a little red hen

Missing Red Wigglers

Sage leaves were in the fridge.  Left from the cranberry bean recipe of the other day, they made me sad.  Only three were used and now there were a whole lot left--and darkening.

For $1.49, over-packaged in hard plastic, this was the smallest amout to buy.   How I miss the red wiggler worms who once ate and procreated in a box in my apartment's front hall.  We had a great exchange going.  Though the sage might have been too strong to add all at once.  Fled this thought by diving into Recipes from an Ecological Kitchen by Lorna J. Sass.  No ideas for my herbs but like the quotes she sprinkles around--

One thing is certain:  nothing will happen if we all wait for others to do it first....The still, small voice whispering to me in the depts of my consciousness is saying exactly the same thing as the voice whispering to you: "I want an Earth that is healthy, a world at peace, and a heart filled with love."  --Eknath Easwaran, The Lesson of the Hummingbird

 

 

A sage leaf or two might work with leftover cooked soy beans and parsley.  Ron used both earlier this week to make Ukranian borscht from a video on Hippy Gourmet, a link with some problems  That's yogurt mixed with dill and chives on top. You can find borscht variations everywhere-- beets, potatoes, tomatoes, whatever. 

Maybe you're fortunate and have red wigglers to eat your peelings.  I wish.  After six years, the fruit flies did in our good intentions.

Hair, Hats, and Statistics

Couple of years ago, I knit this hat to go with (remember matching shoes, handbags ) the blue vest made earlier in Rowan Yarn's Cotton Denim yarn.   I was in a mood to be "less white," not younger because my hair began to turn gray in my late twenties.  It was this sense of disappearing : my eyebrows were losing their color.

Visibility is a big issue for me.  Around the same time my voice began to fade.  Ron noticed this and I told him it must be his hearing.  Realized people were asking me to repeat, leaning toward me when I spoke.

Color added to my head became appealing.  Made  another hat in this style.--pretty but looks better off than on.  Wearing it to a recent textile event, Sheila Hicks:  Weaving as Metaphor,  noticed elastic thread would improve the fit.    Later realized that I might have been bolder,  jazzed up my outfit with this Condom Amulet around my neck.  Not an exact-match but complementary, a merge of my 1950s self and the hoped-for, more visible 21st century little red hen.

Maybe without the condom?  Women at the event were highly fibercentric, some would have commented on such a curious, fringed object.  Missed a chance to spread the amulet's safe sex message. 

... about 11% of all new AIDS cases are in people over 50.  Statistics show that new AIDS cases are rising faster in the over 50 population than in people under 40....Centers for Disease Control have just recommended that all teenagers and adults up to age 64 be tested for HIV when they receive routine medical care.  Please tell me how you feel about routine testing for the AIDS virus.         ************************************************************************

Senior Theatre? Older Actors?

Two reviews of movies of particular interest to Elderbloggers appeared recently.  Millie Garfield wrote about the pleasure of watching 78 year old, Joan Plowright in "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont."  I join her in relating to a film star with the courage to wear low-heeled shoes!   The story revolves around Plowright's life-change and adjustment as she moves to a retirement hotel in London.  Millie, who knows about this sort of move, commented, "Unfortunately they don't make enough movies like this anymore." 

Susan Harris, guest blogging at Time Goes By covers many bases in considering another movie,"The Boynton Beach Bereavement Club."  Generally she found it without ageist stereotypes and enjoyable as comedy.  Please read her rewiew itself.  I vote for Susan to do this regularly, at TGB or her own blog, Takoma Gardener (that's Takoma Park, suburb near Washington, D.C.).

Living in the Big Apple, I gravitate toward live theatre--off-Broadway, off-off Broadway, the more affordable options.  In August, Ron and I watched a charming performance of "Evensong."  Mary Gage, a playwright who had plays produced in Australia, shifted to college administration on coming to the states.  This is her first American play.,

Based on interviews with older people in near Bay City, Michigan, Evensong was unusual for NYC, hub of youth culture.  The actors, one was 90 (!) play women and men from 80 to 101.  Music added to the flow of their tales.  Simple choreography, resembling musical chairs, relieved them from sitting and added needed variety.  We enjoyed it for its window on an active future for ourselves.  It would be a pefect vehicle for the Senior Theatre League to promote to its members.

This is June Bingham, playwright.  Look closely at my fuzzy photo from the talk-back for her first play, "Asylum, the strange case of Mary Lincoln."  In the background is a portrait of Lincoln and a young son.  Several of these were used very effectively at the back of the set.  June Bingham is 87.  Described in publicity as a "musical," I tell my friends it is a play with music.  Carmel Owen, the composer, is a much younger parttime fundraiser Bingham met in a workshop.

