Girlfriends

Sixteen women friends with whom I graduated from Sidney (Ohio) High School in 1965 assembled at the Inn at Cedar Falls this week to celebrate the year of our 70th birthdays and our friendship. You may think that these were my closest friends in high school, but that is not necessarily the case.  They were all classmates, but in a class of about 300. Some of them I had gone to junior high school with, but there were two junior highs in town then, and most had attended the other one. None of these girls were in my elementary school, but some of them had known each other since elementary days. I knew several by virtue of going to the same church back then. And a couple I knew not at all, because they had moved into the school for only the last two years, and our paths had simply not crossed in the course of daily classes or extracurricular activities. I have no clear idea of how I came to be invited to the first meeting of this group, ten years ago in Naples, Florida. A matter of serendipity and knowing some of the right people, I guess. I am glad I went to that first meeting, and though I have missed a couple group events since then, I am glad I went back to this second big celebration.

We had reserved ten of the cottages at the Inn at Cedar Falls, adjacent to Hocking Hills State Park in south central Ohio near the town of Logan. The first surprise was that the cottages were so far away from each other and the lodge where we were to eat and gather--and that the quarter-mile terrain over which we travelled from cottage to gathering point was so hilly! Clearly we had remembered growing up in flatland Ohio. Even the hardiest among us was grateful for the assistance of cars and drivers that could make the trek, especially during the once-only light rain and the three evenings when we all returned after dark. Many of us, however, appreciated the lush greenery and solitude in the early morning, when we could take a cup of coffee onto our balconies and watch the sun rise, or at least listen to the wind before the joint activities of the day commenced.

With seventeen of us, a lot of time each day was spent in discussing who was driving whom where and when...but the discussions were all in good humor and achieved the result of caring for everyone's wishes. Groups left for hikes to Ash Cave, Old Man's Cave, and Cedar Falls. Also shopping at gift and craft places in the area. Some of us explored the little town of Logan, with its restaurants and unique shops. All these excursions gave us time to walk and talk in small groups or one-on-one. We ate as a large group in the Cedar Falls lodge two nights, and had a special prix fixe six-course dinner all together at Glenlaurel the middle night. We had a late afternoon bourbon tasting and book discussion, which lead us into such deep and moving discussion that our hosts had to come fetch us for out 7:30 dinner reservation.

I renewed friendships on this excursion but I also made news friends. We have all reached an age when we have accomplished a lot of different things, made different choices, weathered different crises, and enjoyed different blessings. But we all come from a certain place at a certain time, and it is interesting to see how that common rooting has served us in the years we have spent apart. Gone is any touch of envy or competition or insecurity, I think. What has grown is respect, support, and appreciation for the people we have become as we have each moved through life.

We told stories, we laughed, we sighed, and occasionally we cried through three days together, but it is noteworthy that in spite of personal challenges, we are all upbeat at this stage of our lives. My words cannot explain or describe the feeling of camaraderie we have developed. Thursday morning we met for breakfast and laughed again and hugged, and started planning for our next get-together. There is no doubt that it will happen.

Roskilde 6 in Cincinnati

On Saturday this week I listened to Kristiane Strætkvern, conservator of the Danish National Museum, telling the story of how a Viking ship was unearthed in Roskilde fjord, Denmark, in 1996 and twenty years later made its way to Ohio to be a major focal point of the recent exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

In 1996-1997 the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde was expanding. During the renovation process the remains of nine Viking ships were unearthed. Through investigation over several years, the ships were determined to have been constructed during the period 1009-1032 AD. Roskilde 6 was the sixth one to be unearthed; restoration of this long ship started in 2009. With a series of excellent and detailed slides, Kristiane explained the process of conserving the waterlogged remains of the ship, using polyethylene glycol (PEG) to remove the excess water and then freeze drying—it took 3 ½ years to complete the freeze drying!

