This Sunday is International Women’s Day about which I know nothing beyond its notation on my calendar. However, it seemed a timely moment to share a memoir I recently finished, Hill Women by Cassie Chambers. Chambers, raised in Eastern Kentucky, in a terrain of hollows and coal mines, tries to show us a glimpse of the strong women who surrounded her as she grew up.

The Appalachian people are often either denigrated or held up as examples of whatever the writer wants to portray. Chambers aimed for a more balanced view. Yes there is poverty, but there is also resourcefulness. Yes, there are few jobs, but people aren’t eager to leave everything they know to find employment. Yes there is much domestic violence, but there is also deep family connection.

Unlike many writers, Chambers returned to Kentucky after law school intent on providing legal services to women from her home country. While she lives in Louisville now, she has been instrumental in changing some laws that adversely affected poor women. One such law required a woman divorcing an abusing husband to pay his legal fees!

I spent a year traveling the back roads of Oregon providing Head Start in home for children too scattered to come to a common classroom. The women holding those families together resembled the ones Chambers chronicles. Fierce, proud, conflicted, dealing with poverty and volatile men, they had no interest in leaving the Oregon woods for the “big city” either.

The book reminded me to hesitate to suggest that people with few employment prospects “simply move.” There is no such thing as a “simple” relocation.

I went to college with some people who were so like Bernie Sanders that I sometimes have to remind myself that I don’t know him personally. I didn’t like their pontificating, rejoicing in Cuba, denouncing the “establishment,” and generally touting themselves as superior to the rest of us poor souls. Needless to say, I am not any more attracted to the 50 year later version running for President, shouting at me with that same zealous attitude. So I was quite relieved to find that across the United States many more people felt that way than I realized. Maybe I won’t have to decide between a socialist and the incumbent in November.

Then, already feeling a little more hopeful, I went outside and found this patch of crocus flowers in full display. (The little sticks are to help my husband find the bulbs later.) If you look around the purple, you will see a variety of brown. Brown has been the dominant color here for months since we had almost no snowfall. Brown trees, brown dirt, and brown dead plants have been the only landscaping here for a long time. The crocus emerging reminds me that there are in fact other colors in nature’s palette!

The sun is out. It is above freezing. The dog is shedding her winter coat. Things are looking up.

Many phrases in common usage irritate me, probably because of the way I think too long about them. One such comes into play when a mother writes she is going on a trip to “make memories” with her children. I think I resist the notion that anything should be undertaken with the purpose of “making memories.” For me that puts distance between the activity and its enjoyment. I often have the same feeling when someone is videotaping for a long time at a kid’s party without pausing to actually enjoy the time.

Above my mother, my grandmother and my great grandmother paused at a picnic to have my grandfather take a picture of them. It’s a lovely moment, one that I am glad that he captured for me to enjoy years later. However, I am sure he didn’t think “let’s go on a picnic to make memories.” Instead he went on a picnic and memories did or didn’t follow.

Genuine memories form in children all the time. I enjoy talking with my grandchildren about times we had in the past. We have traveled, eaten together, made craft projects and just hung out for long boring times. We say back and forth “do you remember?” Sometimes just one of us does, sometimes all of us do. But we live our lives, memories piling up, and no one needs to set out to “make” them happen.

(Maybe a little curmudgeonly today. Less so than what I might have written. It is Super Tuesday in the Democratic Primary season and it has affected my mood. I am trying to forget, not make memories!)

It had been quite a long time since I had been to live theater. For many years one of our children acted and sang professionally, so I was a regular attendee. But yesterday I went with a friend from the gym to see the play Lifespan of a Fact at Theaterworks in Hartford. My first visit to space impressed me. They had recently finished a major overhaul resulting in a welcoming first floor lounge and bar which complements the basement theater. (Climbing down to see the play was easier than climbing back up all those stairs! There was an elevator for those who needed it.)

I purposely avoided reading anything about the play before we went, preferring to be caught up by the dialogue and plot. This proved to be wise, since knowing too much about the play would have blunted my enjoyment. Only three actors exchange lengthy and witty conversations over the 80 minute, no intermission, play. Without giving away any details, the question comes down to fact checking and literary license in a sparring match of words.

