Remembering Mr. Bolbach

In Junior High, we were introduced to Algebra. The guide to this new world was Mr. Bolbach, who has remained in my memory clearly to this day.

About 5' 5" tall, he was a fireplug of a man, full of energy. He was about 60 then, at the end of his teaching life. I can still see his bald head and fringe of white hair, his blue eyes, and his signature bow tie.

Mr. Bolbach was passionate about mathematics, and I was a words person. But that didn't stop him from converting me. He would pierce me with his azure gaze from across the room, and challenge me to answer, to question, to understand, to appreciate his great love. A number line stretched across the room over the blackboard, and he would constantly refer to it, which was the best teaching method he could have used. He cemented information visually, and I have never forgotten it.

I also have never forgotten the moment when the light dawned over Miami between me and Algebra. There was this little shift in my thinking, and the magic made itself real to me. It was like a movement from 2D to 3D in my world, and love bloomed. It was all a big puzzle, cosmic, almost divine. Mr. Bolbach got to see me experience that. We must have made quite a picture, the two humans, old/young, short/tall, unlikely comrades-in-arms connected by the electricity of joy in numbers.

I kept in touch with Mr. Bolbach all the way through high school, but then lost track. I haven't thought about him in years, but recently I was talking to a photographer about the time I photographed that deserted school building where I learned so much. I wandered through the rooms, trying to find a way to capture the spirit that had lived there, looking for light and dark corners that would bring interest to my pictures.

I felt no connection until I went into the room where Mr. Bolbach had introduced me to his subject. A number line was up on the wall--the same one?--I don't know. I took a picture of it, now lost. No matter. Mr. B smiles through the years. One man with a mission. Mission accomplished.

A Christmas Awakening

When my daughter Amanda was three months old, we scheduled her christening ceremony to coincide with a holiday visit to my family’s home. We gathered at my parents’ church for the small private ceremony, just our family, closest friends, and the godparents. With all the planning and preparations for Christmas, I confess that I had given little thought to the christening—-other than as one event among many that busy year.

As we assembled in the tiny country church, I suddenly became conscious of the fact that everyone my husband and I loved was present. The minister glowed in his vestments as he cheerfully prepared his missals and the font. Suddenly it seemed to me that time stopped. I could hear nothing of the outside world, but every detail in the church was distinct, each dust mote clearly defined in the sunlight. We were no longer fifteen solitary people—-but legion—-as all goodness coalesced in a sacred place for that instant of benediction. I perceived each word the pastor spoke as a flame—-warmth around which we gathered, just as cavemen must have huddled around fires against the uncertain night. The scene was primal, holy, cosmic.

Bewildered by the intensity of my emotions, I found myself weeping openly as the service progressed. Soon we were all weeping, embracing, and celebrating in a magic moment of awareness of the specialness of our love for each other and our belief that darkness will never triumph. It was a moment words are inadequate to describe, a glimpse into all that I wish to understand.

I am just as moved, even so many years later, to recall this special Christmas–the Christmas when unto us, as well, a child was given. We celebrated more than a birth that took place almost two thousand years ago, more than a ritual performed by mere men. We celebrated the magic of our very existence, and the potential for mankind that faith ever renews.

More Than Six Choices? Don't Ask Me . . .

Recently, I saw an amazing lecture about the downside of having a lot of choices. It was absolutely riveting. A lot of studies have showed that people like having lots of choices. But they were flawed studies, because they just assumed that because people liked three choices better than two choices, that it would always be preferable to add more choices. But this is wrong. It turns out that there is a point (and it's a pretty low number) where the choices are actually changing the quality of life for the worse.

Worse for a number of reasons, but the most interesting one is this: you aren't satisfied with any choice you make, because, with all those choices, you must have missed the best choice. Even in corporations, the more choices the corporation offers for retirements plans, the lower the participation in the plans! People are defeated before they even start, because they can't decide. They actually give up the free money because they can't decide. This holds true for making decisions about telephones, computers, blue jeans, entrees on a menu, and automobiles.

If we can hand over choice to someone else, even someone who doesn't know any more than we do, we are happier. Ask any wife. My own husband tells me that sometimes choosing among many options is physically painful to him! He shops for groceries; I buy everything else. Since there are 275 choices for salad dressing, I'm not sure he got the best end of that deal.

Right now, for instance, I have the luxury of some rare free time. But I am not sure whether to do my needlework, read, look at hulu, check my facebook page, study search engine optimization, check Twitter (in case John Lithgow sent me another twitter), or photograph some of my items for my shop on 1000 Markets (www.1000markets.com). So what am I doing instead? Writing about my inability to choose.

And now I thought of something funny that David Letterman did years ago. He went to a shop named Just Bulbs and kept asking for other kinds of things, until the old lady in the shop was ready to kill him. "Just light bulbs," she was yelling. "Just like the sign says, JUST BULBS." I think I will make it my mantra.

Just bulbs.

My So-Called Relatives

This is my downstairs bathroom wall. Every day I look at these people, imagining their lives, their thoughts at the moment of the photographer's click. Ironically, while I have several other pictures of ancestors on the walls in there, these two aren't even related to me.

