later, living in Hong Kong with her husband, Rose discovered Asian cuisine and ever since then incorporated this into her own cuisine, whether at home or catering. Returning from Hong Kong, Rose and Stuart spent a few years in California, but when they had children they moved to Suttons Bay where she has lived ever since. After Stuart died , “I decided to look into the idea of going to a culinary school, not with the notion that I would ever run a restaurant, but just that I would learn those skills.” This led to a twelve week program at the Ballymaloe Cooking School in I...

  NORTHERN HARVEST: TWENTY MICHIGAN WOMEN IN FOOD AND FARMING https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/northern-harvest   CHERYL KOBERNIK’S STORY Her German heritage looms large in Cheryl’s tale.   You never give up, go backwards, or go around obstacles, but face them head on until the solution pops up.   A house inhabited by raccoons, black with smoke and the furnace not working?   “Perfect. Exactly what we were looking for.” Cherries grown without chemicals to help them abscise. How then to get them off the trees?   “Step back, think. . . . You don’t pick fruit until it’s ripe. . . We are just going to have to let it get ripe.” Growing up in a suburb of Detroit, Cheryl was lucky in that her parents owned ninety acres of pine woods in Boyne City, northern Michigan, her dad’s “ place of solace, ” where they spent not only summer vacation time but many weekends during the winter months. Planning to be a nurse, she enrolled at Wayne State, switch...

  NORTHERN HARVEST: TWENTY MICHIGAN WOMEN IN FOOD AND FARMING https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/northern-harvest   Patty’s Story After describing herself as a “ terrible ” student in high school, and before that a “horrible” student in junior high school, Patty LaNoue Stearns attributed her successful career as a journalist to the teaching of one very charismatic journalism teacher in that high school, and also to the good fortune that her mother was already a journalist and could give Patty, still in her teens, entrée to a local chain of papers in Lincoln Park, as a copy girl/society reporter. Years later that same high school honored her as a distinguished former student in the Allen Park Hall of Fame for her career in journalism. With regard to food, she described her mom as “a stone soup cook who would pull a rabbit out of a hat every night, and we’d eat it.” And this was in the “Wonder Bread, Space-Age kind of eating existence.” But moving on from Wo...