When the restoration began in 2009 it was not envisioned that the ship would be exhibited outside Denmark, but by 2013, it was decided that exhibition would start first in Copenhagen but then go on to London and then Berlin. This complicated the conservation process tremendously—in addition to planning for assembling the ship, plans had to be made for dissembling it, packing it, and transporting it. Denmark, unlike some other countries, does excavation and reconstruction piece-by-piece, rather than assembling the object as a whole in one piece. The careful marking of each piece was crucial in moving the exhibit from place to place. All three exhibits were successful, gathering nearly 200,000 visitors in each of the three museums.

In 2016, through cooperation with a museum exhibition company, the Roskilde 6 ship was matched with the Cincinnati Museum Center, and now the exhibit had to be transported out of Europe for the first time. It came from Copenhagen to New York by ship; from there parts were re-packed and sent by air, while other parts came by truck. Kristiane came to Cincinnati to direct the assembly of Roskilde 6, and she returned for its disassembly, which is scheduled to take ten days. (A YouTube video shows its assembly in Cincinnati https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFMB-IBFOk8&feature=youtu.be.) Roskilde 6 is “almost certainly” going to Minneapolis after its Cincinnati run, and it is hoped that it will find a temporary exhibition spot on the west coast and on the east coast before making its way back to Denmark, where it will become part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Denmark.

At 122 feet, Roskilde 6 is the longest Viking ship yet discovered, and required 100 men as crew. It was definitely used as a warship and was built after 1025, probably in Oslo and shows signs of being repaired at a later date, also in Norway, before finding its nearly 1,000-year resting place in Roskilde fjord. It was operational at a time when King Knud of Denmark was fighting against King Olav of Norway, but it is not known who commissioned its construction.

More links:

Roskilde 6, from the Viking History Museum in Roskilde

http://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/professions/education/viking-knowledge/the-longships/findings-of-longships-from-the-viking-age/roskilde-6/

Longest known Viking ship goes on display at British Museum http://www.historyextra.com/news/longest-known-viking-ship-Roskilde-6-goes-display-exhibition-british-museum

Rebirth of the Viking warship that may have helped Canute conquer the seas

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/dec/27/viking-ship-roskilde-british-museum

It is still somewhat amazing to me that the first appearance of this restored ship outside of Europe would be in Cincinnati. We went to the exhibit with friends last month and I was amazed at the information in the entire exhibit--the Viking ship was only a part of the excellent content. It closed today, and although the exhibit was excellent, there was virtually no representation of this curation online or in book form, and that is a terrible loss.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Andersen!

Today is the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), the creator and teller of "fairy tales," as the poor translation of the Danish "eventyrer" characterizes his "stories told for children." In fact, Andersen also wrote in the form of novels, theater pieces, poetry, and travel journals in addition to the output of 156 (or 212, depending on how you count them) stories that made him famous.  The travel pieces are probably the most surprising, but Andersen was a great traveler in the 19th century, going by coach or steam railway far from his native Denmark, throughout Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, Spain, and beyond--even to England to pay an infamous visit to Charles Dickens and his family (he overstayed his welcome). Perhaps Andersen was wary of leaving England. He was fearful of ocean travel, a fact which prevented him from ever coming to the United States, even though he was invited and carried on a long correspondence with Horace Scudder, his American editor, and was glad to have some of the later eventyrer published in Boston before they were published in Denmark.

At rejse er at leve, Hans Christian Andersen famously remarked: "To travel is to live. " Andersen traveled for months on end, and often enough that for several years he had no permanent residence--he simply traveled or lived in a hotel in Copenhagen. You can still see his room upstairs between the Hotel d'Angleterre and Magasin du Nord in Kongens Nytorv, King's New Square, in Copenhagen, or at least you could as recently as 2005, when the city celebrated the bicentennial of his birth.

I've been traveling in the past weeks, but unlike Andersen, I stayed in my own country this time. It is delightful to discover something new, that you have never seen before, in your own country. In this case it was even more pleasant because I discovered it in Florida, a state that I have visited several times, but mostly Orlando and Kissimmee, where my parents and an aunt lived for many years.