The man came with the beautifully carved tramp art frame, all the way from Australia. I have named him Henry. I picture him as a man with a successful business, possibly an enterprise involving the making of fine woolens, or somesuch.

Penelope, there in front of the hotel, is having a much-deserved holiday. Her life isn't clear to me, but she does have a beau. They are very much in love, but there are some issues that need to be resolved in order for her family to be accepting of the match. This clandestine rendezvous is by far the most daring thing she has ever done.

I wonder who they really were. I can't help but wonder what they would have thought to know that they'd be images for a stranger's imagination. At the very instant the shutter clicked, the world I inhabit would have been unimaginable to either of them.

Their presence pleases me. In my own way, I honor them. It's not crazy, is it?

Being the Change

Improbably, this innocent-looking pair of eyeglasses symbolizes a journey of personal growth. First of all, I have had these glasses far longer than any other pair in my life because I can’t afford to replace them. New eyeglasses have been demoted in priority. In the past, I took for granted the benefits and entitlements of The American Middle Class. No longer. I remember the woman I was, oblivious to the fragility of a paycheck, but that women is four years gone.

I wouldn’t want to have that old me back. She was more shallow than I am, she was more arrogant than I am, she was living with blinders on. She would have had a problem with the cobbled-together repair to the earpiece.

Yes, she knew the things that were really important—health, family, living honorably. Service to others, to her Town. She knew those things. But she knew them through a thick glass of material comfort.

I know now that comfort has a different definition. Once you are tempered by adversity—real adversity—your perspective on “things” changes, irrevocably. So, eyeglasses break and can be repaired many times. They can even be repaired with an artistic flourish. Who will care that my earpiece is tipped with a glob of seed beads? That other Alyson would have cared, would have felt deprived.

The current Alyson’s opinion:

Puhleeze . . . . Everything is relative.

A Basket of Joy

I have been caught up in my task of creating a new market on www.1000markets.com, caught up in making the market come to "live" status---you know, using my brain instead of my hands.

So this morning when I glimpsed this basket of yarns, I came to a halt, took a picture, and resolved to set aside time today to make things.

And I did make things.

Wow, all this Village stuff has gotten me to consider my goals carefully, and try to meet them. I even made a crocheted flower of my own design and hung it up. It is useless, but it pleases me.

I have a slew of ideas for making things. I hope this week to get some of them off the page and into reality.

I admit I have been "sunning myself" in the good feeling that the market has brought. I have a million ideas for The Village, too. They have to get off the page and onto the screen!

But now I have a community to share all that with. I just love that. I feel like I have found "my peeps" here after looking far and wide for those who share my need---the craving to share with others about all life brings, not just the creative side of our lives, but all of the messy and wonderful and sad and frustrating things that show up along the way.

I can think of many analogies for this, but none better than that basket of yarn, full of expectancy, full of promise, just waiting to be brought to life.

The Boys are Back

I collect snowmen. They pose so nicely, too, don't they? Every year the collection grows, and now their box can hardly hold them. You can see how pleased they all are to be out and about, even if they do have to contend with (shhhh) the C-A-T-S .




And look who spent the day helping me decorate the house for Christmas. This is my baby, Molly. Isn't she spectacular? She is as pretty on the inside as the outside, as well!


This Christmas I feel especially festive. I don't know if I've just gotten used to poverty, or whether I've just realized that life is happening around me and to me whether we're poor or not. It's just not going to do any good to fret over our retirement money disappearing, or whether Richard has a permanent job or not. These things are out of my hands, for the most part. My children are healthy and happy. What more could a person ask for?

Plus, the snowboys make me laugh. And the cats. . . this is Gabriel Mozart. He is a sun hog. The cats are feeling festive as well, since Molly added vintage jingle bells to their collars. They sound like Santa's reindeer when they go on the move!

The Ice Storm

This morning at 4:30, I gasped myself awake, hooked up to a sleep apnea machine that was no longer delivering the promised Positive Airway Pressure, but instead delivering a sound that sounded waaayyyy too much like Darth Vader on the treadmill. No power, no light, just a Stygian blackness that tends to make one believe that blindness has struck.

I have barely gotten used to this apnea contraption, which has offered blessed relief and improved sleep. Richard has one, too, and the two of us, if observed in the wee hours, must closely resemble a mini-hive of Star Trek's Borg species. Richard, in his briefs and undershirt (a vision of loveliness), put on his Nikes and headed down to the basement, where the sump pumps normally keep things crisply dry. Uh-oh, four inches of water!

The first half of the day is a blur of misery, rain, sleet, hail, no charged-up items in the house. Three flashlights that dimmed infuriatingly quickly. No telephone, no cell phones, no oven, even our Nintendo DS(es) were dead. Plus, I am apparently pathologically unable to resist trying to turn on everything in reach that runs on electricity, repeatedly.

A horrendous crash against the house--our pine tree had shed a huge branch. More followed all over the yard, and we can only imagine what the rest of the town looks like if our yard is a barometer. My little battery TV gave the news that there was a state of emergency, with a million people electricity-free, probably for several days.

