Sacred Places Revisited

Platte River sky
Originally uploaded by cedarkayak

I’m putting together a collage of photos from our motorcycle trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes with Jim and Joyce this summer so I popped on over to the Sleeping Bear Dunes group I belong to at Flickr to see if I wanted some add-ins and came across this stunning shot just taken.

Y’know how there are some places that feel hollow, emotionally hollow? Malls feel this way . And some public places get that way, even if they didn’t start out that way. A lot of public parks have a just-barely feeling. Like if you concentrate you can feel it, but if you’re there to roast hot dogs you will miss it.

But at the Dunes, I can feel God, even when God eludes me elsewhere.

I feel this same way in my home state of Virginia, pretty much anywhere in the state, but especially in the mountains. I feel this way, in particular, at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home. When I go there, which is often, actually, I stand where Jefferson put his viewing seats and burn the images into the back of my eyes, into a place where I can call them up. To a place where, when I’m long back to Michigan, I can wrap a blanket around me and lay down in my mind, and look out over the mountains.

Jefferson died with a personal debt greater than the debt of the federal government, mostly from building and re-building and maintaining his home on that mountain. And I can understand that, the simple refusal to ever permanently leave that place. I plan to go to stay myself, I want my ashes spread in those mountains.

What are your sacred places?

Prostitute Auctions Sex for Charity

Check it out:

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Bethesda Says Merry Christmas, Too

Finishing the story…

Final details so the story doesn’t get set down wrong:

• Aunt Esther had heart problems but she didn’t die of them, she died of pneumonia at the age of 35.
• Her husband’s name was Simeon Rocheleau and he was French Canadian. He was a barber like his brother-in-law, not a salesman. He had a barber shop and a beauty salon and they lived in rooms behind the shop until they could afford a separate house.
• Final blow: when the priest cordoned off our family in the back of the church he also wouldn’t allow our family to participate in the ceremony. My grandma was 5 at the time of Aunt Esther’s wedding and didn’t get to be her flower girl. Not over it.

Aunt Esther’s Syrup Pitcher

A family story to celebrate the season.

This is a picture of my Great-Great-Aunt-Esther’s syrup pitcher. We get it out on special occasions, like Christmas Eve breakfast. Aunt Esther is my mother’s (Diane) mother’s (Elaine) mother’s (Lucy) sister (Esther). Lucy and Esther’s mother was Allie (My Great-Great-Grandmother).

Aunt Esther married a Catholic. This was a very big deal in 1920. She converted to Catholicism before the wedding but his family still had the gall to cordon off the rest of our family in a little tiny section at the back of the church for the ceremony. It’s 90 years later. We’re still not over it. Whenever Esther or her kids come up in conversation someone will say, “Did you know that his family made us sit in the back of the church?!” This is Lucy and Allie we’re talking about. Made to sit in the back of a church. By papists with their fancy airs. Not over it. Not over it at all. Not planning to get over it.

Aunt Esther lived close to her sister Lucy with their respective families. When my grandmother ran away from home at the age of 9 because her mother Lucy asked her to beat an egg (an intolerable, slavery-level request to the 9 year old), she ran straight to Aunt Esther. Aunt Esther and my grandmother Elaine were always close.

Aunt Esther had two sons – Richard and Donny. When they were 7 and 3, and she 35, Aunt Esther died without warning of heart failure. Esther’s sister Lucy took in the boys and raised them. Their father had them on the weekends but apparently it wasn’t customary for a single man to rear his children alone. In any case, in our family Lucy took in the boys and raised them with her own sons. My grandmother was married and out of the house by this time.

Our family was pretty normal. Lucy’s husband was a barber. He owned his own shop. Lucy and Esther’s father was a captain on the Great Lakes. I believe Esther’s husband was a salesman, but correct me on this point if I have it wrong. And Esther was young, she hadn’t had time to acquire objects to pass down. Her sons got her wedding ring and what little jewelry she possessed, for their wives and daughters. The rest of the family got her dishes. The items she had chosen for her home, which could be handed out and down one at a time for the relatives who wanted something to remember her by.

My grandmother Elaine got Aunt Esther’s syrup pitcher. There’s nothing extraordinary about it, except that it was chosen by Esther and it was hers. It was in my grandmother’s china cabinet all of her adult life. And when my grandmother gave away her china to the rest of the family, I asked for and received Aunt Esther’s syrup pitcher. It lives with my most precious pieces as well.

Merry Christmas, Aunt Esther, all the way from 2007. Thank you for the syrup pitcher.

Happy Holidays Everyone

Photo by XandrabyDesign

Lousy Milwaukee Beer

Hubby is from Milwaukee. Beer. Laverne and Shirley. Harleys. Beer. He’s from Milwaukee.

