Another old photo

 

There goes the image of the United States!

Oy vey! I've set foreign relations back at least a decade.

I just noticed that a bunch of people on a Polish social networking site called Grono are visiting this particular post. I hope they are not taking this as gospel. How do you say "It's a joke" in Polish?

I wonder what people in Warsaw and Bialystok think of it.

In related news, I am still getting visits to my post, Miriam's porn site. I'm wondering if I should take it down? It must be very disappointing.

Welcome, Polish readers!

Defiling the environment

I happened to mention today in art class that I don't like fluorescent light bulbs, and they all looked at me like I was Mussolini come back to life. I mentioned that incandescent bulbs give a nicer light, and they all protested. I do have one fl bulb, and it makes everybody look like one of the pictures in the post office.

Case closed.

I've been losing sleep over this

Whew! Foreigner who teaches at a mediocre local university reassures Americans:

America's tarnished star got some needed polishing overseas last month, thanks to recent actions by President Barack Obama, according to foreigners living in Delaware.

From his visit to the U.S. State Department and his first formal White House interview with Arab news agency Al-Arabiya to reversing several policies of George W. Bush's administration, he helped the United States regain the credibility it lost over the past eight years, said Muqtedar Khan, an international relations professor at the University of Delaware.

"You can argue that Obama's election has caught most of the world on the wrong foot, and so right now they are much more positively predisposed to the United States," Khan said, noting an international perspective that thought Americans' prejudices would prevent them from sending a black person to the White House.

You can also argue that he is full of s--t. The article certainly gives us no reason to believe that he knows what he is talking about.

Who is this guy? What is his area of expertise, that he can bloviate over how the world sees America? What are his associations? For that matter, since he is a foreigner, what is his country of origin? Is he a member of a terrorist group, for instance, like Sami Al-arian? And why are his vaporous musings printed above the fold in a Delaware newspaper?

Just asking.

Octuplets--should there be a law?

This woman is crazy, not to put too fine a point on it. She has certainly taken advantage of "the right to choose," although Gloria Steinem probably would not agree with her choice.

This is one of those instances when hard cases make bad law. The situation is deplorable. Her children's future looks bleak. The government's options are all bad. But meddling with the rights of women to conceive and bear children by legislating or regulating or harassing doctors would make matters worse.

Fortunately, very few women will be inspired by this woman's example. I don't think there are going to be too many imitators of a woman who can certainly be classified as a breeder, if anyone is.

Blogroll Amnesty Day or weekend, whatever

Jon Swift and a bunch of others have declared this weekend Blogroll Amnesty Day.

We little tiny blogs are supposed to link to five really really wee blogs that we really like and want to list on our blogroll.

Truthfully, I don't know of any little blogs because I don't know what the traffic of other blogs is, being obsessed with only my own traffic. But I do like and regularly read lots of blogs. I don't read blogs that don't agree with me politically; since I've already made up my mind, I find that skipping the insights of left-wingers saves time and keeps my blood pressure on an even keel.
I'm going to recommend two bloggers, since it's late at night and I'm tired. Maybe later I'll think of more.

My first pick is a fellow librarian who calls himself Akaky Bashmachkin, but I have always suspected this an alias stolen from Gogol. Anyway, he attended the same library school I did but managed to get out without totally muddling his brain, which is more than I can say for myself.

You've got to like a fellow who writes a line like this:

After all, Barack Obama probably doesn't hate white people no matter what 20-years in the pews of a racial separatist church suggests. It's just far harder to see a bunch of white people against ice and snow.

At least I do. But I'm breaking the rules, I don't believe he's small. I suspect he has more readers than I do. So what? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

And so to bed.

You call that snow?

Just a normal Winter day in Albany, NY

Mother, English, Yiddish, being American

Both mother and uncle Moe were born in Russia and came to the US when they were small children. While Uncle Moe spoke of his Russian grandmother, Laya Fagel, Mother would never admit being born in Russia, even if cornered. Only by chance do I know where she was born; it says on my birth certificate: Pinsk, Russia.

