Good fences, good neighbors?

Now that Seattle weather is warming up,  people in our neighborhood are starting to "come out" again.  It's nice to see folks, but a just couple of houses down, they are complete strangers.

We've lived in this same house for over 35 years, but we only know a sprinkling of our next door neighbors.  And by saying "know,"  that just means first names and we wave occasionally.  In all those years, I've never set foot in a neighbor's house!  That strikes me as odd, and rather sad.  It's enough to make a person paranoid.   

But it isn't unusual. According to a Pew Research study, only 43 percent of Americans “know most or all of their neighbors.” Meanwhile, 29 percent said they know just some of their neighbors by name. And 28 percent said they know “none.”

With all the new high rise apartments buildings springing up and thousands of people moving to West Seattle, I suppose the anonymity and isolation will only increase.  It's going to be like living in Manhattan, but without the perks.

Las Vegas has endless suburbs with tract houses that stretch across the desert in every direction.  My sister has a nice house in one of these developments, and when we were visiting we took a walk through her neighborhood.  I was pleasantly surprised that she knew everyone on her street, and even people beyond her immediate neighbors. Not just names, but where they worked and what they did and other interesting stuff.  Of course Marji is a friendly, outgoing person and she makes friends easily.

I've never been a fan of suburbia, but there is something nice about that cul de sac lifestyle. It seems to bring people together more naturally than our fenced-in rows of city houses.

Or maybe it just appeals to that Gladys Kravitz in me. Ha!

Well, the big West Seattle annual community yard sale is coming up on Saturday and I always look forward to it.  There are over 350 separate sales within a mile or so. 

No, I don't need a thing. I always come back with fun stuff anyway, and happy from a day of wandering around chatting with the nice people who live nearby.  Under all those roofs and behind all those fences, we really are pretty much the same.

Movie memories

When our family moved from Pennsylvania to Colorado Springs in the late 1950's, the downtown looked like this.  Just a few miles out of town the prairie began abruptly, with real working ranches. 

Colorado Springs was built on Cripple Creek gold rush money. When the gold petered out, the city began to reinvent the economy around auto tourism and the military. After WWII, thousands of acres of open land were donated to the Army and Air Force, resulting in Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy, Peterson Field. etc. 

With the huge influx of military personnel, not to mention demand for inexpensive, postwar housing, Colorado Springs spread far out from the original town core.  If you fly into COS airport these days you'll see monotonous, endless suburbia covering what was once open land.  Of course this is true of most American cities.

Unfortunately, Colorado Springs lost many downtown landmarks along with history and heritage.  The city planners in the 1950's believed you had to get rid of the old in order to build the new.  The magnificent old Antler's Hotel on Pikes Peak Avenue closed in 1964 and was torn down.

The Antlers Hotel was one of the dramatic architectural causalities, and it was replaced with something that now looks like a tired, concrete Marriott. The bland Colorado Springs downtown is the result of what happened in the '60s and '70s.

As the suburbs grew, the classic old movie theaters on Pikes Peak Avenue gradually closed.  It's kind of amazing that even small Colorado Springs supported four theaters within a few blocks: The Ute, The Peak, The Chief, The Trail. My brother and sister will recall these, because going to the movies was a big event.  They had fancy lobbies, exciting balconies and lavish theme decorations.  The Chief and The Ute were done up in a politically incorrect western "Indian" decor.

I remember the theaters better than the movies, with the exception of Hard Day's Night at The Chief in 1964, a turning point in my young life.  I suddenly wanted to be any place except boring Colorado Springs.

Oh, yes. Later there was also this drive-in east of downtown. Double dates, scratchy speaker hung on the window, dusty trips back and forth to the snack bar. 

Another place of teenage memories, but you can use your imagination on that one!

The musical fruit

For my pressure cooking friends, here's a recipe for ham and navy bean soup. Well, actually it's more of a technique-- I never met a soup recipe I didn't tinker with and you can, too. 

Of course a regular pot works if you have hours to hang around the house. But with trial and error, I've found the real beauty of pressure cooking isn't just speed (which is nice, of course) but the way the closed method of cooking pulls intense flavor from whatever you throw in there. Like a pile of nasty-looking leftover bones and rough cut vegetables.

This ham and bean soup is a two-step process, but worth it. And it freezes really well.

