About these ads

Get Rid of That Baggage with Murad

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Product Reviews, The Beautiful Life

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

CreamonEyesFNL

Self-portrait with Murad eye cream

Today we are going to talk about baggage, which—given the title of this blog—should come as no surprise. Longtime readers might remember an early post about baggage, but I should warn you that what you’re about to read concerns luggage of a different sort: the bags we’ve been hauling around under our eyes ever since passing through that fun house portal known as midlife.

I can’t remember when I first noticed mine, which suggests either a woeful lack of perception or a state of blissful denial. My almond-shaped brown eyes had always been my best feature, the only place on my face where one could discern anything resembling fine bone structure. (When I was taking my seat for my kindergarten school portrait, the photographer asked: “Where did you get those big brown eyes?” Without a moment’s hesitation, I told him: “My father.”)

It’s sad when what you take for granted goes away. Oh, the brown eyes are still there, although one of them betrayed me several years ago. And with prescription eyeglasses, I can see just fine, thank God. But when I look in the mirror, I can’t help but notice the bags underneath.

The Web site for the Mayo Clinic explains that the aging process causes the swelling and puffiness we see beneath our eyes. Because the tissues around our eyes, including some of the muscles supporting our eyelids, weaken, the fat that would ordinarily help support our eyes migrates forward into the lower eyelids, causing them to appear puffy. Fluid accumulates there, too. It’s all part of what I call the great downward migration.

As go the eyes, so go the breasts. But that’s another story.

Short of plastic surgery, what’s a gal to do?

The Mayo Clinic recommends the following:

  • Getting enough sleep at night
  • Sleeping with your head slightly elevated
  • Applying a cool compress, using mild pressure, to the skin under and around the eyes.

Now, I happen to love sleep and get lots of it, so that’s not an issue. Admittedly, I’m not good about employing the other remedies. But I do love me some good skin care products, and I believe I have found something that has reduced the appearance of that unsightly under-eye luggage.

Last year, Murad gave me some of their skin care products to try. Their Vitalic line had me at hello; I was smitten, and shared my enthusiasm on this site. I did, however, wish out loud that Murad had something else that might help me:

I think my skin looks great! Now if Murad has something to address those bags under my eyes....

I think my skin looks great! Now if Murad has something to address those bags under my eyes….

Although the Vitalic line does not include an eye cream, Ginelle Torres, Murad’s broadcast and digital media specialist, told me they had a product that I might find useful: the Hydro-Dynamic Ultimate Moisture for Eyes from Murad’s Age Reform brand.

SONY DSCI’ve been using this product since Ginelle sent it to me in November. Soon after receiving it, I had a professional photo taken. While I’m wearing makeup, including eye concealer, in the photo below, I think you’ll agree that there seems little evidence of under-eye bags. The photo has not been retouched, other than to obscure an object in the background that detracted from the shot.

121107_8180Asq

Photo credit: Elli Morris

As with my other review for Murad, I made no promises that I’d write a positive review. I test the products and form my opinion. But here’s how much I love this eye cream:when I began running low, I shelled out $62 to buy it at Sephora.

So what is it about Murad’s Age Reform line that makes it so great? The PR materials claim to “effectively reduce the signs of aging resulting in smoother skin, restored resilience, and increased firmness.” In the case of the Ultimate Moisture for Eyes, the product features Murad’s proprietary Collagen Support Complex, which infuses the eye area with essential nutrients for immediate hydration to firm the eye area. Here are a few other features and benefits:

  • Osmolyte technology helps maintain critical water balance for more youthful-looking skin
  • A peptide blend, based on natural elastin, awakens eyes by improving skin firmness
  • Collagen Support Complex (in conjunction with Hyaluronic Acid) boosts skin’s resilience and smooths the appearance of fine lines
  • Immediately hydrates to firm and awaken eye area
  • Maintains optimal moisture levels for eight hours

If you’re still skeptical, let me tell you this: I rarely wear full makeup anymore. Working from home, I have the luxury of letting my face breathe. You’ve seen a picture of me in full makeup; here’s one I just took today, about an hour after applying the Hydro-Dynamic Ultimate Moisture for Eyes:

AfterEyeCream

Photo taken June 2013

Now compare this with the photo from last year, when I began using Murad skin care products but did not yet have the Hydro-Dynamic Ultimate Moisture for Eyes:

I think my skin looks great! Now if Murad has something to address those bags under my eyes....