Pretty soon we got our heads around the situation and began to adapt. Molly and I lit some candles and wrapped Christmas presents. We made a big pot of chili, because the stovetop is gas! We even were able to keep warm from one room where the heating is gas. Rich was in his element experimenting with ways to use the generator to keep our fridge going---"For God's sake, don't try to turn on the bathroom light again, Alyson, you'll overload the balance!" Thanks to his shenanigans we don't have to cook and eat 5 lbs. of shrimp.

The sun began to break out, the room lit up, then dimmed with the late afternoon. Candles again. The warm, rich scent of the chili enveloped us. We found some vintage Christmas tags and had fun using them on our gifts. The cats posed pleasingly for photos, hypnotized by the warmth of the wall heater. We laughed ourselves senseless remembering lines from Saturday Night Live skits we have seen and loved.

And then the lights came on. The perfect end to this day. Here is the chili recipe.

Alyson's Chili,
adapted from Lisa's Chili
adapted from Williams-Sonoma Chili

Ingredients:

some ground beef (anywhere from 1 to 3 lbs.)
1T cooking oil
some onions (I only had 1.5 today, anywhere up to 3 big ones is fine)
fresh garlic (I use 4 cloves), chopped fine
a bottle of beer
a cup of beef broth (or 1 beef boullion cube in 1 cup water)
a couple of cans of beans, drained and rinsed (I use pinto and red kidney)
a large can of crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup or so of bottled ketchup
1t jalapeno powder (Bobby Flay's), or a chopped, fresh jalapeno
1/3 cup chili powder (Chimayo is the best, if you can get it)
2T powdered cumin
1t dried coriander
1T dried oregano
salt to taste, and black pepper
1/2 cup masa harina
1 box frozen corn kernels

Method:

Brown meat, drain of fat and reserve. Saute onions in oil until translucent. Add chili powder, salt, cumin, coriander, oregano, jalapeno powder or jalepeno, garlic. Cook until spices are fragrant. Add beer, beef broth, tomatoes, beans, cooked meat, and catsup. Bring to simmer and cook one hour. Add corn. Stir masa harina into mixture slowly to avoid lumps. Adjust amount of masa depending on how thick your chili has become, and how thick you like it to end up. The masa will continue to thicken over time, so be careful or you'll end up with concrete. Turn it off and let it sit for an hour or so if you can. It improves with age. I like to eat my chili with Saltine crackers spread with grape jelly. Try it, it's good!

Stay warm; stay safe; stay patient with life's little surprises.

To All the Unemployed Out There

You should read “My Life as a Statistic” by Steven Maas, an essay in the 12/7/08 Boston Globe Magazine. Heartbreaking, uplifting, and poignant. You’ll know how he feels.

My New Friend Janet

This morning I got an email from Janet. I first met Janet when purchasing a kit from her for something called a “Dottie Bag.” She is the queen of this bag, even down to finding the most beautifully colored felt. She finds colors heaven forgot, let me tell you.

I had told Janet that I was looking at tutorials on the blanket stitch, and had been surprised that there are so many ways to do it. It was almost a philosophical dialogue to see what each teacher said about the stitch. Here is what Janet wrote back:

“Have you ever heard of the zen of stitching? When I get into my zen zone my stitches just flow! It’s such a great feeling. I have perfected my own blanket stitch. I know there are simpler ways to do it, but they don’t feel right to me. My style feels right and balanced. It’s a rhythm, like a heartbeat. To me, stitching is a prayer, a spiritual offering, a moment to treasure the miracle of our hands. It’s not work, it’s an expression of joy and it’s very personal. Not to mention comforting!”

Isn’t that an amazing paragraph, it absolutely exalts the idea of simple sewing to a new level, doesn’t it?

Here are pictures of a few other smaller bags that I was compelled to create. Oh, joy.


(See more of Janet’s work at http://www.feltonthefly.etsy.com/)




Dottie Bag by Alyson

Three Amazing Artists

I joined Etsy (and now 1000markets) this fall, and just today I was marveling at how many wonderfully talented women I have met in my explorations.

I would like to tell you about three of them.

Janet is from Michigan. Her sellername on Etsy is feltonthefly. She makes the most beautiful colors of wool felt in the world. She sells goodies made out of felt, including an incredible Christmas “boot” for those who don’t have a place to hang stockings. I just completed one of her unique and adorable kits for a “Dottie Bag,” which transforms a few bits and pieces of ribbon, a felt triangle, and embellishments of your choice into a work of art. Janet told me they would be addictive, and they proved to be so. I have already made three more, and have ideas for more. Check out her website, http://www.feltonthefly.com/.

Fiona (sellername linenandroses) lives in the UK, where she lives a life immersed in art and beauty. Fiona is a thoughtful Renaissance woman, interested in many things. Her blog (ginghamandflowers.blogspot.com) is an education in itself.

And then there is Elke. She lives in Belgium, speaks five or six languages, and is a gifted jewelry maker. Her work is young but elegant, bright and bold without being garish, and very much a bargain. This necklace is only $26.00. Elke sells on Etsy as dellejuwelen.

The fact is that I have met these three spectacular artists because of my love of handmade things. I have to say that I have always felt a bit guilty about my “craftiness” gene. Maybe it wasn’t “real” art to me, or I felt that I should be doing something more useful with my time. I don’t know why I felt that way; it seems crazy now. The desire to create takes many paths. Why should anybody question that? I have been freed up at this stage of my life to explore hither and yon and I plan to follow where that leads me. Like Janet, Fiona, and Elke, creating pretty things, useful things, or even totally useless things is my journey.