I had to fill out a questionnaire in school which asked for parents' nationality. I asked mother what to write in this space and she said, "Put in American." Neither she nor Moe, her older brother, spoke with a hint of an accent. Mother, in particular, could have been employed by the BBC. She spoke full sentences in grammatically correct English. In fact, she said she decided to be a lawyer because everyone said she was "such a good talker."

She was also fluent in Yiddish, which she spoke to her parents. Bubbe and Zayde had heavy Yiddish accents, although Zayde did attend and successfully complete English classes in the Columbus public schools, according to a certificate I now have hanging on my wall. But Yiddish was what they spoke at home, which makes it even more remarkable how good an English speaker mother was.

I could speak Yiddish too, and used to read the Yiddish newspaper to bubbe occasionally, a skill which I have tragically lost. I can't read Hebrew very well either, which is another story.

Russian was the language of secrets in our house. When mother and bubbe didn't want me to understand what they were saying, they communicated in Russian. I found this frustrating, and so did my father, who was born in Youngstown OH and never spoke a word of Russian in his life. His parents came from Hungary, but they also spoke Yiddish. Dad didn't have an accent either, but then he grew up in the US in various places including Peoria and Denver.

Mother didn't make a show of patriotism, but she loved living in the USA, particularly in that most desirable spot in the world, Columbus, OH. When the whole family moved, in stages, to Bexley, OH, she liked that even better. When we drove her through posh neighborhoods in upstate New York or New Jersey, she conceded that they were almost as nice as Bexley. High praise, indeed.

grounded

 

I did a recent painting based on a photograph of my younger daughter. At the time she was grounded, confined to quarters, incarcerated, made to stay home. She was always being grounded, because what else could you do? She was always violating her curfew; the grounding was meant to improve her behavior. It had the same effect as telling a stream to run uphill--none whatever.

While she was grounded she sulked, read Harlequin romances, and ate lots of Slurpees purchased by me at the local 7-11 because I was sorry for her.

I took a photo of her once when she was grounded. I liked the way she looked in the photo. The painting does not look much like her, except for the long legs and big feet.

She grew up to be a very sweet, nice, intelligent person, but the stubbornest person I've ever met, until she had a baby, who is now seven. In this child she has met her match. He has her beaten in the stubborn sweepstakes.

 

Here is the original photograph.

Mother as a young woman

 

Here she is, with a nice-looking young man whom I can't identify. I know she had lots of boyfriends and loved to go out dancing. I like the dress, the hairdo and the smile. She was very proud of her legs and her small, shapely feet.

I inherited my love of shoes from her. She had dozens of pairs, in lots of colors. When I was a child I used to line the upstairs hall with them and play shoe store.

Sic transit gloria mundi

 

Ruins, Agrigento, Sicily, May 2008

Born too late

I wish I could wear something like this, but I am a couple of centuries too late. Apparently you can purchase Renaissance clothing from this website, but it doesn't exactly suit my present lifestyle--which features ye olde jeans and sweats. I am sorely tempted, though.

They sell everything you need to lead the Tudor lifestyle: clothing for men and women, shoes, chains of office, drinking implements, and last but not least, weapons. Isn't the Internet great?

Unidentified

 

This nice-looking young man (who?), with a confident smile, was photographed on July 25, 1932 (where?)according to the information written on the back if the picture. He looks happy and cheerful, standing there in the sunshine getting his picture taken, before I was born. I wonder who he was and what became of him. Probably he perished in Hitler's war machine, but I hope not.

Again--label your photographs!

When bubbe died, my cousin and I tried to bring order to her possessions. Her dresses, shoes and coats were easily given away. Linens, dishes, and silver were divided among us. There were only a few photographs, but one in particular had us scratching our heads. It was a formal group portrait. We decided that they were relatives of my grandfather, probably. But when we showed it to mother, she said, "Oh, those were some people who worked for papa."