Photo taken October 2012

I see a considerable difference. Are my bags completely gone? No, of course not. But are they as overstuffed as in my bathrobe photo?

Well, you tell me. What do you think?

Now about those breasts…

The Silver Grille’s Maurice Salad

31 Friday May 2013

Posted by in Food for Thought, Nostalgia

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

SilverGrille

From THE SILVER GRILLE: MEMORIES AND RECIPES, Copyright © 2000. Images used with permission.

My morning’s ritualistic reading of the New York Times unexpectedly transported me to my childhood, thanks to “A Lunch that Tastes Like Nostalgia,” Alex Witchel’s lively account of a midday repast at Bergdorf Goodman’s. Her article pays homage to a fading rite—the department store lunch—and shuttled me back to the 1960s, when my Aunt Helen would occasionally take me with her on the bus to downtown Cleveland, where she had standing Saturday appointments at Higbee‘s hair salon with Miss Rose.

Higbee’s was one of the late, great urban department stores, where you could get your nails done, buy furniture, browse through books and greeting cards, try on dresses, and—oh yes—have lunch. Back in the day Cleveland boasted four such retail havens: Besides Higbee’s there was Halle’s, the May Company, and Sterling Lindner-Davis.

At the Higbee salon I idled away the time looking at fashion and movie magazines, with the promise of lunch afterwards at the terribly sophisticated Silver Grille, followed by a visit to the girls’ clothing department, where Aunt Helen always bought me a dress.

So comforting were my memories of lunch with Aunt Helen at the Silver Grille that when Cleveland Landmarks Press published The Silver Grille: Memories and Recipes a number of years ago, I snapped up a copy at Walden Books.

Higbee‘s and the other stores are gone, now. (So, for that matter, is Walden’s.) The sturdy but elegant Higbee building still stands kitty-corner to the landmark Terminal Tower on Public Square (flanked, on the tower’s other side, by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel). The grand old store is now home to the Horseshoe Casino, and has been for exactly one year to the day that I’m posting this. Fans of A Christmas Story, filmed primarily in Cleveland, will remember Higbee’s; its iconic display windows feature prominently in the film and contained Ralphie’s holy grail—the Red Ryder BB gun.

But I digress. Nostalgia will do that to you. Witchel’s article inspired more than this reverie: It compelled me to pull out my copy of the Silver Grille cookbook.

SilverGrilleCoverThe first recipe I turned to, for Maurice Salad, had become a longstanding favorite of mine long after I outgrew the creamed chicken, which arrived in its own cardboard oven.

Silver Grille cardboard oven

The book notes that Higbee’s Silver Grille began serving meals to little tykes in this cardboard oven in 1974, but my memory (which could be faulty) suggests that I opened the oven doors to retrieve my creamed chicken and whipped potatoes in the 1960s.

Large cities with renowned department stores invariably opened satellites in suburban shopping malls, and Higbee’s was no exception. I often ordered this salad when my mother and I ate at the “Attic” in the Elyria Higbee’s. It was a charming place, but it was no Silver Grille. There could only be one. Happily, the food—if not the name—was the same.

Lunch is ready!

Lunch is ready!

The Silver Grille’s Maurice Salad with Classic Maurice Dressing
Adapted from The Silver Grille: Memories and Recipes. Used with permission.

—Serves four

Six cups diced iceberg lettuce
4 ounces julienned cooked ham
4 ounces julienned cooked turkey or chicken
4 ounces julienned Swiss cheese
4 teaspoons chopped sweet pickle

Combine all ingredients. Mix with one cup of classic Maurice dressing and place in a bowl lined with lettuce leaves.

FOR THE DRESSING (makes one cup):

One cup mayonnaise
One hard-boiled egg, chopped
Two tablespoons chopped parsley
One teaspoon vinegar

Combine salad ingredients with the dressing and mix.

Note: The Silver Grill made the original Maurice Dressing with a commercial base not currently available, according to the cookbook. A recipe former Silver Grill employee devised this recipe.