Milwaukee cares seriously about their beer. I mean, beer matters over there. This is totally foreign to my experience. I don’t particularly like beer and I don’t care about beer. I smile politely when Hubby’s friends and family get on the topic and try really hard not to let my eyes wander because, I mean, the conversation matters to them. Two years ago, Hubby’s best friend, previously referred to here as StudBoy, had a birthday and I got on board with the beer thing. He brought examples of three batches of his home brew for Hubby and I noticed he had no labels. Now, labels, that’s something I can manage. So we went to a beer supplies place in Grand Ledge, got the right sized labels that stay stuck through cold, moisture, etc. and made him labels with these super-StudyBoy-specific names. He was thrilled.

OK, anyway, so Hubby has a good Milwaukee friend who drinks a horrible beer called Hamm’s. It’s the only beer that he drinks and he drinks a lot of it. This is Big Daddy Jim of our summer road trip. His friends laugh at him for it. It is a constant topic of amusement every time he opens one. And it is such a staple in his life that we prepared for his motorcycle visit to Michigan by having StudBoy bring an enormous case of the stuff three months ahead of the trip so Big Daddy would have it waiting for him.

 

Well, he didn’t finish the case, so one day I decided to try it.

 

Hamm’s ROCKS. I will never again tolerate snickering over Hamm’s. Hamm’s is the most intoxicating beer I have ever drunk. Hamm’s is genuinely appealing. I get home some nights and I think, “I’d like a Hamm’s” and a glow of pleasure begins in my stomach.

 

I have become an honorable Milwaukee-ite. I drink their worst beer and I love it. I will defend it. I will now have something to say during beer discussions. I can’t tell you how important this is to them. It’s like I’m actually a member of the family now.

 

All Out for Christmas

We give Christmas cookie tins and treat bags to, well, everyone. Everyone we like. Everyone who admired them from afar last year (my ego is easily manipulated). Everyone who earns them like the nice guys in facilities at work who keep our building functioning (they get one of the BIG tins). The guy who owns the plumbing supply shop in town both because he is incredibly helpful and knowledgeable but also because he is the most sexually magnetic person in my personal universe (Hubby: gotta go pick up new faucet stems. Me: really? [casual yawn] oh, you mean, go to that plumbing supply store? well, gee, I suppose I could go on over with you. drool.)

The people in the neighborhood who do my favorite light displays. Neighbors on three sides. Mailman. Hair stylist. The chiropractor. The totally awesome shop that takes care of Nadia (our car). The guy who sells Hubby his work shirts (this is where outstanding customer service pays off). The real nice woman at the dry cleaners. Liz at “Liz’s Alterations” (seamstress – I totally recommend her above Minsky’s in Lansing – less expensive, better service, and well, Liz). I carry treat bags with me everywhere I go for people I forgot and people who look like they could use one – like tired sales clerks. I’m Santa Claus with chocolate dipped Oreos.

Of course, I’ve also made cookies for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family including special batches of everything that has nuts sans nuts for my grandma who can’t have them. Plus every Christmas and New Year’s party either Hubby or me or both of us has been invited to plus his work plus my work. The freezer is cookies. That’s all. Just cookies.

OK. Explanation needed at this point. Cookie tins go to GROUPS of people, like shops of mechanics, the chiropractor’s office where they have multiple staff members, families with kids at home.

Treat bags that consist of totally awesome chocolate dipped Oreos drizzled with white chocolate in this totally awesome and pleasing way and sometimes with chocolate dipped pineapple and apricots depending on what I felt like while I was making the treat bag go to INDIVIDUALS – either single people or married people when I don’t know your spouse.

How much I like you DOES NOT play a part in which holiday present you receive. This is a matter of human volume. If you cannot accept that, JUST ASK for a tin. My ego is easily beguiled and I will be over-joyed to get shy little emails saying, “I think I rate a whole tin, SnakeLady.” Make my day.