I hope you will take a look at the work of these three amazing artists. They lit up my November!

www.feltonthefly.etsy.com (www.feltonthefly.com)

www.linenandroses.etsy.com (www.ginghamandflowers.blogspot.com)

www.dellejewelen.etsy.com

www.alyson2.etsy.com

(http://www.1000markets.com/users/alyson2)

“Soup Day” Dawns

So, there was a slight problem with the turkey. We forgot it in the laundry room and found it the day after Thanksgiving. Thankfully (no pun intended) it is very cold in there, so my husband went ahead and cut it off the carcass to get ready for The Great Soup Day, Charlie Brown.

This is an annual tradition that always makes me feel very righteous and pioneer-y. We use up just about everything that is in the crisper to make this absolutely fabulous soup. Every year we do the same lame things: we claim that the turkey was the best ever. Then we tell the story about my first Thanksgiving as a new bride, when I suited up with rubber gloves to remove the turkey innards from the bird, causing my uncle to laugh so long we got worried. Then, when we have the soup, we say it was the best part of the holiday.

So here it is, my own invention, which I call

WONDERFUL TURKEY SOUP

Ingredients:
1/4 stick butter
2 T. flour
2 T. curry powder (I use Madras mild)
1 t. sage or Bell’s seasoning
1 big white onion, chopped
2 Yukon potatoes, cubed
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, sliced thin
8 cups turkey broth or chicken stock
salt, pepper
2 cups leftover turkey meat
1 cup cream
1 package frozen chopped spinach
Optional: leftover gravy, leftover stuffing, leftover green beans

Procedure:
Melt butter, drop in onion, celery, carrots, and potatoes. Saute for a few minutes; don’t worry that stuff is sticking to the pan, that’s normal. When the veggies have a bit of translucency and maybe even a bit of color, stir in the flour, curry power, sage, salt, and pepper. Cook for a minute to take the raw taste out of the flour, then slowly pour in the broth. This is the base for the soup, and you need to simmer it with the lid on once it has come to a boil. Let it simmer about 30-40 minutes.

Turn off the heat, immediately put in the turkey, frozen block of spinach, and cream. Put the lid back on and let it sit still until the spinach has completely melted into the soup.

If you have some leftovers that you are trying to use up, you can put in a bit more broth and add whatever strikes your fancy. My family is particularly fond of a bit of gravy in this soup.

What I like is that the turkey doesn’t get overcooked, because you are basically just heating it up, not simmering it for a long time. Also, this is the best use for dark meat ever! It is just delicious.

I hope you will try the soup, and let me know how your family felt about it.

The Crowded Kitchen

I do love Thanksgiving. A different love from Christmas, which has a bitter aftertaste—-namely the months of January, February, and March. But starting Thanksgiving week, the world is rich with possibilities. The future beckons, all dolled up with seductive smells and glitter.

Not least of what matters to me about Thanksgiving is the food. Not even so much the eating of the food (although trust me, I’m no slouch in that department), but for the planning—the military campaign mentality that connects me to my mother, twenty years gone.

I guess it was a generational thing. Certain things had to be done, no exceptions. There was cranberry/orange relish, and out would come Grandma Feazel’s grinder. Clamped to the counter, this hulking holdout from The Great Depression seemed totally bewildered in our 1970’s avocado green kitchen. Even after we got the ubiquitous Cuisinart, that grinder made its annual appearance. It was undoubtedly a laboratory experiment of germ possibilities, so had to be assembled and disassembled with operating room scrub-up procedures.

And the oyster stuffing. Every year my grandmother made it using the instructions written in the spidery hand of my great grandmother. I wouldn’t trade that piece of paper for a million dollars, even though my grandmother was the only one who ever ate any of it at the Thanksgiving feast.

The secret weapon of the holiday was the dessert. We acquired this little beauty in 1960, when we lived near Boston for a year while my father attended MIT on assignment for his company. A very close group formed of those young couples, all on a yearlong adventure, and I recall how sophisticated they all seemed. It was that Camelot era, and everyone was young and beautiful. A cookbook was produced (again you can’t have it for a million), and the pecan pie recipe was introduced into the lore of my family. Unlike other pecan pie recipes, there is no corn syrup in it. It is dense, rich, and memorable. It wasn’t until I came into my own as a pretty good cook that I realized that it was basically a pecan tart baked off in a pie shell. It is like eating pecan fudge with a crust. Heaven. Dibs on the leftovers.

I don’t cook like my mother. I am not of her generation, and I have found that if I slap some butter on the outside of the turkey, put it in a very hot oven, and cook it to the right internal temp, it all works out. Probably no little credit is due to the freshest bird in the world, which we buy every year at the “farm” nearby, nicknamed the Yuppie Palace. The birds are moist no matter what you do to them, but I follow the Gourmet Magazine recipe with confidence and it’s always great, no turkey dust the next morning.