Two more things you should know:

1. James A. Toman, publisher of Cleveland Landmarks Press, tells me that they are reissuing all of the previously published Silver Grille recipes in a new volume, Recipes from the Silver Grille. The book is forthcoming sometime in late summer; be sure to check out the publisher’s website for details.

2. The Silver Grille underwent an award-winning restoration in 2002 by the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland. Although no longer a restaurant, the hotel uses the spacious tenth-floor room as a “function space,” according to Kelsey Williams, senior marketing and PR coördinator of the Ritz-Carlton, which is the venue’s exclusive caterer.

The Silver Grille today, in its current incarnation as an event venue of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

The Silver Grille today, in its current incarnation as an event venue of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Photo courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton.

Do you have department store lunch memories of your own? Share them in the comments section below!

My Mother, the Dictionary

06 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, Special Events

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Gypsy

My mother’s copy of the book that led to an indelible memory.

My mother, to quote Yul Brynner in The King and I, was a puzzlement. She was a first-generation Sicilian-American—strict and extremely Catholic—yet the legendary burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee so fascinated her that she purchased a copy of Lee’s autobiography. By the time I was six or seven and a book magpie, reading anything I found lying around the house, I picked up the memoir and dove in. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary had not yet been published, so if an unfamiliar word ground my reading to a halt, I went to my most trusted source: My mother.

“Mom, what does ‘lesbian’ mean?”

“What?” She pretended not to hear me.

“Lesbian. What does it mean? It says here that someone in the book couldn’t go back to Chicago, because they knew her there as a lesbian. What’s a lesbian?”

Having sufficiently recovered, my mother replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s a kind of religion.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

It could be said that my mother taught me the art of dissembling—something that could come in handy later if I ever became a fiction writer. Or entered politics.

But that’s selling her short. Although it is true that she presented me with a lifetime of exasperating puzzles and mixed messages, she also taught me many wonderful things. Here’s a short list:

  • A love of Broadway musicals. (Hence the King and I reference.)
  • A love of classical music. (When I think of Saturday afternoons as a child, I always think of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts while cleaning the house. “Si mi chiamano,” choreographed with a dust rag, enhanced by the smell of Pledge.)
  • A love of dogs, as evidenced by this photograph.

MomMePuppy

  • The lesbian red herring notwithstanding, a respect for honesty and integrity, and an expectation of both from me.
  • An abiding faith in God. She might have skipped Mass with regularity, but she taught me how to pray. And she always believed that her own prayers would be answered.
  • A love of cooking and baking. I think the recipe section of my blog attests to this.
  • A sense of style and a love of fashion. We didn’t have much money when I was growing up, but my mother would rather go shopping than pay the electric bill. In this way and in others (again, I think of her disingenuous definition), I formed healthy and prudent life habits, sometimes as antidotes to her examples.

My mother was a complicated woman, which is to say that she was human. By trial and error, although often with her example to guide me, I figured out a way to be in the world.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. She would have been 99 this June.

But she wouldn’t want you to know that. She also lied about her age.

This is a bloghop! To read posts from Generation Fabulous bloggers about what they learned from their mothers, click here.

Powered by Linky Tools

What I Wore

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Humor Me, The Well-Dressed Life

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , ,

“For ‘Talk Stoop,’ I wore a blue and orange print Jenni Kayne skirt, a sheer black top and the black Casadei cage sandals. I want to kiss them and make out with them.”
—Heather Graham, “What I Wore”
The New York Times
April 26, 2013

NaotSandles

I ask you: Would you kiss these shoes?

Wednesday, April 24
No need to wake up early, since I’m not flying anywhere, so I lounged under the covers in the sleeveless coral nightgown my husband bought me for Christmas from Soft Surroundings. It has the sweetest ecru trim at the shoulders and neckline that seems as though it should be called lace, but it isn’t lace. I don’t know what it is. Crochet? Some other kind of needlework? How am I supposed to know these things? It might be crochet. My grandmother used to crochet afghans, which are blankets made out of large holes and yarn, and not Afghani dolls, although there might be some connection with Afghanistan. I’m not sure. My grandmother was from Lebanon. Anyway, I slept until the dog woke me up. Then I put on the ecru duvet slippers I bought on sale at Restoration Hardware. (Amazing. You go shopping for a brushed-nickel hook and end up finding the perfect slippers! I want to kiss them and make out with them!) I went downstairs and made coffee. When I added cream to my coffee it was the same color as my duvet slippers and the crochet on my nightgown. Ecru is my favorite non-color color, in that it reminds me of coffee.