Ham and Bean Soup

1 leftover, gnarly-looking, picked-over ham bone. (Set aside a few nice chunks of meat) 
1 onion, skin on, quartered
2 chopped carrots
2 stalks chopped celery
A few grinds of fresh black pepper (no salt) 
Optional:  a teaspoon of dried thyme, dried or fresh parsley

Pile everything in the pressure cooker, add enough water to cover the entire mess (or up to the fill line.) Bring it to high pressure and cook for 45-60 minutes. Remove from heat. After it cools somewhat, strain through a fine colander into a large bowl.  Cover and refrigerate.

Set out 3 cups of dried white beans to soak before you go to bed.

In the morning, there will be a hard layer of fat on the broth. Spoon it off and throw away. 

With the perfect soup base, now you can get creative. This broth would also make a great minestrone. For bean soup, saute about a cup each of chopped onion, carrot and celery, along with a garlic clove in a bit of olive oil in the pressure cooker.  Add the soaked beans, cover with the cold broth and cook on high pressure for about 15 minutes. After the beans are done, add those nice fresh chunks of ham you saved. As pretty as bean soup can be.

More beans?

Today is Cinco de Mayo, so how about homemade re-fried. These are nothing like the kind you pry out of the Rosarita can.

Cook 3 cups of (soaked) pinto beans on high pressure for about 15 minutes.  They need to be soft and mash-able.  But no surprise, the secret of authentic, delicious Mexican beans is fat. Traditionally they are "fried" in a big chunk of melted lard.  But as John will tell you, a bit of pig gets stretched a long way in this house. 

So a couple slices of minced bacon is just right. Once it's crispy, dump the cooked beans on top and get out your potato masher.  Add the saved cooking liquid as you go along until they are nice and creamy.

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Generations

My Grandparents Generation
by Faith Shearin

They are taking so many things with them:
their sewing machines and fine china,
their ability to fold a newspaper
with one hand and swat a fly.
They are taking their rotary telephones,
and fat televisions, and knitting needles,
their cast iron frying pans, and Tupperware.
They are packing away the picnics
and perambulators, the wagons
and church socials. They are wrapped in
lipstick and big band music, dressed
in recipes. Buried with them: bathtubs
with feet, front porches, dogs without leashes.
These are the people who raised me
and now I am left behind in
a world without paper letters,
a place where the phone
has grown as eager as a weed.
I am going to miss their attics,
their ordinary coffee, their chicken
fried in lard. I would give anything
to be ten again, up late with them
in that cottage by the river, buying
Marvin Gardens and passing go,
collecting two hundred dollars.

Happy Birthday, Dave!

There comes a point in your life when you realize how quickly time goes by, and how quickly it has gone. Then it really speeds up exponentially. With that, I think you start to put a lot of things into context; you start to see how huge the world is, and really, the universe.

Michael Keaton

Festival of Flora, etc.

The local news this morning was full of warnings about disruptions and traffic chaos expected from May Day protests and marches downtown. A "Celebration of Anarchy" is planned. Oh, boy.

Fortunately, I'm headed in the opposite direction to the mountains.  It's a beautiful sunny day, which tends to bring out the "anarchists" in Seattle.  As least the ones that don't have to go to work. Today is celebrated as Labor Day in many countries, but it seems to have evolved into a day to protest every issue in the universe.

Long before the labor movement, communism, socialism and every other sort of "ism,"  May Day was a pagan holiday. In ancient Rome it was the Festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers. It was a time of wearing bright colors, drinking and all sorts of permissive behavior. 

By the middle ages, these pagan spring festivals were adapted to the Church calendar and became the celebration of Whitsun, or Pentecost.  There weren't many holidays for the medieval working stiff that involved feasting, dancing, and parties, but this was one of them.   In England, people gathered flowers to "bring in the May" and danced around a maypole with garlands.

There were many superstitions associated with May Day, including the belief that washing yoiur face with dew on the morning of May 1 would beautify the skin.

May Day never became part of American culture, mainly because the Puritans forbade celebrating holidays with pagan origins. But May Basket Day was the exception, and in some parts of the country it was once a big deal. There really was a time when America was more innocent.

Eleanore Roosevelt receives a May basket in 1938

 
On May 1, children would gather flowers and make construction paper cones to hang on the doorknobs. A nice reversal, because on almost every other holiday, children receive gifts from grownups. Part of the fun and excitement of course was trying to sneak around undetected.

Our little neighbor girls used to bring May baskets over, and Amanda made them too, but that was over 35 years ago. Like so many other sweet old customs, May baskets have fallen by the wayside. We never see children outside anymore playing alone, or even walking to school without a grownup.  Much less, leaving things on the doorsteps of strangers.