Let me reiterate: label your photographs. Some day you and I will be gone, and someone will be staring at our pictures and trying to trace a family connection.

Michelle's gown

It looks like she stole the bedspread from the Lincoln bedroom.

Thingy

 

My decorator is called Will, as in Good Will, and it was there I got the above thingy, or whatchmacallit, or whatsit, for 2.00. Plus tax--my Good Will in in Pennsylvania. It's aboout 24 inches long.

I thought it might make a statement, or rather a Statement, if displayed in the right place. I haven't found the right place yet. Maybe there is no right place. I bought it because I like pictures of fruit, particularly grapes, because my family is in the wine business. They don't collect representations of grapes, but I do.

So call it ugly, if you will. But in the right place....

In memoriam

"Golden lads and lasses must, like chimney sweepers come to dust."

By happenstance, I found out that one of my old boyfriends had died. He was always a romantic figure to me, good-looking, smart and rebellious. He always did the unexpected. He wasn't exactly mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but close enough for southern Ohio. I broke up with him because I couldn't stand the ups and downs of a relationship with someone basically undependable. I don't even know if he realized I had broken up with him, because he kept coming in and out of my life. The last I saw of him was when we both graduated and he went hurtling into the world like a rocket. I heard of and from him once in a while afterwards, then I went off somewhere and lost touch with him. I always wondered what had become of him.

Well, he is dead, and has been for quite a while. That certainly answers the question of why he was not at our last reunion. But I was amazed to discover that this iconoclastic figure had ended up as a small-town school superintendent.

How I became a big reader

When I was four years old, it was determined that I had been hanging around the house too long, so my parents sent me to a pre-school run by two old ladies, Miss Louella and Miss Virgilia. They lived and did business in a formerly swanky neighborhood of Columbus, in a great old house with a turret that had a stained glass window on the landing. A pleasurable shiver of fear went through me when I went by this window. It was mysterious but exciting.

Miss L and Miss V taught me to set a table properly, to use napkin rings, to say "Yes please" instead of "yes," and "No thank you," instead of "no." They also taught me to read, a skill I learned rather quickly.

When my mother saw that I could read, she started me in school in the second grade, skipping first grade entirely. Mother believed that you shouldn't spend too much time in school, should get it out of the way, graduate from college and go to work as soon as possible. She herself had done this, never taking a summer off, zipping through high school at the age of 14 and graduating from law school before she was old enough to pass the bar exam. (You had to be 21.)

My father also got out of high school at the age of 15 and proceeded to Madison WI, where he went to college. His father was mad at him because they lived in Illinois and he could have attended the University of Illinois a lot cheaper.

I went to school which was very "progressive," which meant they didn't teach you much about anything except the triumphs of the Soviet Union, and let you do more or less what you wanted. Anything practical you wanted to know you taught yourself. For instance, I taught myself the alphabet because I wanted to look up things in the dictionary. Try looking up words if you don't know the alphabet. It's hard.

I emerged from this den of iniquity at the age of 11, when mother gave in and enrolled me in public school junior high. For some reason, perhaps a coin toss, I was placed in the eighth grade. The other kids were 13. Mother also made me wear braids and knee socks. Still, I had friends. I didn't mind junior high; I was in the glee club and practically the citywide spelling champion. I could have aced the spelling competition if I had not been dubious about the spelling of the word "acquaint." I knew there was a C in there but it didn't seem right somehow, so I left the C out. I've always felt bad about this, because within a nanosecond of spelling the word wrong I realized the C definitely belonged in the word.

After junior high came a new town, a new school, a departed father, and High School. When I tell you that I, at age 13, was the champion dork of Central Ohio, I am not exaggerating. I was 13 and a sophomore, alone and miserable and friendless.