Because I was getting a pedicure later that morning the woman at the salon asked me to wear flip-flops so the polish wouldn’t smear. I don’t own flip-flops, so instead I wore these beautiful blue leather slip-on sandals from Naot with my “Not Your Daughter’s Jeans” blue jeans and a Norton McNaughton navy boatneck three-quarter-sleeve top I bought on sale at Higbee’s in the 1980s. My mother always said: “Buy classic clothes and accessories and they’ll never go out of style.” She was right. I still wear two acrylic bracelets that I had in high school. The Naot sandals are insanely comfortable yet pretty; seven small rhinestones form a daisy petal on top of concentric stitched leather cutout petals. I want to kiss them and make out with them! It was cold and raining outside. I should have been wearing socks and warm shoes but what with the pedicure and all I couldn’t. As my grandmother used to say: “You have to suffer to be beautiful.”

Thursday, April 25
Woke up with a bad sore throat and a stuffy nose. I didn’t have any appointments outside the house, but contractors were stopping by to discuss installing a railing on our front stoop and a white picket fence in our backyard. Luckily it had stopped raining, which was good because I was going to be darting in and out. I selected the warmest, comfiest clothes I could find that still proclaimed “Spring!”: a Cleveland Indians hooded sweatshirt featuring Jacobs Field on the front, the NYDJ bluejeans, warm socks, and my Abeo running shoes.

I don’t run. I have bad knees. But I do walk the dog. A lot. Sandy typically requires three outings, on average, each day. This is in addition to the morning walk she has with John before he goes to work, and the walk he gives her right before bedtime. Walking is excellent exercise for those with bad knees, but regardless of what you do with your knees, comfortable footwear is essential. My midlife compatriots know what I’m talking about. What does a year of disco dancing in platform shoes in the ’70s get you? A generation of women with knees like rusty hinges.

Friday, April 26
So excited! John and I had tickets to hear Michael Feinstein perform at Playhouse Square! My cold was a bit better, since I’d been popping Coldcalm like an opium fiend. I decided on my go-to evening-out attire: a black square-necked, dropped waist dress from Coldwater Creek. Because it was a bit chilly, I topped it with a black and grey duster from Barbara Lesser Studio. It looks like alligator skin but it’s not really alligator skin—I wouldn’t wear anything that harmed a reptile or a mink-like animal. I accessorized with a black beaded necklace set off by crystals and gold-like round things that I found at the bottom of my jewelry box, and my black acrylic bracelet from high school. Even though it was getting colder by the minute, I completed the look with dressy, black, open-toed sandals from Timberland to show off my pedicure.

Saturday, April 27
Sick in bed.

The NeatDesk Scanner Wins My Battle Over Paper…and my Heart

13 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by in Product Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

MessyDeskRock-paper-scissors.

I have all three in my office—rocks gathered from different hikes in Northeast Ohio, a beautiful pair of scissors that I inherited from one of my favorite uncles, and paper. Piles and piles of paper. In my office, in my life, paper has always been the winner, hands down, a fact made abundantly clear when I began organizing my office in January for our move from Virginia to Ohio. Just take a look at this photo. See what I mean?

And so it was that I embraced the opportunity to review the NeatDesk Desktop Scanner as a member of Viewpoints Blogger Review Panel. The timing could not have been more optimal: Not only did I have to purge what seemed like tons of paper files, separating the wheat from the chaff (and here I must give a shout-out to my trusty Fellowes paper shredder), I also realized that many documents moldering away in buff-colored three-tab files were in need of digitizing. Moreover, my husband and I were in the process of purchasing a new home in a western suburb of Cleveland. Our lender, several states away in Minnesota, needed about a zillion documents from us, verifying everything about us, from our identities to our net worth to our hopes and dreams. (Ah, for the old days of corner neighborhood banks. But that’s another post.) Of course everything that our lender required must be sent via secure email. Of course none of what he needed was e-mailable.

