Fingers and toes

In just the last two weeks I've had appointments with both a hand surgeon and a podiatrist!  That's a new record for me with doctor visits. I'm truly blessed with good health and so I avoid conventional medicine as much as possible.  Most minor afflictions go away sooner or later. America is going bankrupt with heath care costs, yet statistics show we're the unhealthiest rich country in the world. More medicine is not always good medicine. So I've never been one to head to the doctor often, other than an annual checkup and the usual sensible screenings for people my age. 

But when I need to consult a doctor, I like most of them despite myself. Maybe I've just been lucky in the choices, or it's because I seldom go and so appreciate their advice more. It's no surprise that my hands and feet have taken a real beating in 62 years. We all know feet are complicated and terrific and necessary, but we take them for granted until they hurt. (More on the hand doctor later.)

A few weeks ago I sprained my ankle trying to balance too long on one leg in yoga class.  It wasn't getting better, so I finally went to a neighborhood foot doctor yesterday.  The wonderful man spend an hour examining my poor old feet with fascination (really?) and telling me all about my conformation idiosyncrasies.  As a farrier would say in the horse world. Basically, my self diagnosis was right-- he said an injured deep tendon that should heal slowly with stretching, wrapping and all the usual things. A real drag, but not the end of the world.

Greek toe

He also enjoyed describing my short metatarsal bones, a condition known as "Morton toe" or "Greek toe."  John has been known to refer to it more cruelly as my "deformed" toes.   The shortened metatarsal means that the second toe is noticeably longer than the big toe. This isn't a great tragedy, but it can aggravate problems, such as what I'm having now.  Morton toe used to be called a genetic defect, but since 10% of the population have the condition it's now kindly referred to as just a "genetic variant."  It's more common with people of European ancestry, so some of my German ancestors must have been walking around on funny feet.  I got it from my mother.

Art museums are full of examples of Morton toes on Greek and Roman statues and Renaissance paintings.  I don't feel too bad because the Statue of Liberty has a foot that looks exactly like mine, and she has been standing there for quite a while.  It must have once been considered very beautiful.

  Take that, John.

Old comics

The "Teenie Weenies" was a comic strip created by William Donahey in 1914. It's mostly forgotten now, but it ran in newspapers for over 50 years. The Teenie Weenies were hardworking and sweet natured little people who lived under a rose bush, trying to get by in a world of real sized objects.

I think they are adorable, and you can still find pictures from the books and old cartoon strip on the Internet.  However...Google teenie weenies at your own risk! Some of you know what I'm talking about. :-)

Poltergeist

That might look like just an ordinary kitchen TV, but it's possessed by a poltergeist. It sometimes turns on in the middle of the night, all by itself. The kitchen is just a few steps from the bedroom so I'll wake up to flashing lights and noise-- just another weird dream? Or sometimes it's blaring away when we walk in the door, and no one ever watches television here during the day, except the poltergeist.

So we've learned to turn the sound down when we shut it off, so not be awakened by an infomercial at 2 am.  I could go on Ask.com and probably get a mechanical or electronic explanation from some smarty-pants, but it's more fun to blame it on our poltergeist.

A poltergeist is the apparent manifestation of an invisible but noisy, disruptive or destructive entity. Most accounts of poltergeist manifestations involve noises and destruction that have no apparent cause. Reports also include inanimate objects being picked up and thrown as if by an invisible person; noises such as knocking, rapping, or even human voices.

The stars of tomorrow

For the past 60 years, the Metropolitan Opera has sponsored an annual singing competition to search for new young talent.  Auditions are held in different regions of the United States and Canada, giving singers the opportunity to enter the contest locally.  Those who advance from their district auditions move up to compete at the regional level, such as the concert we went to yesterday afternoon at Meany Hall.

Eleven singers under the age of 30 were competing for a place at the national audition in New York at the Metropolitan Opera. This competition is a big deal because it has launched many operatic careers, including stars like Renée Fleming and Spokane's Thomas Hampson.