This trip took us to Fort Lauderdale to make use of a four-night stay in a private home that I had "won" as part of a benefit auction last year. Our host warned us against coming during March and April, as that is spring break time, and the place is overrun with tourists, he said. But that is when there was time available on our schedules, so that is when we went. Somehow I never "did" spring break during my youth. I never had the money for an extended trip, and I was lucky to get home from college at spring break instead of staying in the dorm alone for a week. During my freshman year I remember a dorm neighbor bringing a souvenir back from her spring break to my roommate and me--a fork she had "forgotten to return" to her vacation hotel, the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. We added it to our "kitchen utensils" centered around the popcorn popper--that was what we cooked in illegally in dorm rooms in those days.

Since we were going to spend four days in south Florida and this was my first pleasure trip there (I had been to Miami Beach only once before, for a conference at the convention center) we decided to go the extra mile, so to speak, and we spent three nights in Key West. A shuttle picked us up in the Ft. Lauderdale airport at 2:30 in the afternoon and drove us south and west on US 1, and by 7:00 we were on what I thought was the westernmost Key of the Florida Keys. I learned later that Key West is not the westernmost Key and that the name "Key West" was an anglicization of Cayo Hueso, island of the bones, because it was used as a commercial graveyard for prehistoric peoples, and bones were found by the first Europeans to explore the island. We explored Key West mostly by the hop-on, hop-off bus, and saw several of the sites along the route, but we didn't push ourselves too much. It was a relaxing few days, with good eating, gallery visits, some walking, and wandering among interesting architecture and gardens.

The Key shuttle appeared again to take us back to Ft. Lauderdale, and we passed along US 1 again, this time facing the hurricane evacuation signs, and then were escorted to a delightful Spanish-style villa within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean in Lauderdale. This house reminded us very much of our home in Spain, but its completely surrounding garden was more lush, and our time there was as at an oasis. We took a boat trip along the New River and saw lavish homes, and walked to the beach and a mall (imagine being able to walk to an Apple store!), and bought good fish and prepared it ourselves in the well-equipped and comfortable kitchen. This was a delightful period of reading, eating well, and living in beautiful and peaceful surroundings. It was definitely more relaxing than most of our vacations--we moved at a sedate pace.

Mr. Andersen would have approved, I think.

Spring Forward Smørrebrød

This was my nod to the all-too-premature "spring forward" Daylight Saving Time command last night--a spring-like addition to our regular Saturday evening Danish smørrebrød, simply because I happened to have fresh asparagus in the house. Asparagus is not a usual accompaniment to Danish open-faced sandwiches, though it does appear occasionally on ham with Italian salad, I now recall. But it is not usual with us, since we concentrate more on good, healthy herring (shown here in the five smaller tidbits circling the spring sandwich).

We washed down our five different herring and the spinach-egg-tomato-asparagus-shrimp-dill mayonnaise concoction with a less healthy Carlsberg beer and aquavit. It was delicious, as always. I have been doing some thinking this weekend about the distinction between a habit, a tradition, and a ritual. A habit is done regularly, but without thinking. A tradition has been done before--a few times anyway--and tends to acquire meaning in the fact of being handed down. A ritual is also performed on a regular basis and has meaning; it is ceremonial and, according to Merriam-Webster, has "religious, courtly, social, or tribal significance."

I have been making smørrebrød for almost fifty years. It wasn't until we lived in Spain and had easy access to the ingredients (yes, Spain) that we started to enjoy it every week. Now, back in Cincinnati, we also have easy access to many, though not all, ingredients (bless Ikea and Jungle Jim's). Our Saturday evening dinners go beyond habit to tradition and ritual.

Turning the clocks forward or backward is just an annoying habit.