One particular item that our kind but gently insistent broker insisted upon was a profit-loss statement for my business. For that I would need a bookkeeper (up to this point I’d been muddling through with my cockamamie system). But a bookkeeper would need access to an entire year’s worth of receipts. Of course the bookkeeper I selected was in Ohio. I was in Virginia. Her location would be convenient for future fiscal years; for the one at hand, not so much.

No, I needed a dependable scanner. I had a scanner, mind you, but it was a dinosaur, part of the bulky copier that once belonged to husband. You might be familiar with the process: place the document face down on the screen, open up your computer’s scanning program, hit overview, wait, hit scan, do it all over again because you forgot to switch modes from JPEG to PDF…As a nice finishing touch, the scanner I used accented each document with a rugged black vertical line somewhat right of center.

Readers, I was in dire need of scanner relief.

And so the NeatDesk Scanner, which filled me with such joy upon its arrival that I marked the occasion photographically:

ScannerArrivalNeatDeskBoxI found the software easy to install (I used the version for the Mac—PC versions are also available—but I’ve subsequently learned that those using a MacBook Air rather than a MacBook Pro had considerable difficulty in that the MacBook Air lacks a CD-Rom drive, essential for installing the NeatWorks for Mac software.) You can read the reviews of my colleagues on the Viewpoints Blogger Review panel here, and learn what a NeatDesk spokesperson had to say for those using Netbooks.

You might also want to take a look at our Viewpoints video on YouTube, featuring our opinions about the NeatDesk scanner.

I should note that when I  first used the scanner, I ran into a spot of trouble. I called Tech Support and the person I spoke with could not have been more helpful and patient. For someone such as myself, who knows enough about technology (and I actually think I know a fair amount) to be dangerous, clarity, patience, and successful results from Tech Support is critically important.

One final caveat: In addition to being sent the scanner, which I do plan on keeping (thank you, Viewpoints!), we were all given a 30-day free trial of Neat’s Cloud service. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always been leery of the Cloud. I have an Apple Time Machine that backs up my computer, so losing files isn’t a concern. I don’t consider my modest operations so critical as to warrant information access across all my devices (iPhone, iPad, laptop). At $14.95 per month (I kept the Cloud service for two months), I just couldn’t justify the cost and so I canceled the service.

Now to what I simply adore about the NeatDesk scanner: how swiftly it turns paper into PDFs. I run a document through the scanner, and it shows up on the Table Pane in the NeatWorks software. All I have to do is drag the scanned document to my desktop and voilà! Instant PDF! Although the scanner populates information from a receipt intuitively, it doesn’t always do so accurately. Like any task involving the transmission of information, one must check one’s work and the work of anyone (or anything) done on your behalf. I did not find this a negative; it took me a nanosecond to enter the correct information. I also found that selecting the “document” mode rather than the “receipt” mode eliminated the problem, and also empowered me to enter information the way I wanted.

Take a look at my desk’s “After” picture. Not only did the NeatDesk scanner help me to eliminate the visual clutter threatening to clutter my mind, it allowed me to zip through the myriad requests of our lender in record time. And now, for the first time, I have a proper profit-loss statement for my business. A task I had been dreading was actually fun—the sense of accomplishment gained by scanning all of those receipts and shuttling them off to my bookkeeper was almost as gratifying as putting the finishing touches on an essay!

NeatDesk

Now you might say that I was primed to love the NeatDesk scanner, having needed it so desperately. You might say that I would turn a blind eye to any faults. And to a certain extent that’s probably true, despite the aforementioned caveats. My approach to any new technology claiming to help me gain efficiencies is this: I learn what I must learn in order to accomplish what I need, and that is all, until I need to learn more. I downloaded the User’s Guide for the scanner and it’s there for me when I’m ready to tackle more complicated problems. Some have said, upon digging deeper, that the scanner itself is complicated to use. That might be, but I did not find it to be the case. I’m sure that the NeatDesk scanner is capable of far more than my current demands, but to take me from the first photo to what you see above was, in my view, an Olympian accomplishment worthy of my highest rating: five gold rings.