It was a wet, gloomy Sunday afternoon and a good time to drive up to the UW and sit inside listening to some of the most famous opera arias ever.  Each of the 11 contestants yesterday sang 2 separate arias, one of their choosing and one chosen by the judge.  As you can imagine, this took some time and at the end there was a wait for the judges decisions. But if you love opera and like the drama of live competition, the 3 hour audition is a bargain for a $20 ticket. There's also an "audience choice" award where you pit your ear against the pros and pick the winner, American Idol style. 

There's a interesting PBS documentary film about the audition that shows just how nail-biting it is. We just found out that Michael Fabiano (one of the most intense competitors in the film) will sing Rudolfo in La Boheme when we go to Seattle Opera later this spring.

Seasons change

"The early bird gets the worm, 

but the second mouse gets the cheese"

Willie Nelson 

I'm sorry it's so bitter cold back East, even though you expect it in January.   Around here, believe it or not, the mood is turning toward spring.  The first bulbs like Dutch iris and alliums are coming up and many plants in the garden barely died back or froze at all, including potted geraniums and jasmine, despite those 10 days of freezing fog.  I gloat in the rare years when that happens, even though it doesn't have anything to do with me.  Well, other than that old fleece blanket I throw on pots in the basement stairwell.

Last night the sun set after 5 pm for the first time in many months. True, Seattle springs are chilly, damp, gray, drawn-out affairs, but close to Puget Sound it's relatively mild and always very, very green. From my desk yesterday I watched the fat robins running in and out of the hedge scratching for worms. All the birds are washing off winter in the (dirty) fountain basin. Outdoor work will be calling soon.

N.C. Wyeth

The Young Charles Lindberg
N.C. Wyeth

N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945) was an American artist and the father of several talented children, including the famous Andrew Wyeth.  N.C. created over 3,000 paintings and illustrations in his lifetime. When he was young, he said he liked doing "true, solid American subjects" like cowboys and Indians, but later worked on landscapes, fantasy books and medieval subjects.  He did advertisements for companies like Coca-Cola and Cream of Wheat and hated the commercialism his family depended on.  But if you Google nc wyeth images you'll see there really wasn't anything he couldn't paint. Here's a few examples.

The Giant

The Prospector

Dance of the Whooping Cranes

The Bronco Buster

I know these western subjects were done in a different time and place, but his straining, skinny, panicked horses kind of hard to look at.

 

Cimmaron

Bronco Rider

Peas in a pod

Winter riding school

Morning Exercise in the Winter Riding School

Julius von Blaas

The Spanish Riding School Arena

Vienna, Austria

Someday I would love to see a performance of the famous Lipizzaner stallions in Austria. They sometimes travel the world, but the Tacoma Dome just wouldn't be the same. Their home arena is a spotless, sunlight flooded hall with a royal box and a portrait of Emperor Charles VI that the riders always salute when they enter.  

Traditionally, Lipizzaners at the school have been trained only by men. In October 2008, two women, an 18-year-old from the United Kingdom and a 21-year-old from Austria, passed the entrance exam and were accepted to train as riders at the school - the first women to do so in 436 years. I don't know if I envy or feel sorry for them.  Talk about a man's world. Almost as bad as the Vienna Philharmonic.

Hauling in to our winter arena

Fall City, Washington

 Cindy calling out patterns to Jen riding Spanky

Around here, recreational riding is definitely a woman's world. The more ambitious friends are practicing patterns for upcoming Western Dressage shows. The lazy ones are trotting their horses around the track, chatting and watching others work. Guess what category Dolly and I fall into?

Look up

Mt. Rainier

My brother Dave took these pictures last weekend when he drove toward Mt. Rainier National Park, where the mountain is shining above us in the warm sun. This weird temperature inversion in Washington has persisted for almost 10 days.

The road up to Hawaii

That smirch you see in the distance is Seattle, where we've been creeping around under a freezing and dirty fog.  But if you can escape to the foothills or up the mountain passes, it's brilliant sunshine and t-shirt weather. And the higher you go, the warmer it gets.  At the top of the lift at the Snoqualmie Ski area, the temperature was 50 degrees yesterday.  To put that in perspective, we haven't been out of the 30's in Seattle for days.