Music Live with Lunch

So soon (just three days) after the Mack and Mabel performance at C-CM, and here comes another great musical experience. This week it was Music Live with Lunch, a series hosted by Christ Church Glendale, usually on the second Wednesday of each month. These are short concerts, starting at 12:05 and over by 12:35 or so. Some of the ladies of the church prepare an easy-to-eat, but hot and nutritious lunch, that you may purchase for a few dollars and eat during the performance, if you are truly on a lunch hour. I am not, and 12:00 noon is early for my lunch, so after the first one earlier this year, I've just showed up for the performance. It really is an opportunity to be able to leave my desk at 11:45, drive to the next town, park, hear a half hour or so of good music, and be back at my desk (after taking my lunch out of the refrigerator) by 1:00. You can almost do that without telling anyone you are taking time off. And you come back refreshed, inspired, and/or at peace.

Last Wednesday's musical menu featured Michael Unger playing the fabulous new organ in the chapel at Christ Church. Not all the performances are held in the chapel, but all three that I have been to have been in this modern, multi-purpose room with flexible seating and a multi-level pipe organ as center focal point. It was particularly fitting for the four organ pieces played by Mr. Unger, who is, among other roles, Assistant professor of Organ and Harpsichord at UC's College-Conservatory of Music. I wish I was more educated about organ music, or even music in general; all I really know is that this was grandiose in the good sense, and Unger clearly appreciated this great organ and venue. The program:

Concerto del Sigr. Torelli in A minor, arr. J.G. Walther (1684-1748)

[Allegro]

Adagio

Allegro

Herzlich tut mich verlangen, Johann Peter Keller (1705-1772)

Andante with Variations in D Major, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Fugue No. 2 on BACH Op. 60, No.2, Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Mack and Mabel

Mack and Mabel, according to Wikipedia, is a musical first produced on Broadway in 1974, which received eight Tony nominations--including Best Musical--but which won none. The original Broadway production starred Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters and closed after just eight weeks. It tells the story of the romance between Mack Sennett, movie director, and his leading lady, Mabel Normand. between the years 1911 and 1933. It also tells the story of the early film industry in Brooklyn and Hollywood, Mack Sennett's comedic "two-reelers" starring Mabel Normand, then Sennett's Bathing Beauties, then his Keystone Cops, and finally the demise of "movies" after the incursion of the "talkies."

After seeing the production at the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music (CCM) this afternoon, it is hard to believe that the play was a flop in its original production. Spectacular choreography and costumes, original stage settings, expert music, and powerful and energetic stage performances transformed it into an experience to remember. Then, too, it was the first performance I have ever seen at CCM, a leading school for music in the U.S., with no fewer than five performance venues. I have heard of CCM since we came to Cincinnati two years ago, but somehow the timing was never right to get there. But the timing was right today, and off we went. It will not be our last excursion.

I have loved theater since the first productions I ever saw, two musical comedies in Dayton, Ohio, and two summer Shakespeare plays in Yellow Springs, Ohio, when I was in high school back in the 1960s. When I attended Tufts University I was pleased to discover bi-weekly Cup and Saucer performances in Tufts' small Theater in the Round during the school calendar terms, performance put on by the drama department, with discussions of the plays after each  presentation. Somehow I got myself admitted to a program in London for my junior year, designed for drama and English literature majors, though I was neither, and I went to every single play showing in the West End of London during the fall of 1967. There were theater performances at other times after I returned to New England, in the Merrimack Repertory Theater in Lowell, Massachusetts when we lived in the Boston area; the Yale Rep and the Long Wharf in New Haven when we lived in Connecticut; and occasional Broadway productions. I've even gone to a few live theater productions in Denmark on my many trips there, and attendance at the summer musical revue at Bakken north of Copenhagen has become an almost annual event. But attendance at live theater dropped off dramatically during the decade that we lived in Spain, replaced by mostly classical musical performances, which bridge the language barrier. So it had been a very long time indeed since I had experienced the energy and life of real theater. Until this afternoon. And I loved it again.