OK, so I’ve been baking for well over a week. On two days I baked all day. Every night I’ve made a batch of cookies. Some nights I made two. Oh, and I did ALL MY OWN DISHES. And made dinner every night, we never ate out. (Can you tell I am all about myself over this?) Here’s the list:

• 9X13 pan of double chocolate brownies
• 9X13 pan of lemon bars with freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 9X13 pan of magic bars with extra layer of peanut butter chips
• 9X13 pan of magic bars with extra layer of toffee chips
• Double batch of Swedish wedding cookies (those white ball cookies rolled in powdered sugar)
• Double batch of peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss in the middle
• Single batch of cocoa chocolate cookies with a Hershey’s kiss in the middle
• Quadruple batch of chocolate dipped macaroons (my signature cookie)
• Triple batch of lace cookies (oatmeal cookies with a ridiculous amount of butter that fan out like lace when they cook and get a spread of melted chocolate chips on top – my brother’s favorite cookie. He gets a private stash.)
• Double batch of chocolate chip
• Two packages of oreos dipped in this chocolate so special you can’t even purchase it in Lansing (I figured this out when I tried to buy more after my initial 5 pounds played itself out) drizzled with white chocolate (I am inordinately proud of these – they look awesome!)
• Chocolate dipped dried apricots drizzled with red chocolate (white chocolate dyed red)
• Two packages of dried pineapple, chocolate dipped and drizzled with red and white chocolate.
• 3 loaves of pumpkin bread
• 1 pending loaf of banana bread for my brother – a traditional gift.

Delivery time! And don’t delay with the “Hey b*tch, whole tin, here, now” messages or they might get distributed to someone less deserving because I had to get rid of them before Christmas.

Bob

OK, you might have had to be there for this one, but I’m going to tell the story as best I can:

Hubby and I were in Best Buy to purchase assorted electronic gadgets that we simply couldn’t live without and still be cool when we passed a rack of Christmas CDs. Y’know, James Taylor, Bing Crosby, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Christmas CDs.

And right at eye level was a Christmas CD by Bob Marley.

I stopped dead. Bob Marley?

What blasphemy is this?

My first purchases, at the age of 12-13 when I started babysitting, was Bob Marley’s entire repetoire. $2 an hour X 4 babysitting hours for Andrew and Alexis down the block = 1 Bob Marley album. My brother and I split up TV time in the living room, where both the TV and stereo were. I used all my TV time to crank up Bob Marley and dance around our living room with the cat as my audience and a stick of wood as a microphone with my head thrown down to my knees and back up until my brother told me to just take the stereo into my room. He couldn’t take it anymore.

I thought Bob’s wife Rita was the most beautiful woman on the planet. At 13 I became a Rastafarian and grew dreadlocks (yes, it takes a long time for white people to grow dreadlocks but with perseverance, white people too can have dreadlocks!). I read biographies of Bob Marley like some people read biographies of Winston Churchill: to better understand the modern world through greater knowledge and contemplation of the great figures of the 20th century. Did you know that Bob Marley had 13 children: three with his wife Rita, two adopted from Rita’s previous relationships, and the remaining eight with separate women including one with Miss World 1976 and another with, if teenage memory serves, a table tennis champion? Did you know that one of his sons, Rohan, married Lauryn Hill? And so Churchill carried one of the world’s most formidable nations through WWII. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

I memorialized Bob’s death day for several years. Every May I still think, Bob died in this month. At 15 I wrote a passionate story about a group of teenagers (who included me had I been just a little bit older) who were 15-16 in 1981 when Bob died who somehow managed to get the money for plane tickets and went to the funeral in Jamaica. I had posters of Bob plastered all over my teenage bedroom (of course). Bob Marley has become such a fixture in our family that we refer to him simply as “Bob.” Bob and Cat Stevens are the only two singers that we all agree on, all the time.

And Bob Marley never created a g.d. Christmas album. He never recorded a single version of “Jingle Bells.” He never performed “Auld Lange Syne.” Ever. He never smiled in a silly Santa hat for an album jacket. Not once. Not under the influence of the best dope Jamaica could grow. BOB MARLEY DID NOT RECORD A CHRISTMAS ALBUM.

OK, so you know how this story ends. Somebody stuck a Bob Marley CD on the Christmas CD shelf.

(OK, OK, I did a Google and an iTunes search for Bob Marley and Christmas and it turns out he did record “White Christmas.” This does not constitute an entirely themed Christmas album or a silly Santa hat. Besides, can you hear how HIGH he is in that song? I bet he doesn’t even remember recording it. Besides, it kind of negates this entire blog entry and I like this blog entry so we’re gonna just kinda ignore the inconvenient truth of “White Christmas.”)

I invite you to take a moment to consider that you, too, (if you were born before May 11, 1981) walked the earth at the same time as Bob. I invite you to take a moment to re-live the greatness of Bob. Crank up your favorite Bob song, or pop on over to iTunes and give yourself over to 30 seconds of his greatness. Loosen up. Do some easy skanking around your living room. Grab a wooden spoon as your microphone. Grab your partner and play “Bob and back up singer.” What do you have to lose?

Note that iTunes wants almost $30 for a copy of his greatest hits, Legend. Jumping Jehosaphat.

We’re All Snowied In Here