So one day I picked up a copy of Pride and Prejudice and read it from cover to cover. It was so good I re-read it immediately. Then I read all the tripe in the school library, much of it consisting of stories of young girls or women who became interested in a career in photography, dance, the theater, or interior decoration while at the same time falling in love with a cute guy. Then I read all the works of P G Wodehouse that the public library---which never discarded a book--had on their shelves.

Ever since then I have had to have two lives going, my real one and the one in the book I was reading. I like to take refuge in a book for a couple of hours a day. If I don't have a book to read, and a stack of other books waiting to be read, I start feeling panicky.

Television, talking books, even music--they don't do it for me. I like all those things, but I need a real book. Hard-covered, paperback, clean, dirty, old or new, trash or masterpiece, I need a book waiting for me to read.

Customer service

All my interactions with Hammacher Schlemmer have been courteous and helpful. Every time I buy something from them, it does not do the job it was purchased to do, and I have to send it back. They accept returns willingly. Their customer service is a pleasure--polite, helpful, timely. The staff also speaks excellent American English.

The only problem is with the merchandise. Everything they sell is over-priced, unnecessary, or too expensive. I worry that the polite, helpful customer service staff will shortly be unemployed. I mean, who would buy that stuff?

Dell ought to hire the whole bunch en masse. It would be so nice to speak to someone whose English is comprehensible.

Will it ever be summer again?

 

A garden in Sicily

Mosaic seen in the ruins of a Roman villa, Sicily

 

Now there's a mosaic. Or part of one.

A mural at the Charleston airport

 

Bessie Coleman, aviation pioneer.

You've got to admire a guy like that

I mean Blago. I thought it was a smart move to appoint Burris. I also admire his spunk for sticking by his post. I seem to remember Bill Clinton responding to pressure to resign in the same way.

Suppose Blago is tried and found innocent. What then? I don't trust Fitzgerald, who made a big to-do about the Valerie Plame kerfuffle, spent tons of money, and put Scooter Libby in jail for, essentially, nothing. I don't trust the guy, and am surprised to see him still holding a government job. To me he seems like one of the pod people. Did anyone spot him disembarking from a spaceship lately? Or is he just a zombie?

I suspect he jumped the gun on Blago, and now needs extra time to figure out whether Blago used the office postage meter for personal business, or whatever other crime he can pin on the guy. Maybe he lied to somebody or other about Valerie Plame? Or Valerie Jarrett? Or Valerie Schmidlapp, queen of the cheerleading team at my old high school? Fitzgerald decides to prosecute someone and looks for a reason. He's creepy.

And now the Illinois Assembly in their purity and innocence are shocked--shocked! to find that corruption is taking place in Illinois politics! and recoil from Blago in dread that they will be tainted.

What a herd of independent minds!

My latest painting

 

This is the only one I ever finished to my satisfaction. Art class starts again next week.

New CIA boss stops inhumane practices

Waterboarding is a thing of the past.

The selection of Leon Panetta, who was Bill Clinton's chief of staff, was intended to tell Americans the era of waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary renditions and secret prisons was now over.

Don't worry, the miscreants will still suffer. Panetta will force them to listen to John Kerry's speeches.

Bits and pieces

Don't you feel a little depressed when you see a picture, say a wedding photo or a baby with a bow in her hair, for sale in a garage sale or thrift shop? I do. That's one reason I am scanning all the family pictures into my computer. To my future descendants: don't ever throw a cute picture of me away, or I'll put a hex on you. Ugly picture, okay, get rid of it. Always picture great-great-grandma (me) as a roaring, tearing beauty.

I saw a commercial warning the public to save energy by unplugging your cell phone charger. Boy, did that annoy me! The smug, smarmy self-righteousness of it. I felt like going out and burning a tire, just for spite. Take that, environment! Heat up, you stupid planet!

Every week I fill up another two bags of stuff and take it to the Good Will. But the stuff just keeps coming. You have to be vigilant or it will take over the house. My younger daughter confessed to me that she and her husband have two storage units. Their garage, where they parked their cars a couple of years ago, is now full of stuff which is threatening to invade their living quarters.