The Uncertain Certainty of Moving

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in House and Garden, LifeStyles, Transitions

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

, , ,

RVAtruck2The last time you heard from me (January 23, 2013, if anyone’s keeping track), Downton Abbey’s Sybil Branson (née Lady Sybil Crawley) was still alive. So, for that matter, was Matthew Crawley, heir to the popular British program’s eponymous estate. The last time you heard from me, Pope Benedict XVI was still wearing his famous red shoes. Advance word from Hollywood revealed, however, that due to copyright restrictions, another pair of famous red shoes would not be worn in Oz: The Great and Powerful.

The last time you heard from me I was still living in Richmond, Virginia. That is no longer the case.

Yes, the world will turn. And with every revolution, changes large and small are writ large and small in lives large and small…even in lives fictitious.

Following a nine-week social media sabbatical, I am slowly making my way back to something resembling an online life. Blogging, tweeting, and Facebook-ing all took a back seat to real life, and although I’ve had pangs of guilt about my absence (Would my readers think I’d abandoned them? Would they rush into the arms of another midlife second wife and abandon me?) it was necessary to stay away. I haven’t had a vacation in years, and this hiatus in the real world felt like a vacation, albeit one with considerably more packing involved.

It’s easy to forget just how much work goes into in a cross-country move…how many details, large and small, demand one’s attention. The sheer physicality of moving is exhausting. Just as exhausting are the weeks preceding the move, when your life is in flux and you don’t even know where you’ll land.

In a recent New York Times interview, David Rock, director of the Neuroleadership Institute, talked about the notion of certainty in relation to the brain. Using the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy as an example, he said:

The feeling of uncertainty feels like pain, when you can’t predict when the lights will come back on and you’re holding multiple possible futures in your head. That turns out to be cognitively exhausting.

I cannot begin to compare my own comfortable situation to those displaced by natural, political, or financial disasters. I do think, however, that anyone who has ever moved, for whatever reason, can agree that the months preceding a relocation—with unsettling uncertainties about where one will live, where one will create a life and a home—certainly feels like pain. Certainly it’s every bit as cognitively exhausting as it is physically draining.

House-hunting is fun for about the first week; after that, it’s fraught with existential angst. Where will our new pizza joint be? What neighbors will we have, and what will they be like? What sort of days will fill our daily lives? Where will we dream our nightly dreams?

In The Poetics of Space, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard writes that “an entire past comes to dwell in a new house,” which is to say that “wherever you go, there you are.”

As I write this, my husband and I have been in our new home for 36 days. We have brought our past lives with us along with our books, dishes, and furniture. We are unpacking and storing, organizing and setting up, making room for all of these things in our new space in Northeast Ohio. The rooms that were bare and strange upon our arrival are starting to take on the look of us, the look of the familiar, as if we’ve lived here longer than 36 days.

And all the while the world is turning, and changes large and small are happening all around us.

Thank you for waiting for me. It’s good to be back.

Moving to Encourage Good Fortune

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Transitions

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

MorgueFile Image

MorgueFile Image

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’ve fallen off the map. I haven’t been blogging much lately because my life is about to change in a whopping big way. After two-and-a-half years in the fascinating city of Richmond, Virginia, my husband and I are preparing for our return to Northeast Ohio. Or, as I like to call it, the Land Where I Met the Love of my Life.

You’d be right in thinking: “My goodness! Didn’t she just uproot herself to move from Ohio to Virginia? I remember reading all about it on her blog.”

Well yes. Welcome to life in the 21st-century, where job changes occur with greater frequency than they did in our parents’ generation. My husband’s new job—a really terrific one—is the magnet pulling us back, and it’s a good move for many reasons, although we’ll discuss the frigid climate another time. My son is getting married this fall, John’s oldest son is receiving his doctoral degree in May, and we will be much closer to his younger boy. Our boys, I should say. Our sons. None of this “his” or “mine.” John and I believe that our blended family feels very much like an “ours,” although, sometimes, old speech habits are slow to catch up with the heart.

As for myself and this move? Well, I can write and blog anywhere—from the top of Mount Rainier, if I have to—as long as there’s Internet access and I don’t have to climb to get there.

