In praise of potatoes

My favorite part of this veggie bracelet is the potatoes. I did the surface texture with Old Bay seasoning to look like it just came from the garden. It's been a long time since I've had a freshly dug potato. It's almost more fun to grabble (dig around in the dirt) for them than it is to eat them. My father always hoed a big mound around the potato plants so that we could just brush the dirt away and find the spuds like buried treasure. My mother would take the tiny ones, give them a little scrubbing, and lay them lovingly on a big pot of fresh green beans. The bigger specimens would get turned into our favorite treat: mealy potatoes. Mom would peel them, slice thinly, dip in an egg wash then in coarse cornmeal with salt and pepper and fry them individually in an oiled iron skillet. Heaven! There were only two kinds of seed potatoes you could get locally: cobblers and Kennebacks. I don't remember the distinction between the two, but it was as hotly contested as any political campaign. Nowadays I buy the big bakers to roast in a moderate oven for an hour and a half. First I poke some steam vents,roll them in a bit of olive oil and then kosher salt. Might as well face it I'm addicted to spuds!

Nothing rhymes with orange

Since I took the weekend off from blogging you get three bracelets for the price of one today-all orange! The first bracelet is one of those melange concoctions made from orphan beads. The second one makes me think of going to Knoxville on a football weekend. On the interstate going up you start to see weird flags and pompoms sticking out of car windows with that peculiar yellow-orange color UT fans love. When you come near the campus, a sea of yellow-orange greets you. People are sporting caps, shirts, jackets, pants, scarves, and everything imaginable as they walk to the stadium. It makes you vitamin C sick to watch. The third bracelet mixes orange with chocolate. Yum! Orange you glad Halloween is over?

Goodnight, Moon

It's been hard to sleep lately with the full moon making the night as light as day.Here's the full moon and the crescents (complete with craters), the dark beads represent the night sky when the moon is new. The yellow bead is cheese, of course. Here are some of the titles I rejected for this bead set: full moon, blue moon, moon pie, moonstruck, paper moon, moon shadow, bad moon rising, moon river, howling at the moon, moonlight sonata...I finally chose the title of my sons' favorite book when they were small. We wore out three copies before they got too old to want me to read it. My favorite time of day was the reading of the bedtime stories.
...Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Good night cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight light
And the red balloon
Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs
Goodnight kittens
And goodnight mittens
Goodnight clocks
And goodnight socks
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse
Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady
whispering "hush"
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere

--"Goodnight Moon", text by Margret Wise Brown

Halloween

My first six years of teaching were at a small, rural school. We strive now to get parents involved in schools, but that school really knew how. We had fall festivals, school programs, ballgames, and all kinds of special events, but the Big Kahuna of them all was Halloween. Kids came to school in costume that day. The costumes were ALL homemade.(They didn't have Walmart nearby then.) These costumes were clever and innovative. Moms and grandmas sewed for weeks beforehand. We had Cleopatras, army men, smurfs, lions and tigers and bears. We had Raggedy Anns and Andys. We had clowns and hoboes and ghosts. We always had multiple Elvises. It was wonderful! One year I had an eighth grader who came as the Wolfman. His mom made a concoction of Karo syrup and wool for his face and hands. The flies buzzed around his head all day. After lunch the whole school trooped into the gym for the costume parade. As each class stepped out onto the gym floor to be admired, applause and cheers greeted them. Flashbulbs sparkled. The insignificant prizes we gave out were more sought after than gold. Parents took off work to be at school that day. This small school was the social hub for the community and parents supported our efforts. It didn't hurt that we provided photo ops and memories of their child's life to fill their scrapbooks and their hearts.

Traffic Lights

We've got a few of those special stop lights in our town that take a picture if you run the red light. I'm not a big fan. Driving is not one of my best skills anyway. I try to be careful and obey all of the rules, but the anticipation/dread of accidentally running the red light makes me slow down too soon or speed up to make sure I don't get "clicked". It feels like they cause more problems than they solve. The town I lived in before had only a four-way stop sign and no lights. That worked fine. On weekends we like to go to Nashville where driving can be a real challenge, and I have only recently mustered the courage to drive there. If my favorite used bookstore, McKay's, hadn't opened a Nashville branch, I never would have even tried. Traffic lights and signs don't physically stop us from driving dangerously; we all must agree that the lights and signs are there for the greater good and our compliance becomes automatic. For the most part, this works. If you don't choose to comply in our town, be ready to say "Cheese".

Big Yellow Taxi

When I think there is no more inspiration for unique beads, something always comes to mind. Thanks, Joni Mitchell, for many hours of mellow music.
The hardest part was deciding whether the beads should be car-shaped with wheels in the right configuration or simply suggestive of wheels. I like this better. Perfectly representational beads make a bracelet that needs to be double-stringed for proper wrist orientation. Too much work!

Shy Violet

I was in a meeting today listening to a discussion on blogging as an educational tool. Why was I listening and not contributing? I’m not quite sure. I suppose you could call it shyness, reticence, embarrassment, maybe fear of sounding foolish. Finally I blurted out, “I adore blogging!” We teach others that writing is valuable and needful, but do we really realize the value of writing ourselves? When writing for an audience, we shy folk tend to say much more than we would ever venture to say face-to-face. We have time to think about word choice, tone, focus, even punctuation and precision. We can revise until we’ve expressed exactly what we intended. This almost never happens in a real conversation for us. I started a blog about creating which has, surprisingly, turned into an autobiographical treatise. I’ve begun with a clear vision about what I wanted to post and found that forgotten people, places, and events resurface to help me clarify a point. We teach that there are three purposes for writing: to inform, to persuade, and to entertain. I say there is a fourth purpose: to know our own minds. It’s amazing how our brains put on travelin’ shoes when we write.