We enjoyed the play and most of the music.  Carolann Page, sang beautifully as the 56 year old Mary Lincoln, 20 years after her husband's death.  She looked worn and burdened, came to life as she plotted her release from a mental hospital.  The plot was based on the successful effort by Lincoln's son to have his mother declared insane.   We see her as she plots to return to the outside and retrieve her dignity. 

The cast was largely over 50 which is unusual for New York theatre.  This production was far off Broadway at the York Theatre Company dedicated to producing new musicals and bringing back well-loved shows from the past.  (A few years ago, Allan Knee's "Little Women" began here. Lovely show before its music was changed and it became a syrupy Broadway production.)  Closes October 1. 

This week we went to an on-Broadway production-- discounted preview tickets to see Philip Bosco in "Heartbreak House."  Written mid-career by G.B. Shaw in 1917, my first thought when the curtain opened was, "I see why many companies are re-staging classical opera and theatre in modernized ways."  It needed help past its fustiness.  Bosco was appropriately blustery but his voice went in and out of hearing range.  That was a problem with Swoosie Kurtz and a few others.  Byron Jennings, one of the younger players, was excellent, and seemed genuinely engaged in his role.   

Last year I saw an hilarious production of Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" produced with robots by Les Freres Corbusier a young, impudent company.  You can read a review here.  My particular favorite last season,"What Then," by Rinnie Groff, was the work of another under-40 group, Clubbed Thumb. 

It is hard to draw conclusions from the above.  But I still am drawn to seeing reflections of myself in older performers and/or situations relevant to life over 60.  Then I have to ask myself:  if i'm less interested in young people's boozing, sex, angst, should i expect them to care about my issues? 

Moonsnails and Cranberry Beans

Random, chance, these words describe my choices in art-making. 

Moonsnails underfoot on a barrier island in North Carolina.  In the late 1980s I began making neckpieces with beads, weathered shells, hardware.  Often I used eye or "I" beads from various countries as symbols: "good eyes" to ward off evil. The beach strewn with   moonsnails large and small seemed a blanket of natural eye beads.  This large shell [Holden Beach, N.C.] is encircled by copper wire, Italian glass, ceramic, stone, plastic beads; metal washers and tubes, leather cord, vintage button closing.  "Courage, My Love" was its title, the name of a Toronto store visited a couple of years earlier.

Why "weathered" shells?  Pushed around in the ocean, less-than-perfect shells have uneven surfaces, rough edges.  They are my personal vision of women's history of adornment, homage to our aging and survival.

The New York Times mentioned a bean unknown to me in a good-sounding recipe for a parsley pesto. 
1 1/2 pounds cranberry beans (or other fresh beans) in their shells
1 head plus 2 cloves garlic
3 leaves sage
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt
1 cup (packed) fresh parsley leaves
6 ounces (about 4 slices) bacon, cut into small pieces
10 to 12 ounces crimini mushrooms, thinly sliced.

Few days later I saw them in a local greenmarket:   pretty, purple-spotted beans.  Recipe was delicious but the beans lost their spots!

Yarn Harlot Drops into NYC

She describes life on the road promoting her books as "being dropped into this city."  Though hardly anyone's idea of Tinker Bell, Stephanie McPhee does have a creature-from-elsewhere aura.  It's not just being a Canadian from Toronto, though that helps.  She is precisely the same straightforward woman in person as on her blog, Yarn Harlot.  And quirky.

Her voice sounds like someone in your knit circle who has a great sense of the ridiculuous--about yarn fantasies and child-raising.  She is funny and self-deprecating in a way that includes you, the knitter whom she values for being with her in the creation of handmade, not machined-tooled, objects.  In a room filled with yarn and fervid sock knitters, Stephie stood before us--Everywoman as Knitter, brownish shirt and pants, glasses slipping a bit down her nose--exactly as she appears on the cover of her latest, her third, book, Knitting Rules!

If you're having a really good time with a needle someone else (or maybe everyone else) says is crap, ignore the warnings.  You can like crap if it works for you.  [page 60]

Scarf Rescuse Hat:  A while ago, I discovered a way to get out of finishing a scarf ..I could just finish the thing...you'll enjoy it more when you bend a scarf to your will.*  [see page 107 for a 9-step program that will surprise you with its design possibilities, including new ways to measure for size]

Sunday night with Stephie at Knitty City was my dream of the ideal yarn community.  Pearl Chin, proprietor, has in less than a year created a mellow space on New York's Upper West Side.  I'm not even sure if we deserve it or are ready for the challenge.  But we seem to be opening up to the idea that a yarn shop in this overheated, expensive city can have a heart, can have free events along with classes, expensive and not-so-pricey yarn, books.