But for now, I’m here, chipping away at the slow deconstruction of my tiny office in our Richmond townhouse. I’ve just removed the artifacts and “familiars” that adorn my bulletin board, and at present I have on my desk a great treasure. It is a poem, yellowed with age and riddled with pinholes. I will carefully tuck it away in a file for the move to Ohio, where it will resume its rightful place—I want to say like a talisman, but that’s not quite right and you’ll see why in a moment—in my new office. I also want to say I hope it will bring me luck, but again—habits of speech tend not to catch up with the heart. The poem is about anti-luck, or, as the late American poet William Stafford called it,

The Little Ways that Encourage Good Fortune

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life,
you will simply be overwhelmed.
You may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life, and you
do not know why, you are just lucky,
And you will not move in the little ways that
encourage good fortune.
The saddest of all are those who are not right
in their own lives who are acting to make
things right for others.
They act only from the self, and that
self will never be right;
No luck, no help, no wisdom.

—William Stafford
(1914-1993)
©  1960, 1998 The Estate of William Stafford
Used with Permission of the Executor, Kim Stafford

When I emailed the poet’s son, Kim Stafford, asking for permission to reproduce this gem of a poem, I wrote that this is likely to be one of the poems I’d like read at my funeral. His reply?

“Perhaps the poem is more useful in the midst of life, when one can act so as to encourage the little ways …?”

And of course it is, which is why I’m sharing it with you here, thanks to Kim Stafford’s good offices, and why I’ve always kept it close to my heart, where old speech habits—even reflexively wishing someone good luck—sometimes lag behind.

Kim also shared something his father once said: “I must be willingly fallible to deserve a place in the realm where miracles happen.”

So I won’t wish good luck for myself, or for my husband or our boys. I shall will myself—and them—to be fallible in order to reside in the realm where miracles happen.

I wish that for you, too.

Note: Kim Stafford is an associate professor at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling in Portland, Oregon, where he directs the Northwest Writing Institute. He tells me that he and his colleagues are at work planning “The William Stafford Centennial, 2014: 100 Years of Poetry and Peace.”

Don’t Look: She’s Not Who You Think She Is

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in The Well-Dressed Life, The Writing Life, Transitions

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

, ,

FashionMistakeMidlife2ndWife

This post is part of a GenFab™ blog hop on the topic of fashion disasters.

In the early 1970s, when I was in high school, a boy in my class had an older sister who worked for Glamour magazine. She edited its wickedly fascinating “Dos and Don’ts” column, with its pictures of ordinary young women going about their lives in various stages of street-scene activity. Unbeknownst to them, they were about to become anonymously immortalized as representing either sartorial savvy or a cautionary tale. If a face happened to be included in a photograph, black bars strategically placed across the eyes shielded one’s identity, sparing any number of poor girls the humiliation of being caught in broad daylight wearing ankle-strapped platform shoes with palazzo pants that were, sadly, too short. And with a panty-line to boot.

Believe me, having that kind of second-degree proximity to a fashion arbiter did make me think twice before getting dressed for school in the morning.

There’s little evidence in my own photographic archives to suggest that I had a terrible sense of style, or was prone to making serial fashion mistakes. In fact, I like to think that I was something of a snappy dresser, despite coming of age in the 1970s. Yes, I once purchased a belted polyester pantsuit, and I wore it with ankle-strap platform shoes. No, no pictures of the atrocity exist.

I did, however, come across this photo. What’s so wrong with it? you might ask. Well, quite a lot, actually.

The real fashion mistake here, aside from the tight curls that looked as though Harpo Marx dipped his head into a bowl of India ink, is the fact that this woman is not dressing for who she was.

Can’t blame her, really; she didn’t even know who she was.

The bridge in the backdrop of this studio portrait is fake. Even the pearls. And yes, the dress was polyester.

It was 1983, and she had dressed to play a role—the role of a certain kind of wife, a certain kind of woman. She was just starting to become who she was going to be…who she was meant to be. But she wasn’t there yet.

The word “corporate” comes to mind. This is a corporate look, whereas the woman fastened into it has a creative temperament. There was a poet and writer inside, struggling to get out, but it would be a year or so before the chrysalis would crack.