So, bird is easy, sides are painless, pies can be the day ahead. And yet, it is wonderfully crowded in the kitchen. I have my own two girls helping, and the voices of the women who shaped me. They guide my hands, my tongue, and my heart all day. I take out the biscuit cutter with the worn, green knob. I remember my mother’s warning not to let the stuffing get dry. My grandmother takes a rolling pin to that stack of Saltines. We don’t serve oyster stuffing, but I can almost smell it anyway. I am closer to my beloved women than any other day of the year.

Oh, yes, and we can’t ever forget to buy the Durkee’s spread for sandwiches. Never, never forget the Durkee’s, even if you have to drive two hours to find a grocery store that carries it. I’m not saying I ever did that, mind you. . . .

Have a blessed holiday.

The Last Craft Fair

For the fourth time, we printed the signs, packed up the baskets and trays, loaded the goods into the car with the card table and my grandmother’s tablecloth, and hit the road for the craft fair. Today was the fourth one this fall. We have done four towns, both upscale and blue collar, with merchandise in every price point.

So far the outlay is about $125, and we have sold only one item for $7.50.

Everybody loved the stuff, thought it was fairly priced, oohed and ahhed over how cute, etc. Then they all went somewhere else to spend their money. One woman wanted to buy things with a Visa card. At a craft fair at a church. I ask you . . . .

Food sold well at all the fairs. Cupcakes for $.25. Can you make money selling a cupcake for $.25? My daughters are convinced that most of the vendors do fairs as a hobby rather than a money-making enterprise.

So, I am giving up the Craft Fair

Making a Cute Gift on a Shoestring (Great FREE idea!)

Credit Card Holder with Vintage Buttonand Magnet Closure

I love that term —- shoestring. This little paper creation came to me when I began to wonder how we were going to give Christmas presents to my sisters-in-law and nieces without any money. I had just gotten some little magnetic paper closures from Basic Grey, and with a vintage button, this is a perfect little something for a purse full of either business cards, or credit cards, calling cards, etc. Here are all the pictures, along with a photo of the template, which is simple and easy to duplicate. For the gluing, first put about an inch of glue along the bottom flap, which you have folded up. Next run a line of glue down one of the folded side flaps, fold the other side over to stick everything down, and weight it down for a minute to dry thoroughly.

Decorate away to your heart’s content with interesting embellishments, photos, original art, or even use recycled plastic. I did line the inside of the top with a pretty contrasting paper, just glued it on and cut around to neaten it up. There’s no reason you couldn’t do this with felt, and embroider it. That magnet is such a satisfying little item, makes it seem so professional.

I realized as I was writing this that I can do a couple of masculine ones for my brothers and nephews! Okay, I am going to say the cliche that we all love so much —- “you are only limited by your imaginations.”

Enjoy, and please let me know how you like this.

Six Months at Intel

It’s a night job in the computer labs, four nights per week, about half of his usual contract rate, but it’s a JOB! He’s got the hope of permanent work after six months, and we can just about scrape by without losing our credit rating. He’s already standing taller, looks younger. Just a coincidence that the hiring manager is also a mature employee . . . . I’m sure its just a coincidence . . . . bless his heart!

The Garland

I spotted the prototype for the garland in one of those eminently tasteful decorating magazines. Lovingly situated between two candles in its sedate Connecticut home, the felt and ribbon creation called out to me as a do-it-yourself project.

It looked simple enough—a yard-long white fabric streamer with red checked ribbons attached, the whole thing gathered and scrunched to swag across a mantle. Simple and elegant cherry clusters clung every few inches. This looked easy. A mother/daughter Christmas project for Molly and me.

As with all such visions, the execution turned out to be much more involved than the initial assessment indicated. From one craft store to another we went, wheezing our way through the walls of scent from the holiday potpourri displays. Then to the fabric store for the snowy felt. Along the way we accumulated an assortment of irresistible ornaments, buttons, tiny porcelain roses, and snowmen for the decorations–, each discovery punctuated with Molly’s exclamations of delight. One ribbon down the center looked lonely, so we picked two to layer, one deep red satin, followed by a narrower red checked. It was already beginning to seem a lot more crowded on this garland than the picture.

First we cut the felt with pinking shears. Then, an ironing lesson with fusible web to get the ribbon to stick on down the middle. Another day to make the sturdy gathering stitches, and we were ready to add the goodies. But here we ran into a challenge. Somehow along the way our garland had lengthened to three yards. With this extended goal, our few red, black, and white trinkets began to look sparse and lonely.

I remembered a vintage pin I never wore, and Molly found some Scottie-dog buttons. Suddenly a lot of other jewelry box items were in the mix. There were shoe clips made of cherry-red Bakelite, orphaned glittery earrings, and keepsake red cloth buttons from Molly’s favorite coat, now outgrown. Things kept stored in drawers and boxes came out into the light. Here were the flashy buttons from a dress I gussied up to wear to the company Christmas party. There we found childhood charms, my old girl scout pins, a playing piece from my first Monopoly. We sewed them on in a joyous parade. My mother’s favorite angel pin took its place alongside a scrimshaw charm and a souvenir Alpine bell from my girlhood vacations. My father’s Navy identification disk and a dollhouse basket of eggs marched toward a gaudy red plastic summer earring.