Stephie was a perfect fit.  (Disclaimer:  she and I had essays in the first KnitLit book.)  I first visited her blog because its name was so bold:  Yarn Harlot.  Beyond her wise writing, I found a kindred spirit, a woman with strong feelings about social justice.  Which brings me to the photo of us (thank you unnamed oberserver who reached out for my camera) during the post-talk, book-signing.  Stephie is famous in "our circles" for sock knitting and for maintaing her sanity (we hope) on book tours by schlepping around socks she's working on.  This practice is always immortalized by photos of sock du jour and the socks of her fans on location, so to speak.

I am not a sock knitter, am cerebrally-challenged by the idea of making two of anything.  Did not make earrings when doing jewelry, can only make it happen if I knit two sleeves at the same time.  However, once a grandmother, I had decent success with booties.  Empowered, I tried slipper socks using Cascade Fixation (cute colors, 5% elastic) from a pattern someone advertised online.  Did not happen, straight into stash.

If you enlarge the photo of us, you'll see Stephie wears my latest creation, "Unfinished Sock as Condom Amulet." She was thrilled.

Of course, this is the woman who has raised over $100,000 with her KNITTERS WITHOUT BORDERS idea:  you give up buying something yarn-related to send a contribution.  She gave me this button for my shirt, in exchange for the sock plus 2 condoms; that worked.  (She told the crowd during her presentation that "knitters condoms," her term  for the plastic bags we use for stash, are the true reason Ziploc sells so many, not food storage as the company claims.)

In between signings, I talked with women like me who've been knitting forever, enticed  a recent law school graduate into buying two balls of pretty yarn she "really loved" to knit her first scarf.    Lisa Daehlin, the soprano/designer (singing in the rain, back in April) dressed to the tens, in one of her flowered hats, respectfully removed to take up less room among the knitters  .  She has a growing following for her knit, crochet classes at Cooper Union.  The entry wall of Knitty City now features her sketches and actual wire-knit bracelets, handbags.  Her exhibit is a seamless shift from my knit worms who were happy to leave Ziploc retirement for a couple of months to promote urban kitchen composting on the Upper West Side.

Susan at Saz Secrets, please note, your name came up in a conversation with Sahara of who wore a gorgeous design of her own, pale green cotton lace dress.  At the end of the evening, we were carrying on about the specialness of knitting blogs.  Myself, I put in a plug for Elderblogging. Do not be confused by today's dive into knit life, alittleredhen is not a knit blog; it's one part of my creative life.  Knitting for Change is the other mostly-knit blog I visit.  However, there's always a possibility for more-- especially if Lisa D starts one on music and yarn.

Thank you, Stephie, for the chance to validate one another.  And for introducing me to your publisher's rep from Storey Publishing. who was genuinely interested in the HIV crisis in women over 50 and open to meeting Sahara and Lisa D who may one day find their way to writing fiber books  My knitting spouse wants you to know, because he found the book the next morning before I was awake, that "Five Hats" chapter in Knitting Rules! may shift his focus.

* speaks to me...one has lingered in my stash 4 years!  

Social Control, city and suburban

Visiting Maya's Granny, I read that she had gone to some effort to disable the verification function on her blog.  That's a good idea.  Upon entering the world of blog-reading, I was really put off by these.  I still am--especially the ones with wiggly letters on mesh (?) backgrounds. 

It was a while before I figured out, once I began my own blog, that every service has a style to decipher when commenting.  At Blogger, I am "other."  Please!  At TypePad, the one I use, visitors with limited knowledge of the internet may be put off by the request for a URL.  It's not required and a better idea are those services that place the word "optional" next to that box.

But back to signs.  Was keep off the grass too direct for whoever thought up this one?  Bought in a vintage store in Baltimore in the 1980s.  Balto, a city with great climate for growing; gardens and trees flourish.  Ron believes this is the reason he had success, though casual, with tomatoes. 

I'm always amused by the level of literacy expected of trespassers, non-conformers to THE RULES.  In the 1960s, I bought this discarded subway sign in a store on east 8th street,  or St. Mark's Place in New York City.  At the time, this juncture of a main thoroughfare was becoming a center for cutting edge art galleries, vintage stores, tiny shops with handmade clothes. It was morphing from lower east side to the "east Village," as the Greenwich Village rents to the west pushed people toward the East River.

