Caernarfon Star

The neighbor’s kids are all back in school. The maple and chestnut trees are trading their green coats for much more colorful ones. There are still a few fine days left, but before long we won't dare leave the house without a sweater or a jacket. We’ve decided to take advantage of the calm before colder weather sets in and take one last end-of-the-season road trip. We’ll drive to Wales to see the Irish Sea, Portmeirion, and Caernarfon Castle. I don’t know how much of a language or cultural barrier I should expect. Welsh sounds like Greek to me, and it looks a lot like Polish. They’re both very frugal with their vowels. I’m told most people in Wales are bilingual and only speak Welsh when they want to annoy the English. As we’re not English, maybe it won’t be a problem. O na byddai'n haf o hyd! Oh, that summer would last forever!

Family Tree

As a teenager I was companion to an elderly woman who lived alone. I don’t recall whether I volunteered or was paid. If payment was involved, I’m sure it was less than the going rate and more than I deserved. On my first visit she asked who my people were. I was stumped by the question. When I realized she was asking about my ancestors, my answers were short and disappointing. I know a good deal more about “my people” now. If she asked me today I could say they were Mormon pioneers, pilgrims, veterans of World War II, the Mexican-American War and the Revolutionary War, federal prisoners and fugitives from the law. They were shop-keepers, scholars, farmers, teachers, housewives, and even a few noblemen. There are several I’d like to meet in the life to come. Among my many questions, I’m sure I’d ask, “Who were YOUR people?”

Next Door Neighbor

Our neighbors will move away in a few days. We’ve known this day was coming for some time, but somehow that hasn’t made it any easier. For two and a half years now, these people have been much more than neighbors to us. They’ve been surrogate family. We’ve swapped marmalade and biscuits. They invited us to barbecues and teas in their home. They put up with the strange things we will and won’t drink, and have bent over backwards to try to accommodate us. They even shared our Christmas dinner so we wouldn’t have to spend our first Christmas in England alone. Watching their baby daughter growing up has made it a little less painful to be so far from our grandson. And now they’re leaving. The only thing worse than saying goodbye to lovely people like this would be to have never had the chance to know them in the first place.

Penguin

Nope, today isn’t Penguin Awareness Day. That’s January 20. It isn’t World Penguin Day, either. World Penguin Day is April 25. But since I missed both those important holidays this year, I’m posting a penguin block today. I plan to pencil in both dates on my calendar next year, so I won’t repeat my oversight. Maybe I could throw a party and screen a few penguin movies, like March of the Penguins (2005), Wallace and Gromit and the Wrong Trousers (1993), Madagascar (2005), Surf’s Up (2007), Happy Feet (2006), The Pebble and the Penguin (1995) or even Batman Returns (1992). Mr. Popper’s Penguins (2011) should be released on DVD by then. I could ask my guests to come dressed in black and white. Tails optional, of course. What do you suppose is the proper food to serve on a penguin holiday? Pizza with anchovies? Or maybe Oreo cookies?

Apple Cake

John Chapman was born September 26, 1774 on a small farm in Massachusetts. He loved his father’s apple orchard, and when he grew up he decided to spread apple trees throughout the western frontier. What he called "the west" is what we call Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. According to the legend, Johnny Appleseed went about spreading random apple seeds, but what he actually did was plant nurseries. He built fences around them to protect the seedlings from deer and livestock, and he’d leave them in the care of folks who lived nearby. He didn’t go about with a pot on his head, but he did wear old clothing that people swapped for the saplings he grew, and he often went barefoot in the summer so his shoes would last longer. He lived very simply as an itinerant preacher until his death at age seventy. 

Rabbit

The fourth Saturday in September is International Rabbit Day. Rabbits are the third most popular pet in the world, after dogs and cats. I’ve cared for a lot of pets over the years: finches, turtles, guinea pigs, iguanas, parakeets, hedgehogs, gerbils, cats, hamsters and snakes. The list even includes a pigeon, a chicken, a tarantula, a cockatiel, a skunk and a few ducks. I’ve only owned one rabbit. I don’t even remember his name. He was soft and brown and very fond of chewing things, including electrical cords. It was a habit that easily could have been the end of him, but instead it was the end of his career as an indoor house pet. He was several times larger than the wild rabbits here. They pop out of the hedges around sunset to nibble on the grass, looking exactly like Beatrix Potter’s Peter - without the little blue jacket.