This has been our dismal front porch view. You're used to hearing me complain about the endless rain,  but it will be welcome tonight when it finally comes back to clear out the polluted air.  

On the bright side, it was just another blue bird day at the barn yesterday. The sun in the foothills is unseasonably strong, and you could almost fool yourself into thinking summer was close. In just a week Mt. Si went from this...

To this...

We miss you, Roger

Roger Merrill

With great sadness I'm writing that our friend Roger passed away on Friday. Over the years, his wife Candi wrote a beautiful and moving blog called Bone Marrow Boogie that documented their lives together while they faced his illness with great courage.

He was a wonderful husband and a delightful friend.  He was kind, funny and bright.  He was an amazing artist. Above all, Roger was a creative thinker who believed everything started with good ideas, and with more ideas the world could only get better. We used to tease him about the little notebook he carried around.  We loved his optimism and energy, his keen artist's eye.

Leukemia eventually took Roger's life, but it never touched his joy and zest for living.  He had tremendous vitality.  We have many beautiful memories of time spent with Roger and Candi. We'll always hear his voice in animated conversations, see him in the garden, sitting at the dining room table, and remember him in all the other places we enjoyed together. Our world won't be the same without him.

But of the many things I loved about Roger, the thing I loved most was how much he loved Candi.

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are...

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.
All is well.

 by, Henry Scott Holland

Zero visibility

The fog is so thick this morning the weatherman said in certain areas visibility was down to "zero."  I guess that means you might as well go out and drive with a paper bag over your head.  To add to our misery, the fog is freezing and thick white frost coats every surface of your car.  The furnace runs and runs, but the house still feels chilly. The irony is that down here at sea level the temperatures were in the 20's and 30's yesterday, but a few thousand feet up it was sunny and in the 50s. Spring skiing conditions in the mountains.

 

Even worse than gloomy fog, these winter inversions trap pollution at the surface until marine air finally comes in to wash it away.  Rain isn't expected in Seattle until the middle of next week. 

Banana bread

I've tried different recipes, but my banana bread was always the worst.  It was dried out and pale, or had a gooey top that refused to bake before the bottom was scorched.   Not long ago a friend shared her favorite recipe, so I like to pass it along. It makes children and husbands happy, and best of all-- easy!

Dissolving the baking soda in the sour cream must be the magic trick. Next time you have 3 ripe bananas laying around, give it a try.

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter softened
2 eggs slightly beaten
4 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups banana pulp
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Cream the butter and sugar.  Add eggs and vanilla.  Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream in small dish, then mix well into the mixture.  Add bananas and nuts, then flour and salt.  Bake in a 350 oven.

It seems to work best if you mix it by hand. You can use a regular loaf pan, but I like the minis because this recipe makes a perfect three. One to eat, one to give away, one to freeze.

Annual performance review

We've had the GE gas range for almost a year so it's had a good workout with a full round of holiday meals. Sometimes I still miss my old muscle car, the commercial Viking, although for my home cooking it was like driving a Ferrari to the store for a carton of milk. Overkill and over-powered for our little kitchen.

Once I got used to it, the GE performed fine, especially when it comes to baking, not my specialty, except for Manhattan-style cheesecake, which John said was the best I ever made this Christmas.  The GE has a timer and sensitive oven controls, and the Viking was just a blast furnace.

But the mighty Viking had the edge with stir-fries, cast iron skillet steaks and of course the thrilling, searing hot, infrared restaurant broiler that charred meat beautifully. I loved that broiler, even though it almost burned the kitchen down last year.  But the GE broiler is fine for easy things like garlic toast, and I'll wait until summer and do my flaming steak outside.

The GE convection oven also bakes a pretty good pizza pie.