When we finally came up for air and agreed that we had no more to add, the garland shone and jingled. Rich and heavy with memories, it has taken its rightful place with greenery on the stairway, where it will play the holiday lead for many years to come. After a time it will be Molly’s, to give to her daughter.

Molly and I like to sit and admire what we made. Our garland doesn’t look a thing like the magazine picture. It isn’t tasteful at all–it’s excessive and exuberant. We are content.

Stay With Me, God

Stay with me, God.
The night is dark,
the night is cold,
my little spark of courage dies.
The night is long.
Be with me, God,
and make me strong.

This is the last month we can pay bills. After this, we exist at the whim of the universe.

Rich went on an interview last week that was particularly painful. He had been called by this company, they liked his resume. Then they had a 1.5 hour phone interview with him, and at the end asked him to come in. He was home in one hour. Rich said when he met the young man who had interviewed him on the phone, he could see that his age had not been evident from the resume. The guy just dismissed him out of hand. Rich said he could practically see the thought process. He couldn’t get him out of the place fast enough. Just dismissed him, even though he is completely qualified for the job.

I have traded horror stories about interviews with other wives. My favorite one that Richard had was a company in Boston. The job advertised fit Rich exactly. When he got there they brought guys into the conference room in groups of six, and they gave him a “problem” to resolve. He used a whiteboard to show how he would approach the storage issue, what products he would use, etc. This happened for two groups of employees before Richard realized that he was giving a free seminar. They had no intention of filling any position, they were using the interviewees to resolve their issues so that their own people could effect a solution. No concern for the fact that they wasted a day of his life and didn’t pay him for it.

I have a friend whose husband was flown out to Chicago on a private jet, given an interview with top management, offered the position, and spent the return flight mapping out the formation of the new division with top managers. His advice was undoubtedly implemented, but not with him, because he never heard from them again. They did not return his bewildered calls. Did I mention that the person who recommended him at the company was an old college buddy? Never heard from him again, either.

This happened to Richard, as well, on a smaller scale. A company in Framingham “hired” him, and we had a great weekend celebrating the end of our misery. On Monday we didn’t hear anything, and by Thursday it was obvious that something was wrong. The man who interviewed him introduced himself as a “Christian,” and said how important high morals were at the company. We never heard from them again. Yeah, great Christian behavior. It would make us paranoid that there was some black mark against Rich somewhere, but he has nothing worse than one speeding ticket long ago on his record. We have never been in trouble at all. Just regular people, work ethic, non-smoking, cheap champagne at Thanksgiving and beer in their chili kind of people. Apparently expendable.

Does This Seem Odd To You?

I can’t work any of the media equipment in our house, either upstairs or down, without access to three manuals, four remotes, my conversation hat, and six beers.

Not one single piece of equipment operates according to its instructions. There are ancillary little boxes and switches on shelves nearby the equipment, lights flashing and beeps beeping, and the DVD player in our bedroom doesn’t work for more than half an hour without a portable fan trained on it. (I discovered this by accident, but you don’t even want to hear that story.)

In short, I am married to an engineer. Wherever he is, there is a dusting of wire bits and the faint sulfuric whiff of metal solder in the air, prompting visitors to query, “Been boiling eggs?” No, just waiting for that ferry to Hell.

Along with the fact that I am married to an engineer comes the additional fact that I am married to an engineer who appears to be incapable of accurately taping the correct episode of anything. We begin to watch the tape of The Mentalist, only to find that we are watching a grainy Hudson Selectmen meeting from 2006, or even better, the belly dancing class on local cable. This class isn’t even campy, let me tell you, somebody paid somebody off to get this on the air.

So today, after (literally) 30 years of this, I asked him, “Do you think this is acceptable?”

“What? I wrote out the instructions and stuck them to the bookcase.”

“Rich, YOU YOURSELF can’t manage this equipment without your calculator and your Boy Scout compass!”

“You just have to read my instructions! I spent a lot of time making those instructions for you.”

[Here is a sampling from the instructions: "Video selector IS on unless Sony TV says Video 1, otherwise will say 'not connected'. VCR = 3, Video 2/LD also may say 'not connected'.]

I feel like that man named Charlie who is still riding the subway through Boston. You can just hand me a sandwich once in awhile. I’ll be trying to find the input for the red jack, or is it the black one that needs the yellow hole? Oh, well . . . . see you sometime . . . .

Take It or Leave It

ONE WOMAN’S PRESUMPTUOUS ADVICE FOR THE HOLIDAYS

When I was a child, the playground do-it-yourself merry-go-round was my favorite event. You held on, ran around and around to get up a good head of steam, and then jumped on for a long, giddy ride. My biggest choice in those days was whether to lie flat and watch the clouds spin by, or sit up and watch my friends’ faces appear periodically, like jerky frames in an old movie.
These days, I just wish I could stick out my foot and slow the ride down. Here are a few of my ideas.

Let’s slow the world down.

Recently I was roundly chastised by a fellow volunteer board member because I forgot to leave my home messaging unit on when I went out on errands. Three years ago I had a phone, with two extensions—whoopee. Now our family has access to Internet, IM, texting, Skype VOIP, voice mail, e-mail, fax machine, flickr.com, cell phone, file attachments, and so on. All these things are wonderful. But they are tools. We control them. We can choose when and how to use them. It is up to us to control the expectations that result from a speedy, technologically advanced society. We may not want to be always accessible. We can choose to make time together, to make that time sacrosanct, safe from intrusion by the tools we have embraced.