Aspen Leaf

Today (at least in the northern hemisphere) is the autumnal equinox. Or, if you want to be excruciatingly correct, it WILL be the autumnal equinox exactly one hour from now. This is the point at which the earth’s axis points neither toward nor away from the sun. It is the official beginning of the autumn season, though we have been enjoying crisp, cool weather and brightly colored leaves for several weeks now. My husband and I were both raised in upstate New York, where the fall foliage brings out scores of “leaf peepers” every year. When we lived in the Salt Lake valley, we used to drive up into the canyons to look for signs of autumn. Here in Harrogate, all we have to do to put ourselves in an autumn mood is to walk through the Stray into town and share a chocolate chestnut truffle at Betty’s Tea Room.

Elephant

Elephants have always been my favorite zoo animals. Lions are cool, and it’s fun to watch penguins waddle and monkeys swing around. But there’s just something about elephants. It’s hypnotic the way they sway from side to side. I love their wrinkly, bumpy grey skin. Their shoulders roll when they walk; something you probably wouldn’t notice unless you’ve ridden an elephant. It gives you the alarming impression that you’re about to be pitched forward over the elephant’s head. I’m not the only person who adores elephants, because there’s a special day set aside for them. This is Elephant Appreciation Day. I can’t visit a zoo today, and I don’t feel like donating to SaveTheElephants.org. I made an elephant quilt block instead. If you’re a seven-year-old (or you know one) you could always tell an elephant joke: How can you tell there’s an elephant in the bathtub with you? By the smell of peanuts on his breath.

Sewing Circle

A week from tomorrow is quilt-and-craft day at my church. Heather and I wait all month for Quilting Thursday. She likes to thumb through her collection of DVD movies, trying to decide which ones she’ll share with the “Quilting Women.” The ones she brings varies from month to month, but she nearly always plays Anastasia and The Swan Princess. I have a few projects of my own to bring; a queen-size snowball quilt in blues and tans, a stack of log cabin blocks ready to be set, and a pink baby quilt I never got around to finishing. We like to plan a dish to share, too. In the past we’ve brought seafood lasagna, banana walnut bread, carrot cake, white chicken chili, pumpkin crumb cake, and zucchini bread with raisins. This month I’m torn between a pot of minestrone and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Of course I could always bring them both.

Time and Tide

Time and tide wait for no man, or so says a very old proverb. They wait for no woman, either. I used to think the “tide” in this case meant the rise and fall of the ocean. But I read somewhere that it actually refers to events, tidings or news; what the tide might bring in. In other words, no matter how powerful you might be or how hard you may try, you can’t hold back the inevitable. There are so many of these little snippets of wisdom, and a good number of them have to do with time. Time heals all wounds. A stitch in time saves nine. Time flies when you’re having fun. Time is money. My grandma loved to say, “This too shall pass.” It was her wise response to nearly everything, good or bad. And here are my own two personal favorites: Look before you leap, and He who hesitates is lost.

Pirate Ship

While playing racquetball June 6 1995, John Baur and Mark Summers began to talk like pirates for no reason at all. “Cap’n Slappy” and “Ol’ Chumbucket,” as their friends know them, decided that there should be a day set aside for otherwise mature, sensible people to talk and dress like pirates. So they founded International Talk Like a Pirate Day. As June 6 was already taken, they chose the 19th of September: Summers’ ex-wife’s birthday. A few years later they sent a letter to columnist Dave Barry, who liked and promoted the idea. The holiday has definitely caught on. There are even pirate-speak translator websites to get you started. My grandson celebrates his first birthday today. It may be a while before he’s ready to talk much - pirate lingo or otherwise - but I’ll wish him a very happy birthday all the same: “Avast, laddie, ye’ll be an old salt smartly.”

Apple Dumplings

Welcome to Apple Dumpling Day! These sweet treats are best eaten while watching any movie with Don Knotts or Tim Conway. Or both.

Apple Dumplings

6 small Rome, Braeburn or golden delicious apples, peeled and cored
2 Pillsbury unroll-and-fill pie crusts
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup honey or Karo corn syrup
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Heat oven to 425F (220C). Flatten pastry and cut each circle into 3 equal wedges. Place an apple on each wedge and fill with raisins and nuts. Pull corners of each wedge together above each apple. Moisten edges of pastry and seal. Place dumplings in 9x13" glass pan. Heat remaining ingredients in saucepan to a boil while stirring. Boil 3 minutes. Pour syrup around dumplings in pan and bake 40 minutes. Spoon syrup over dumplings a few times while baking. Serve warm with cream.