While the play premiered on Broadway in 2018, it appears to be very popular in regional theaters such as my own. When it comes to your neck of the woods, I suggest you go see it. Timely without being didactic, the play held my interest and I was glad I was back in front of real actors using a well honed script. Quite a contrast to many political speeches I have had to endure recently!

Despite constant emails suggesting ways to increase the “traffic” to my WordPress site, I have followed none of them. From the beginning I did nothing to promote my posts. In fact, I only mentioned my writing to a few close friends. Basically I wanted an opportunity to write and share my writing with no expectation about readership at all.

In fact, one of my earliest posts was about “likes.” At that point at the start, I had to separate “likes” from the old childhood longing to be liked. Three and a half years on, I have come to understand that “like” is a way to communicate to the writer that something about the post appealed to the reader. I still prefer comments, but I am thankful for the time it takes to click the “like” button” too.

The mystery from the start was who in the world is following me. I expected that my friends might read me. Then I started reading a variety of blogs and when I found one I liked I followed it and wrote comments about its posts. In many, though not all, cases those writers followed me in return. That made sense to me and didn’t seem as mysterious after a while. Then readers of some of those posts must have seen my comments and checked out my site.

So far, so good. But how to explain the hundreds of visitors from all over the world(excluding the commercial appeals)that stop by. Most of them don’t either “like” or “comment.” Who is that person in Qatar who has dropped by 19 times? How about the reader(readers?)from Bangladesh? In some cases I have had to look up the country on a map(Mauritius, Slovenia) to see where they are. I wish they would leave a note of some kind. I would love to correspond with some of them.

So I continue writing and connecting with some, while I wonder about others. Whoever you are, and why you drop by once or many times, you are welcome to my writing. And thanks.

I often remember characters from novels, and I can come to think of them as real people. Sometimes an author uses the same cast of characters throughout a series of novels. Many times these characters remain pretty static and they don’t seem further developed from book to book. The detective remains pretty much the same throughout the books, for instance.

Elizabeth Strout presents the reader with a contrasting approach. After writing Olive Kittredge in 2008, she let her character rest in subsequent books. But in 2019 she published Olive, Again as if she, as a writer, had been unable to forget about Olive, wondered what had happened to her in the intervening years, and decided to tell us.

Strout’s books focus on character, rather than plot. As I have become older, I am more interested in character development and less in plot, so they are a good match for me. Olive, in the first book, presented as a cantankerous Maine woman, difficult to like, who grew on the reader as we encountered her in a series of short stories. We saw various aspects of her, and understood that she was as complicated as most people.

Olive, revisited, shows us the woman, still cranky, still opinionated, and still uncomfortable with herself most of the time. But throughout this book Olive has moments of self reflection. She begins to think about herself in a new way, as a wife, as a parent, as a teacher and as a neighbor. As she becomes self aware, we find a new level of compassion for this old woman. I suspect that is what Strout herself felt about Olive as the years passed between books. Olive was worth another look.

I appreciated the evidence that even in late life a person can soften some, can connect more deeply with others, and can feel, with self-compassion, some regret. May it be so with all of us.

When I was younger there were two sandwich spreads, mayonnaise and Miracle Whip. We were a mayonnaise family, while my best friend swore by Miracle Whip. The other day at the grocery store, the manager told me they were expanding to include even more products that people were asking for. I saw an enormous array of mayonnaise, including the eight varieties from Hellman’s alone. Kraft, Heinz, store brands and “organic” and “healthy” brands completed the offerings. Apparently that wasn’t enough, hence the expansion.

How does one choose among all those jars? Well apparently you find fault with one and look for another. Is it vegan and olive oil or vegan and avocado oil or “real?” You keep eliminating choices until you find the one perfect mayonnaise which meets every single one of your criteria. Either that or you decide to forgo mayonnaise altogether.

It is like that for me right now watching the Democratic hopefuls running for President. While the field is beginning to winnow down, there are still a number of possible candidates remaining. How does one choose? Well apparently you find find fault with one and look for another (yes that sentence is a direct repeat from the mayonnaise aisle.) And at the moment the candidates themselves are attacking each other. And the internet is full of complaints to prove that each one has faults. It is enough to make many Democrats decide to forgo the process altogether.