Let’s keep the holidays as events, not as a 6-month ramp-up period for merchandising.

For instance, I heard the first television ad for holiday merchandise just after Labor Day this year. November and December used to be anticipated with pleasure; now many of us dread the term “holiday season.” We don’t have to acquiesce to this pushing. We can decide not to fight our way through two months of the year with heavy hearts, rushing from one mall, one event, one cookie batch to another. There are many great ideas for avoiding this. Here are a few: shop by Internet; spread out shopping for holidays over the whole year (this is less painful than it sounds); make mustard instead of cookies to give as gifts (it’s much easier); buy good, store-bought food as gifts, wrap it creatively, and keep your mouth shut. Turn down invitations you don’t enjoy. Believe me, it won’t be tragic if you are not there, and it’s absolutely liberating. Simplify and downscale your own entertaining. If you want it badly enough, you can have a wonderful, stress-free season.

Do away with “I should” thinking.

I like and admire Martha Stewart, but I don’t intend to go into beekeeping or topiary design as hobbies. I like to watch This Old House, too, but I don’t plan to tackle that home theater/workshop renovation on my own house. Let’s look at media mavens as teachers and not as guilt inducers. Don’t buy the women’s magazines in December. Clean out a drawer if you have a burning need to drive yourself crazy. Don’t agree to run the craft fair at the school (offer to “bake” something). Don’t acknowledge the power of this year’s Tickle Me Elmo toy search. Don’t support that madness. Don’t start a diet, for God’s sake. Don’t worry; be happy.

Let’s be nicer to each other.

Road rage. Mother-in-law and sibling rage. The thoughtless boss or co-worker. The rude clerk. The bank teller with an attitude. The teenager who makes your teenager cry with embarrassment. Let’s kill ‘em all, right? I tried this kind of thinking, and it just didn’t work well. I have found that maintaining my own standards of behavior works better. This doesn’t mean being meek and witless; you can still take action on that bank teller deal. What does it mean? Teaching my children well, for one thing. They need to be streetsmart—yes—but they need to learn kindness skills, too. Set an example. Open doors for people; help when help is obviously needed. Stand up when someone significantly older joins the group. Don’t stereotype generation X’ers or any other group. These tolerances don’t hurt us; they make us a community. I wish they’d teach etiquette in school. It greases a lot of gears. Throw bread on the water with your behavior geared to conciliation and non-violence. It will pay off for everyone. Okay, sermon’s over.

Let’s work to banish fear.

This is a tough one because the fears are based on real issues. We have a number of sex offenders residing in our town—-human beings who have hurt children. I am afraid of these people living near children—possibly near my very home. What kind of world have we become? I am homesick for my childhood, when we had no locks on the door; when neighborhood houses were drop-by places for juice or snacks; when we rode our bikes all day Saturday and never checked in. I would never dream of such behavior now.

However, some of the fears are overblown. Apparently, for example, we are curtailed by the food police from enjoying Chinese food, popcorn, Mexican food, Italian food, water from our faucets, any imported fruit, cider, fast-food burgers, produce touched by humans, anything cooked rare, chicken or their eggs, anything with caffeine or fat, and to top it all off—I recently read that enjoying Jell-O was a crapshoot because some cow disease could be in the gelatin. I should be thin from these fears.

I don’t really know what can be done about fear, except to take prudent precautions and try not to let our kids see us with a bunker mentality. We can’t let the horrible few poison our world; we can’t let our children live in a world with joy stifled. This is a bit of a tightrope, so let’s try our best to keep a perspective.

Let’s read more things that make us laugh or inspire us.

Let me give you a few pointers here—from experience. For funny: Bailey White’s books of essays about living with her aging, loopy mother in the Florida wetlands. Gerald Durrell’s stories about his family, in particular My Family and Other Animals. Paul Rudnick’s hilarious (and instructive—you’ll learn some Yiddish) recounting of a car trip through the Northeast with his mother and aunts, entitled I’ll Take It. Two family members took this book to baby labor and laughed through the hard parts. Patrick McManus’s tales of life in the outdoors with his friend Rancid Crabtree and others. Anything by David Sedaris (I particularly enjoyed his essay on the stadium buddy appliance for avoiding going to the men’s room. I also loved his tales of being an elf at Macys.) And, of course, Jean Shepherd’s classic In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. You may remember him and his Red Ryder BB gun from a movie called A Christmas Story. Read, laugh, read with the kids, read to the kids. For inspiration, read A Christmas Carol; read A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Read together and to each other. Just read.

And love each other; stay healthy. Everything else is small stuff. Everything.

Unexpected Art

My college was located in a little town in South Carolina, untouched by the twentieth century. Aside from the students, there were about 60 aging residents, courtly remnants of the antebellum South. It was a drowsy, gossipy, languid sort of place. Since I was a Yankee, which was truly like being from someplace like Tibet, I was treated with polite but persistent suspicion.