Pencil

One of my favorite movies is You’ve Got Mail (1998) with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The story has been done before. You may have seen In the Good Old Summer Time (1949) with Judy Garland and Van Johnson, or The Shop Around the Corner (1940) with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan. It was also an adorable Broadway musical called She Loves Me (1963) by the same composer and lyricist who gave us Fiddler on the Roof. I think it was originally an Hungarian play named Parfumerie. It’s about two penpals who are unaware that they know each other - and hate each others’ guts. Here’s the quote that made me think of it today: “Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”

Star Struck

When I was a girl my family lived in southern California. From time to time we took trips to the beach to walk in the sand and watch the waves. On one occasion we encountered Walter Matthau and his family doing the same thing. At the time I barely knew who he was. I guess you can’t swing a dead cat in southern California without hitting a famous actor. But Utah has her share of film celebrities, too. Robbie Benson, Tony Danza, Edward Herrman, Buddy Hackett, Cheech Marin and of course Robert Redford all have or had homes in Utah. Yorkshire lays claim to a few stars, too. Judi Dench is from York and Ben Kingsley is from Scarborough. Sean Bean (Boromir from Lord of the Rings) hails from Sheffield. Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter) was raised in Leeds. Patrick Stewart has a summer home in Grassington. I’ve been to all these places, but I’ve never run into any of them.

Rail Fence Flags

On this day in 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the poem, Defence of Fort McHenry. It described the bombardment of Fort McHenry by ships of the British Royal Navy in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812. His poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song. The Star-Spangled Banner, as it is more commonly known, was adopted as the national anthem of the United States of America in 1931. Before that, other songs served as official American hymns, including Hail, Columbia and My Country ‘Tis of Thee. I’d be happy to see our national anthem replaced by America the Beautiful. Not only because Star-Spangled Banner, with its one and a half octave range, is nearly impossible to sing well. I just think “amber waves of grain” and “purple mountains majesty” describe my feelings about my country better than “rockets’ red glare” and “bombs bursting in air.”

Roman Stripes

September 13, 122 AD construction began on Hadrian’s Wall. Roughly 10 feet wide and 20 feet high, the wall stretched 80 miles from the Irish Sea to the North Sea. Fortified gates along the wall permitted trade with the north and a tax on goods passing through. We visited one of these, Housestead’s Fort, two years ago. It’s in a remote area, which probably explains why so much of it is still there. A parking lot, gift shop, café and restrooms are at the base of a hill, and the fort is half an hour away (at Heather’s pace) up a steep, winding path. Of course the moment we got to the ruins at the top of the hill, Heather needed the facilities back at the bottom. When Romans invaded England, they brought what they thought of as civilization here: running water, wide straight roads, sub-floor heating and public toilets. But when they left so much of that went with them.

Somewhere My Love

Elizabeth Barrett was possibly the most beloved of Victorian poets. The eldest of a dozen children (eleven of whom lived to become adults), Elizabeth was raised in a wealthy but strictly ordered household. She was a well-known poet and a spinster of thirty-eight when Robert Browning began to write to her. “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” he gushed. She must have liked what she read because she wrote back. They kept their relationship a secret, knowing her father would not approve. In fact, he disowned every one of his children who married. On this day in 1846, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning eloped. If you think you’re not familiar with her work, think again: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach . . . And if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”

Patriot Star

On September 11 2001 I was focused on getting my two youngest kids to high school on time. I was halfway there when my oldest son called and asked if I’d been listening to the news. “Someone crashed a plane into a skyscraper in New York,” he said. I told him it had happened before. In 1945 a B-25 bomber flew into the Empire State Building in thick fog. But this was different. I turned on the radio to hear newscasters wonder how a pilot could not see the twin towers on such a clear day. Then the unthinkable happened. A second passenger jet hit the other tower. The rest of the day and most of the next week we huddled around television sets. We wondered if more attacks were coming. We wondered what kind of minds could have orchestrated such horror, and if they would ever be caught. Do you remember where you were ten years ago tomorrow?

Rocky Road to California

California became the 31st state on September 9 1850. It doesn’t much matter now that it entered the Union as a free state, but it sure mattered in 1850. Most people who’ve never been to California think the whole state is like L.A. They couldn’t be more wrong. There are at least 85 whole countries in the world that are smaller than California. California has more dairy cattle than Wisconsin. 300,000 tons of grapes grow in California every year. The biggest almond processing plant in the world is the Blue Diamond plant in Sacramento. If you laid a year’s worth of California strawberries end to end, you could circle the earth 15 times. Did you know the highest and lowest points in the continental United States are both in California? Mount Whitney tops out at 14,495 feet above sea level, and Bad Water in Death Valley is 282 feet below.