It was a film that would do it. She had recently seen Educating Rita, in which a character (played by Julie Walters) undergoes a metamorphosis through the study of literature, helped along with the tutorial guidance of Michael Caine’s character. Rita’s costume changes chart her evolution from tarty hairdresser—a streak of pink in her blond hair to match the color of her smock—to bohemian college student, dressed in studied earth tones, her hair allowed its natural brown. At the end of the film, Rita’s transformation is complete. Frank, her professor, presents her with a graduation gift: a dress. He bought it, he says, with “an educated woman” in mind.

“What kind of education were you giving her?” Rita jokingly asks.

I suppose the point of all this is that nothing represents our true selves better than our clothes. They are fashion markers charting the evolution of our growth and (at the risk of getting all New-Age-y), our self-actualization. In truth, the woman you see pictured here wasn’t representing herself falsely after all. Like Rita, her dress just hadn’t caught up yet with her education.

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to read the other posts in this blog hop…

On Waking to a New Year Without Revelry

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Special Events, Transitions

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Calendarcropped2

MorgueFile image

Last night at midnight a New Year dawned,
But what did I do? I stretched and yawned.
For I was asleep, warmly snug in my bed
While visions of calendars danced in my head.

It was not a good year, two thousand and twelve,
And I’m glad to leave it behind on the shelf
With all of its storms and horror and grief
That threatened to shake my firmest beliefs.

I awoke to the news—not done in a jiff—
That our Senate averted the dread fiscal cliff.
All that remains is to rally the House.
Will they do the right thing? Or grumble and grouse?

I’m so weary of fussing and fighting, my friends.
Can’t we all get along? Can’t we all make amends?
Let this be the year we do the right thing
For our future, our children, and all living things.

Dory’s New Year Strata

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by in Food for Thought

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Strata_MidlifeSecondWifeIMG_1956One of my favorite holiday recipes has absolutely nothing to do with dinner or dessert. I’ve had this strata recipe for years, and it comes from the kitchen of Anne Morse. My former husband and I enjoyed many gourmet dinners with Anne and her husband Andy as part of a couples’ gourmet club in the 1980s and 1990s. They hosted fabulous New Year’s Eve parties, too. The lucky ones who got to spend the night were treated to this the next morning. I don’t recall it being a cure for a hangover, but it certainly helps get one’s new year off to a good start. My tradition since marrying John is to serve this beautiful strata on Christmas morning, accompanied by crisp bacon, perhaps some fresh fruit, and steaming mugs of tea (for John) and coffee (for me). It’s a great stick-to-your-ribs breakfast on a cold morning. I use sharp cheddar rather than mild, herbs and seasonings from Penzeys, and for this particular occasion I bought good semolina bread from Whole Foods. Any white bread will do—I’ve even used baguettes—just so long as the bread is dense and has had a chance to get slightly stale. If it’s too soft you can slice it and leave it sit on the counter for a few hours.

The recipe serves as many as six, but if you’re feeding a crowd you can easily double it (using two soufflé dishes, of course). Just pay careful attention to the note about doubling that follows. And take special note of the timings. Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

Dory’s New Year Strata

1 pound cheddar cheese, grated
1-1/2 Tablespoons dry minced onion
1 Tablespoon dry chopped parsley
4 eggs
Approximately 9 slices firm white bread
Salt and white pepper
3 cups milk*
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dry mustard

Grease a medium large casserole with high sides—I use a soufflé dish. Line the bottom with bread. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, followed by 1/3 of the onion, 1/3 of the parsley, and 1/3 of the grated cheese. Repeat this process two times. Beat eggs lightly, then add milk, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Pour the egg-milk mixture over the contents of the casserole.** Cover with plastic wrap and let stand in the refrigerator for 8 hours. In the morning, remove from the refrigerator and let rest on the counter at room temperature for 2 hours. Bake uncovered for 50 minutes at 375-degrees.

*If doubling the recipe to serve 12 instead of 6, use only five cups of milk.

**I find two tricks help avoid a mess when adding the milk mixture to the strata. First, poke a few holes in the top of the strata so the milk can more easily seep down into the bottom of the dish. Second, place the dish on a baking sheet to catch any overflow. Wipe away any drips and place the entire apparatus—soufflé dish on top of the baking sheet—in the oven.