My basement is full of half-empty paint cans, left behind by the sellers of the house. Once upon a time, I would have carefreely (is there such a word?) thrown them away. Now I have to schedule a hazmat team to come and deal with them correctly.

The reason I don't have a dog is that I don't want to walk around the streets carrying a baggie full of doggy doo. That and the fact that Mr Charm won't let me get one.

One from my college days, long long ago:

 

That's me, second from the left.

Scanning

A lot of things are going on now that are rather upsetting, so to distract myself I've been scanning old photos. This is a really nice one of my younger grandson, who's a big boy of seven now.

 

Happy New Year!

 

And good sledding!

Blago--the gift that keeps on giving

There's a character in a novel by Evelyn Waugh--in might be Decline and Fall--who "blots his copybook(an understated way of saying disgraces himself)." Because he went to the right school his associates decide to let him off easy by putting him in a room with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol, trusting he will "do the right thing (Off himself)."

They go back a few hours later and find him sitting there, having drunk the whiskey but still alive. So they concede defeat and get him another job.

And so it is with Blago. The Illinois legislature, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the news media all thought they could embarrass him into doing the right thing and taking one for the team. Not a chance!

And so he made a brilliant move, appointing a Senator to replace Barack Obama, as he is constitutionally empowered to do. Not just any one, but a black man. And at the press conference announcing the appointment, another black man who just happened to be there got up and helpfully pointed out that he would be the only black person in the Senate, and that Harry Reid and the rest of the bunch had better seat him, or else.

Now Blago's political enemies--all Democrats--are gnashing their teeth in impotent rage while the Republicans are feeling smug as all get out.

Where's the money, Madoff?

Stanley Bing wants to know.

And, to veer from the point, what a name for a gonif--made off with money, did he? Dickens couldn't come up with a better one.

My idea is that the guy had to be a gambler. Trollope's books are full of young, rich aristocrats who have gambled away towering fortunes. There's not enough money printed by all the world's government printing presses for a compulsive gambler.

You can tell a compulsive gambler because all their relatives are going around with their pockets turned inside out, having given their little all so that poor Bernie doesn't get two broken legs.

Label your photographs

 

If you don't, you will find pictures like the one above, of people who are probably related to me, but as to who they are, I haven't a clue!

Write the name and date in pencil, lightly on the back.

Future generations will thank you.

I hope Santa is good to all my readers

 

Ohio University

This image, of the campus of my Alma Mater, makes me sentimental.

Oh to be young, free, and in the right place.

What's not to like about Caroline Kennedy?

She's perfect for the Senate seat. She looks like she's straight out of central casting. First--the debutante slouch, taught only in the most expensive private schools in the nation; then there's the slight equine resemblance, emphasized when she tosses her mane artlessly away from her face; and the aforementioned straight I-can't do-anything-with-it hair, which takes endless time and money to achieve; and lastly, the air of entitlement, of deserving to be a Senator by acclamation, without going through the dreary business of running for office.

Next at bat: Chelsea Clinton.

What's with this "elect" stuff?

I don't ever remember having heard of the position of "president-elect." Is it sort of like being the Prince of Wales? How much does the job pay, and is everyone eligible?

I am reminded of these words from the Mikado:

Emperor: I'm the emperor of Japan!

Katisha: And I'm his daughter-in-law elect!"

Just saying.

Me as a skinny-legged teenager

 

Equal time for Chanukah

Menorah lighting tonight.

Chanukah was taken with calm, not to say torpor, in my family. Somebody lighted candles (that would be bubbe), and if they remembered, or I nagged, they came up with a cash bribe. Not Christmas, by a long shot. We didn't even have Chanukah gift wrap paper, let alone gifts to wrap. And as for household decoration, forget about it!