These signs were posted, definitely through my post-college days in the 1950s, on a beam about 10 feet from the subway platform.  It was dark out there and you'd have to squint to see it, even though the type was large and commanded attention. I'd thought the sign was amusing for a long time:  no one ever spit!  Fast forward to my return to the City in 1995.  Volunteering as a docent for The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, I learned that the sign was part of a serious public health effort begun in the early 20th century with the ravages of tuberculosis and especially the 1918 influenza epidemic.  Spitting was a source of transmission of both diseases.  One of the re-created apartments in the Museum was where a family had lived as the husband/father was dying from T.B.  I would show a pretty little blue glass container similar in color and shape to this one and ask visitors what they thought its purpose was.  They were surprised to learn it would be carried as well as kept in the home for people to use--instead of spitting on the street or into handkerchiefs. This particular bottle's label reads--

Tablets of SODA MINT Use for Indigestion, Diarrhea. Heartburn.  Dose: 1 or 2 tablets.  Put up by Kent Drug Co. Balto., Md.

Recently in New York, tuberculosis has returned, easily brought from less developed countries. Many of these places are comfortable with public expectoration, as it is more formally known.  But I doubt the NYC Health Department will reinvent these signs in various languages.  I could be wrong. 

Women and Men all over the World

Remarkable how two women mobilized the world one day in 2003, a very cold day in New York City.  We came together for 1,029 performances of Aristophanes' Lysistrata around the world.  In many languages-- from South Wales to Syria, Taiwan to Los Angeles.  Peace has been on the minds of people like you and me for a very long time.      

It was called The Lysistrata Project.                The documentary about it was previewed in Rome on Friday. 

You can see the trailer right here. 

How far would any of us go for peace in our time?

 

UPDATE: Feb.  2014 The Lysistrata Archives...thanks to Mikki Lipsey who has performed in Lysistrata elsewhere the link is now repaired.  Would that we could do the same with the entire world.

When Wishes Get Answered

Yes, it was very very annoying to read I've aged out of internet service at 73.  Or, would have, if my home base was somewhere in England.  This was the report from Time Goes By  earlier this week.  Elderbloggers known and unknown to me, visited the source of this bizarre news here and left comments.  Since This Is London only posts a couple of responses at a time, I was lucky to see an appropriately indignant one from Claude of Blogging in Paris the last time I checked.

What to do?  Make this ageist happening a centerpiece of conversations.  Told a friend at lunch on Tuesday, forwarded it to others.  Could Elderbloggers figure out a way to get younger bloggers to read at least one blog by someone over 55 on a regular basis? Yes, I have no idea how to make this, "Eat your spinach!" notion have legs.

And then it happened.  Rhea of The Boomer Chronicles landed in my Comments!  Is this synchronicity, almost-full-moon occurrence?  She was glad to learn about Grandmothers against the War.  Well, I responded, you have answered this old lady's wish.  It was all very heady, as they say.  Of course, now I'll add her blog to those I regularly read. 

HARLEM, Tale of Two Cameras

Once I acquired a Sony digital, figured how to turn it on, produce a picture, my longtime 35 mm companion was left behind.  It's heavier, suffers from lack of immediate gratification.  But I've noticed certain photos still need the old one.  Couple of months ago I took this from my window on the 21st floor.   

The idea was to show the fruit stand under blue umbrellas that opens for business every morning at the corner of 125th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, the "highway through Manhattan."  As I write traffic noise includes fire engine and ambulance sirens, buses, cars with faulty mufflers,  sometimes so intense that I retreat to the bathroom, only room without windows, to talk on the phone.  My shots of this same view with my digital were fuzzy.

This morning, on my way to the crosstown bus, behind those trees on the right, I risked missing one to get these two digital photos of the fruit stand itself. Very immediate...children on way to public school in uniforms.  Not bad when you click on them to enlarge--but dark.  Do I need to do something to get better images besides miss the bus?  Or, is this the trade-off for small digital, limited lenses?  Speak to me, elderbloggers, I've seen your sites with truly stuffing photos.

Wishing Them a Peaceful Future

This past Wednesday the weekly Grandmothers Against the War vigil* at Rockefeller Center was visited by this young bridal couple plus photographers.

I asked Joan Wile (who started the vigil three years ago) if she had any idea why they'd choose this busy street as a wedding photo site.  "Maybe they wanted to have St. Patrick's in the background," she speculated.  Whatever...we hope, when they review images for their album, they'll be pleased that a bunch of New York grannies is looking out for their years ahead.

Joan has written several articles about the Granny Peace Brigade's ongoing activities for Michael Moore's website .  A recent publisher's request for a book about the group's development and adventures, has her rolling out chapters.  Later this month features an anti-war event for Grandparents' Day on September 10. Always timely.

*Wednesdays, 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., Rockefeller Center (across from Saks 5th Avenue), your presence always welcome at the vigil, regardless of age.