LeMoyne Star

On September 8 1966, the first episode of the television show Star Trek aired on NBC. Gene Roddenberry’s influences in creating this series included the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, C.S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower novels and the television serial Wagon Train. Star Trek was cancelled after only two seasons, but an intense fan letter campaign brought the program back for one more year. The Sci-Fi show that wouldn’t die, it gave birth to five more TV series, eleven films (so far), and countless parodies and novels. I was just a little kid, but I can still remember how much it thrilled me the first time I heard, “These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

September

September is National Classical Music Month, and it’s also National Piano Month. Here are a dozen of my favorite classic keyboard compositions:

Johann Sebastian Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - 12 Variations on Ah, vous dirais-je, Maman K.265
Ludwig van Beethoven - Sonata Opus 27 No. 2 “Moonlight”
Johannes Brahms - Waltz in A-Flat Major, Opus 39 No. 15
Frederic Chopin - Nocturne Opus 55 No. 1
Claude Debussy - La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin
Erik Satie - Gymnopedie No. 1
Dmitry Kabalevsky - Opus 27 No. 70 “Having Fun”
Dmitri Shostakovich - Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major
Camille Saint-Saens - Le carnaval des animaux: "Pianistes"
George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
Scott Joplin - Solace

Notice I didn’t call them “classical” piano composers. Most aren’t. Bach is Baroque. Brahms and Chopin (and sometimes Beethoven) are romantic. Debussy and Satie are impressionists. Kabalevsky, Saint-Saens and Shostakovich are 20th century, and Gershwin and Joplin are sort of in a class by themselves.

Ravenchase

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” The party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn’t much.
“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied, “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.
“Nor I,” said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. “I think you might do something better with the time,” she said, “than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.”

Today is Read a Book Day, so I’m sharing a snippet of one of my favorites. Folks have scratched their heads over this riddle for nearly 150 years. I’ve seen many clever answers, but Lewis Carroll probably didn’t mean it to have one. While I’m at it, can you rearrange the letters in NOR DO WE to make one word?

Labor Day Madness

Labor Day was first observed in the late 1800's. Grover Cleveland made it a national holiday in 1894 as a way to celebrate (and probably to appease) labor unions. These days, though, it’s more of a milestone than a holiday. For most of us it’s the last three day weekend before the end of the summer; a day for picnics in the park or backyard barbecues. It’s the last chance to squeeze in a trip with the kids before they all head back to school. Labor Day used to be the last day you could wear white until next Memorial Day. Does anyone really wear white any more? Labor Day also marks the beginning of the American football season, for both the NFL and college football teams. Technically, autumn won’t here for another eighteen days, but as of today you can say you’ve survived another summer.

Windblown Puzzle

My laptop has a British keyboard, which means I probably have a few more keys than you do. And the keys that are the same are not all in exactly the same places. If you were to borrow my laptop you might take a moment or two to find the quotation marks or the @ sign. But most of the letters are where you’d expect them to be. It’s still a QWERTY keyboard. This arrangement of keys was invented in 1873 by a Milwaukee newspaper editor named Christopher Sholes. He invented it for the express purpose of slowing typists down so they wouldn’t jam the keys of their ribbon-and-hammer typewriters. QWERTY deliberately puts the letters we hit most frequently under weaker, slower fingers. The typewriter has been out of date so long most of my readers have never used one. And it’s impossible to type too fast for a computer. So why do we still use the QWERTY keyboard?

Fire and Ice

The Great Fire of London started on Sunday, September 2 and continued to burn through Wednesday, September 5 in 1666. It started in a bakery on Pudding Lane and wasn’t extinguished until it reached Pye Corner. There were people at the time who said this was proof that the fire was God’s wrath against the City of London for the deadly sin of gluttony. True or not, London is still a terrific place to grab a pork pie. Or a pasty filled with beef, onions and mushrooms. Or real Italian gelato, or crispy aromatic duck, or peri-peri chicken or dim sum. But I digress. After the fire there were several radically different plans for the rebuilding of the city. But in the end they were all rejected, and London was reconstructed with pretty much the same street plan that it had before. They really do hate to change things around here.

Lamb

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Mary Sawyer. Like the rest of the boys and girls in Sterling, Massachusetts in the early 1800's, Mary went to school in a little red schoolhouse. One day, just for fun, Mary’s brother suggested that she take her pet lamb to school to show him to the rest of the children. Mary really should have known better. The lamb had no idea how to behave in a classroom. His antics thrilled the other children, but the teacher was less than amused. The minister’s nephew, a young man preparing to enter college, was visiting the schoolhouse that day. The following morning he presented Mary with the three original stanzas of a poem that began, “Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow.” The poem was set to music and published as a song in 1830.