Meanwhile, I was wild with excitement as the neighbors put up lights and Christmas trees. Mother issued a firm nolo prosequi on this stuff, but once or twice Santa Claus delivered a doll, which he placed at the foot of my bed. We didn't have a chimney, and if we did have one, and Santa got cinders on the oriental rug, mother would have killed him.

Tonight, I lit the candles when the sun had gone down. It was the shortest day of the year, gloomy and raw, and I was glad to have the cheerful sight of the candles burning in my kitchen. When my grandson was little, he had his own menorah, his mother had hers, and I had mine. We put them all in the living room, near the window, and they were a pretty sight, especially on the eighth night. Surprising how a few candles light up the place.



For the record, these candles were blue and white, not multicolored.

Cute little purple tree

 

Happy lighted fake Christmas tree

 

Merry poinsettia

 

Politics Chicago style

There's lots of innocent merriment coming out of Chicago these days. It turns out many Chicago politicians are crooks, selling political office, appointing wives of contributors to cushy jobs, and cursing over the telephone, among other crimes and misdemeanors.

I don't really mind the sleaziness on display here. What sticks in my craw is the sanctimoniousness of it all. These crooks--sorry, elected officials--profess just to want to work tirelessly for the people of Illinois, particularly the poor and underprivileged. It's all for the poor--and the children, of course. The combination of high-mindedness and criminality really sickens me.

I am reminded of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr, a Harlem politician, minister and crook. He was unabashedly in it for the money and the wine, women and song. He didn't assume an air of piety while having his hand in your pocket. He was a scoundrel, he knew it, and everybody else knew it, including the voters who kept returning him to office. As politicians go, he was refreshing. His polar opposite would be Eliot Spitzer, who gave holier-than-thouness a bad name.

Trivial thoughts

About this time of year, I start to meditate on the Meaning of Life. My conclusions? Your life can change overnight.

Once upon a time I thought my life would continue along its pleasant but uneventful course. Mr Charm and I would attend concerts and visit with friends and I would work in the library. All that came to a sudden end, without notice. The friend I had the most fun with died and I was not ready to lose her. I was supposed to go to Atlantic City with some friends who were great fun to be with, but he got sick and couldn't go, and suddenly, he too was dead.

Even the college I enjoyed attending so much had morphed into a huge university. I went back to visit and found the place unrecognizable--they had moved the river which was a prominent feature of the place.

And I found myself in Delaware, where the only person I knew was the real estate lady who sold us our house.

On a lighter note; I have had so much vexation with Verizon, who unexplicably keep misplacing my payments, not to mention billing me $45 for viewing a World Wrestling Federation event. Now do I seem like a person who would watch a WWF competition? After hours of voice mail, I spoke to several rude individuals about all of this. All of them had ingested their daily I Don't Care Pill that day. I was so upset that I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about Verizon.

Today, I decided to give it one last try. After being re-directed to the wrong person no less than three times, I finally spoke to someone who understood what had happened and was in a position to do something about it. Hallelujah!

I am one of Macy's best customers: They send me so many coupons that it doesn't pay for me to shop anywhere else. After I apply my $25 off coupon, my $50 off coupon, my just for today coupon which gives me 20 percent off on every purchase, and a voucher they sent me which is just like cash, I pay a little less than I would at K-Mart, and I like Macy's better.

Non-committal all-purpose holiday greeting du jour

 

Above is my non-committal, non-denominational holiday greeting to every one. All you Christians, Jews, and Muslims can accept it as my expression of good will to all men, women, and people. Even atheists can get behind the sentiment expressed here. I hope.

Ugly

but expensive.



I apologize for prematurely announcing the most useless Christmas gift of 2008. The above beats the fish training kit hollow.

When I first saw this advertised on the New York Times website, I thought it was a representation of four breasts, two with eyes. How wrong I was. It is a hand cooler. Whether it cools your hands or some beverage within, it is world-class ugly.

I am officially speechless. If anyone can find an uglier or more useless gift, please e-mail me the particulars. This one will be hard to beat, though.