By the way, I still buy regular mayonnaise. Too many choices gave me a headache. I will support a flawed human being in the fall election. And the time spent arguing about all the possibilities takes precious time away from preparing for a united front in the November election.

As I wrote some time back, my dentist had to replace a crown which he had somehow attached poorly allowing some decay to set it. He put in the new crown, but the gum became inflamed and had to be treated. By the time the gum had healed, the molar sporting the crown had “drifted” back away from the adjacent teeth. Apparently this phenomenon is very unusual, but my teeth love to wander at will. To bring the recalcitrant tooth back in line, I needed to have a retainer for my top teeth. (Remember that all of this work is free since it was his error.)

I was soon introduced to an “invisible” retainer which I need to wear for several months. Actually it will be a series of three retainers, one after another as the tooth is rounded up and corralled. The above photo (not my airbrushed face I assure you) illustrates my type of retainer. The retainer may be invisible, but that is its only positive feature. The retainer cannot be exposed to hot liquids, cold liquids with sugar, or cold liquids that stain. I don’t know why they don’t just say cold water only. It also has to be taken out to eat. The device is supposed to be worn 22 hours a day. Each time I remove it to eat or drink said forbidden liquids, I am supposed to follow a strict routine. Wash my hands. Brush my teeth. Floss my teeth. Reinsert the retainer.

Imagine that every time you thought about eating a snack you faced the prospect of going through all that. Hence my designating this the “retainer diet.” I assure you that I have yet to find anything worth the fuss. My snacking has been totally eliminated. My doctor would be proud. I wonder if she is in cahoots with my dentist!

I grew up with my mother using a heavy aluminum pressure cooker similar to one pictured on the left above. She used it for tough meat and beans. She always made us stay well clear of the thing, constantly scaring us about its ability to explode. (Maybe she just wanted some peace in the kitchen for a change.) It required careful monitoring and adjustment of the burner to keep it at the right pressure. I think its only safety feature was an ability to “blow its top” if the pressure went too high.

Needless to say I wasn’t interested in pressure cooking when I had my first home. But around then the slow cooker phase set in and I used it instead for the same foods. In fact I still have the same Rival Crock Pot that I first used in the early 1970’s and it still works just fine.

But after hearing friends rave endlessly about the Instant Pot, I finally succumbed and bought the one pictured on the right. So far I have only cooked chick peas in the dish Chana Masala. One feature that the slow cooker lacks is the Instant Pot’s ability to saute before it pressure cooks. For a browned exterior, I have had to use a separate pan to saute the meat had before using the slow cooker. In the case of the Chana Masala, I was able to saute the vegetables before pressure cooking the beans.

There really isn’t anything “instant” about the pot besides its name. It still requires time for the steam to reach full pressure, time to cook the food, and time for the pot to slowly release the pressure it has built up. Its main advantage, I think, is over the old and more finicky pressure cookers. The Instant Pot takes control of a constant pressure and doesn’t need watching as did the old style ones.

The jury is still out on whether I will convert from the slow cooker to the Instant Pot.  Nothing can be quicker than dumping beans and water into the slow cooker, setting it and walking away until the evening. As for other recipes, we’ll see.

I finished a lengthy book, Successful Aging by Daniel Leviton recently. Nothing particularly groundbreaking came through for me. He mentioned, as do most people, the need for good nutrition, exercise and social engagement. His discussion of the aging brain intrigued me since he pointed out that many blips in memory are normal and not predictive of dementia. When they occur in younger people, he points out, we think of them as scatter brained, not senile.

He did supply  one bit of information that addressed a problem that I hadn’t even realized was a problem. Occasionally I get an aggravating itch in the middle of my back that I can’t reach. Even when I manage to back up against a doorway to scratch it, the itch continues. I have looked to see if the skin on my back was dryer than usual, but that didn’t seem to be true. But Levitin, as an aside, mentioned that this particular itch not only commonly exists as we age, but that it also has a name. He pointed out that the itch is coming from aging nerves, not the surface of the skin.

I cruised the internet for more about this phenomenon and was amazed to see that it is quite common across the world. Most amusing is the speculation that back scratchers were invented to address the itch. Apparently the itch can drive some people to distraction. I will say that just writing about this has encouraged my back to itch!

So if you are older and have a spot that you just can’t reach to scratch, feel relieved. It is just another sign that you are “successfully aging.”