One day close to Christmas break, I noticed that an empty storefront along the town’s tidy Main Street had been spruced up and sported a “Christmas Exhibition” sign. With the arrogance that only 18-year-olds (who fancy themselves terribly cosmopolitan) possess, I posed a slightly sardonic question to my friends—-What could pass for art in such an unlikely setting? We crowded through the door and stumbled into a magical world.

Strung on invisible lines at varying heights—-from almost ceiling height to inches above the floor—-were hundreds of fabric-covered, decorated spheres. Large or small, they were each as unique as a snowflake, some lavish and regal, others simple and adorned with only calico ribbons. Some were trimmed in pearl designs with satiny ribbon shimmer. A few were as big as basketballs, others were intricate, small wonders the size of Faberge eggs.

Speechless, we began moving along a marked path through the globes. Some invisible moving lighting made it seem as though we were observing an underwater, otherworldly place—-a solar system unlike anything imagined. There was so much to look at that my brain resented my eyes as they moved to each new creation.

I went back every day until it was time to fly out for the holidays. But all through the break, I thought about those beautiful ornaments. When I returned to school, I dialled, with some trepidation, the phone number of the exhibit’s sponsor. I asked if I could meet with her to see her studio and observe how she made the wonderful works.

“Well, shuah, dahlin’,” she responded. “You just come ovah any time. I’d be delighted to show you my studio.” She chuckled and gave me directions.

I was startled to be greeted by a sixtyish, bosomy matron with a freshly lavender-rinsed hairdo. She was wearing a well-worn housedress and an apron. She looked like an illustration out of one of my childhood Dick and Jane books. With a sly glance, she said to come along for a tour of her “studio,” then threw open the door of what was obviously her bedroom. From behind the door, she pulled out a brown shopping bag, overflowing with colorful fabrics and ribbons. Further down, I glimpsed styrofoam balls of varying sizes, and other paraphernalia.

Mrs. Brennan and I became great friends, and, in time, she generously forgave me for being a northerner and shared many of her secrets with me. I learned so many lessons from her, not least of which was the lesson that artists’ spirits do not depend on trappings, or on youth. I miss her. And while I have often wished I could share just one more Christmas with her, her lessons did take root. My lovely friend, wherever you and your shopping bag are now, God bless.

www.alyson2.etsy.com

www.flickr.com/alyson2

Legacy

A million of us have breathed
the clean smell of hot muslin,
have felt it between our fingers,
rich and velvety.

Or rejoiced,
laughing, talking of nothings,
ripe with our unborn,
in the sharp tang of August geraniums.

Some of us fashion quilts not of cloth,
but of memories, or of words,
or of families.

We are thus inherited by our daughters,
quiltmakers all.

To Jean Shepherd

The rough voice in the darkness, always on the verge of laughter. I used to love the way he told his radio stories, taking side trips down back roads, only to bring the plot thread home just in time to close the show. I wish I could thank him for all the joy and laughter, and to wish him well.

Oh, Well

The craft fair turned out to be a bust. We did sell one item, but were obligated to donate one of equal value to an auction. Plus the $30 entrance fee, which does go to a good cause. There were less than 100 people who came through, according to the kids, and the fair preceded the actual Pumpkinfest event, rather than coincided with it. Very frustrating.

I am wracking my brain to come up with ways that I can make money at handcrafts. I suppose more research is in order. I need publicity, so maybe I can make a comment at a political rally, and become instantly famous and trendy like Joe the Plumber. Yeah, that’s the ticket! In fact, I probably have as many bona fide plumbing credentials as Joe does — ZERO. We surely can chew them up and spit them out here in the USA . . . .

Perspective, Perspective . . .

Shopping site for Alyson: http://www.alyson2.etsy.com/

So, as I was kvetching about our troubles, I got a reality check. My sister-in-law has a mentor and friend whose son’s wife just went into the hospital to deliver their first child. During the delivery her heart failed, and when she woke up her heart had been removed and she was hooked up to a mechanical heart. Can you imagine how devastating? Now they are awaiting a heart for transplant. The baby is fine, and I know that is a blessing, but how can I complain about my minor problems in the face of such actual suffering?

Life keeps on keeping on anyway, and this weekend I am putting my work in a local craft fair at our Town’s annual “Pumpkinfest.” My daughters are going to “man” the booth. I have gotten a folding bridge table, vintage linens to drape over it, and many, many pincushions to sell. I decided to make the sock monkeys into toddler toys, and now each one has a little booklet from the pictured monkey directly to the recipient child. They are just adorable, if I do say so. I can’t imagine that some of them won’t find new homes. I am told that their is quite a subculture of monkey-loving children. I hope it is true, because I surely have a lot of tiny monkey pillows. I also have now made over 60 more pincushions that I haven’t placed in my shop. I will wait until the craft fair is over to list those. I tried to explain today why I can’t stop making these things, and I think it’s because it’s a project totally within my control. Nothing else in my life is. Unemployment is not something I can influence or change. But a pincushion. A bit of fabric, a bit of fluff, an old button, and VOILA! A small piece of control.

If anyone is reading this, please post and tell us why you create, and what you create. I am so interested in what women do to express joy in their lives, and to cope with negativity. Be of good cheer, all of you.