More of the same

The month is passing in a pleasantly boring way-- neither of us caught the awful cold that went around with the holidays.  I sprained my ankle slightly last week showing off to other ladies in yoga class while doing the "eagle pose."  We all know that ego and pride are never part of yoga practice (ha ha.) 

No, this fellow isn't in our class, or I would have been really showing off.  What else is going on? John pruned the fig tree without mishap, also good.  For evening entertainment, there is Season 3 of Downton Abbey.  When will something nice ever happen to poor Lady Edith? Last night she got jilted at the altar, but thank heavens the family won't need to move to their tiny mansion.

The only real news this morning is our unusual January weather.  We're in the middle of a long streak of dry days, but it's about 15 degrees colder than normal. The bright western sky made a quick and pretty sunset last night.  The entire west coast is cold and they are panicking in Los Angeles.  Here's some clips from the local news down there that will make you laugh.  This is from Scott Sistek's KOMO TV weather blog.

Over

Even the loyal 12th man fans must feel like Popeye today. About an hour into the game I had to take an escapist nap.  When I woke up, there were 30 seconds left to play and the Seahawks had just made a touchdown. Woo-ho, we couldn't possibly lose now. As John likes to remind me,  it isn't over until it's over.   I took a walk outside after the game, and it seemed like a great sad hush had fallen over our neighborhood.  But as they say...there's always next year.

Frosty the Mountain

Here's some pictures of magnificent Mt. Si in winter glory, seen from the Snoqualmie barn yesterday.

It was too cold to ride more than a few minutes, but we'll take the blue sky and crunchy mud over sloppy rain-- anytime.  I think the horses agree, especially the part about short rides.

We're headed for a nice stretch of clear, cold weather in Seattle.  As usual, I spoke too soon about those geraniums making it through the winter.

This weekend is all about the Seahawks playoff game.  We heard on the news that some local churches were canceling services tomorrow morning to spare people the guilt of not attending. So it goes.

"Rarely do I attach guilt to something pleasant. Life's too short."
 Robin Gibb

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to our Great-grandma Wilda.

Have a wonderful day.

Love from, 

Nova, Maya

and all your Washington family.

P.S. It's so cold out here in the Methow Valley my dad loaned me his hat!
(Thanks, Amanda for the fun pictures of the girls.)

"The inside of joy"

It took me over a month to finish Barbara Kingsolver's novel Flight Behavior, which might be a new personal best for slow reading.  I've been busy during the day, and you don't get very far in 15 minutes before you fall asleep and the book flops over.  But it's also one of those novels that deserve close reading, with excellent writing and a multi-layered story.

Barbara Kingsolver wrote The Bean Trees (1988) and The Poisonwood Bible (1998) read by every 1990's book club, so she has many fans. She was a biologist long before she became a writer, and her novels often have themes about community, biodiversity and climate change.

In the first chapter of Flight Behavior, an unhappy young wife heads up the hill from her farm in Appalachia for a tryst. There she sees the forest below her "burning" like a lake of fire. The color is actually millions of Monarch butterflies.  Needless to say, the insects are far off track up in the Tennessee woods.

Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve- Mexico

She describes the sight like this:

It looked like the inside of joy, if a person could see that. A valley of lights, an ethereal wind. It had to mean something.

And so, it does. This strange event sets in place big changes in her life and for the community.  She becomes a celebrity and the hardscrabble farmers encounter scientists, journalists and sightseers for the first time.  The "butterfly miracle" sparks a host of explanations from religious leaders and the media.  Great characters and a good story follows.

The story of butterflies wintering in Tennessee is fiction, but in Mexico it's estimated that up to a billion butterflies arrive in any given year.  The butterfly reserve (now a World Heritage Site) is 60 miles NW of Mexico City in a small belt of oak and pine forests in the mountains.  The Monarch butterfly is the only species to make a long north-south migration like birds. In Mexico they fill the sky like clouds and their beating wings look like rain.

Even more incredible than a billion butterflies in once place is the fact this area, so close to a major city,  wasn't even discovered by scientists until the 1970's. Some of you may still remember the almost unbelievable National Geographic article and photographs published in 1975.