Bigot

From the December 2008 edition of Hadassah magazine, a letter to the editor:

You asked your respondents to focus on "issues of concern to Jewish voters." Clearly the most important issue is Judaism itself and our freedom to practice it....I think [Sarah Palin's] candidacy changes the parameters of the debate.

Her public statements and the few glimpses of her that we have been allowed indicate that hers ls a Christ-centered worldview and that she believes in the primacy of that religion above all others. (Note: Is there anyone who does not believe in the primacy of their own religion?)

If there is any more frightening issue of concern to Jewish voters (Note: I can think of several others, but that's just me )than the possible (Note: But not probable in a million years) erosion of the free exercise of religion, I cannot imagine what it might be.

Be alert, Jewish readers! The Christians are apt to burn down your synagogues and Jewish Community Centers and invade Chabad houses, torturing and killing their innocent inhabitants--oh, wait! Those aren't Christians, they're Muslims!

If past performance can predict future actions, I would say that Jews in this country have little to fear from Christians, even evangelical Christians. But this bugaboo is raised every time a Republican professes a belief in evangelical Christianity. Barack Obama, in contrast, could attend a racist church whose pastor espouses the Palestinian cause for 20 years without incurring criticism.

Perhaps the president-elect slept through the reverend's more fiery sermons. I, at any rate, am inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt until he actually does something which adversely affects the Jews of this or any other country.

Hadassah, by the way, is a Zionist organization. You might assume that its readers are more concerned with the perils facing an embattled Israel than with the imaginary and highly unlikely persecution of American Jews.

This year's most useless Christmas present

 

Train your fish?

Miscellaneous

I haven't gotten any comments lately, which worried me--but then I remembered that I hadn't posted anything in ages, so what's to comment on?

So here I am, with what a lady I once worked with called "nits and lice," miscellaneous trivia dredged up from the hodgepodge in my mind.

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving? Mine was very nice, thank you. My daughter and her husband love to take over the kitchen, so I let them. My kitchen's too small for more than one person, anyway. I made the stuffing and peeled the potatoes and disappeared. My daughter and aforementioned husband love to go to the Acme every day, so they do. They even checked on Wednesday night to make sure the Acme would be open Thanksgiving Day. (It was.)

Their life is a whirlwind of purposeful activity. This daughter is the mother of a 7-year-old who she is convinced will perish if he does not get broccoli and green beans every single day. We did have an very enjoyable time. My older daughter and her son were able to come for the holiday so we were all together, which doesn't happen often enough.

They came at dinnertime the Monday before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately there was a power outage at thee o'clock Monday afternoon so I was unable to cook anything. We all went out to dinner and then they very sensibly went to the Holiday Inn for the night.

I've been reading a book called "The Legal Limit" by Martin Clark. It's very good, particularly the small-town Virginia setting. But it could have been better if an editor like Maxwell Perkins had been on the job. I guess they don't edit anything these days, or maybe the authors are paid by the word, because this book would have been better if it had been shorter. It tells the story of two brothers, one of whom peaked as a high school football hero and has gone downhill ever since, and the other a striver who pulls himself up by his bootstraps to become the county prosecutor in his home town. The action takes place over a period of twenty years, with the younger brother--the prosecutor--as the hero.

The book covers his life from his early twenties to his forties. The parts dealing with life as a small town prosecutor and his relations with his friends and neighbors, and particularly his brother, are well handled. His courtship and subsequent marriage, not so much.

His wife sounds too good to be true: I am sure it's not outside the realm of possibility that there are women who are tall, beautiful, intelligent, honest and artistic geniuses, but it's not plausible or believable within the covers of a novel. Also--and this is a minor quibble--scenes of passionate abandon are much more fun to experience than to read about. I could have done with a little less of his gay best friend's problems as well. Still, I enjoyed the book, most of the characters are extremely well done, and I look forward to reading Clark's other books.