Meeting a Challenge

Last week once again I got tired of waiting for my hair to grow gray gracefully. It had been six months since I had last had it colored, and while it sometimes seemed as though the gray was coming in nicely and highlighting the remaining light brown, I wasn't really sure that an objective (or critical) observer would make that same judgment. So it was off to the local beauty school, my favorite place for a color after previously evaluating three other more upscale salons in the area. The prices are less at the beauty school, but part of the reason that I favor this place is that I have vocational school education in my professional background, and I like to support it and see how it works these days.

I walked in and went to the desk where an adult teacher or supervisor keeps the records, receives payment, and assigns the task to a student. I have been there at least five times since I moved to Cincinnati, but I have never had the same woman (the students are all women) twice. I did not have to wait long before Erica approached me and asked me to come to her station. I went and sat. She disappeared, as the student usually does, to the back room, where she or someone mixed the solution. She was a long time in coming back, so I took off my glasses and my earrings, glanced around at the few students on duty that morning, and then zoned out, closing my eyes and doing what I think many women do at the hairdresser's--enjoying the relaxation. Then she returned and started parting my hair section by section and applying the solution. It is a familiar procedure, so the only surprise was that she seemed to be parting it in smaller sections than usual. That may well have been necessary since it had been so many months since it was last attended to; I didn't let it bother me. Part of going to a salon where there are students in training is to be patient.

We chatted. Did you grow up in Cincinnati? she asked. No, but I grew up in Ohio. How long have you been a student here? I asked her, and when will you be finished? I'll probably be done a month from now, she answered. That figures, I said to myself; I never get the same person twice.

The supervisor came over and told Erica that she had assigned another customer to her, for a cut while my color was setting. OK, responded Erica, but then she looked over to see the customer and said, That woman won't let me do her hair. She doesn't like me.

What? Erica was black, and the next customer was white, but then, so am I. No reason was given for the customer's prejudice, and no discussion ensued, but the supervisor said she would assign the customer to someone else and walked away. Erica muttered quietly that she thought it wasn't right that the next customer was against her, and I murmured quietly from my reverie that there was no reason that the customer should be so negative. But I didn't want to start a discussion, so I just closed my eyes again and enjoyed that lovely feeling of someone working with your hair.

Finally Erica finished with the partitioning and application of color, set the timer, and allowed me to get out my iPad to play with while waiting a half hour for the color to set. It was only as I watched her clean up her station that I realized that Erica had only one hand.

Nor did she have a prosthesis. There was a stump where her second hand should have been; it came somewhere between her elbow and wrist--closer to her elbow. How could I possibly not have realized this as she parted my hair into sections and applied the liquid color? But I hadn't. Somehow she had managed to do that so similarly to the way it had always been done that I, with no central vision in one eye, and diminished vision in both, had not seen it. Or had not been paying attention.

Now, of course, I paid attention. When we walked over to the shampoo station, I wondered silently whether she would be able to soap my hair and massage my scalp. She did, and I didn't get any more wet around the neck than I normally do at this stage in the process. Then we walked back to the styling station and she asked if I wanted her to blow dry the hair. Yes, please, I said automatically, and did I notice correctly a slight hesitation on her part? Yes, I wondered, how could she hold the dryer and style the hair with a brush with only one hand? I do that poorly enough myself with two.

Truth be told, it wasn't the best blow dry that I ever had. The dried hair was wispy and not shaped as finely as I would have liked. But by that time my lunch date had come into the salon and made his presence known. Perhaps she hurried more than normal, or stopped before she normally would have, because she assumed I was in a hurry. I did not ask her to re-do or refine the styling. I simply thanked her, put on my earrings and glasses, tipped her as usual, wished her well, and walked out.

I thought about her for quite some time and admired her determination and skill, but I couldn't help wondering why she had chosen a vocation that not only glorifies normal attractiveness but also requires physical dexterity. And then I remembered. I, too, am persisting in my chosen profession. With diminished eyesight I am still reading, writing, keyboarding, and even editing code on a screen. Perhaps it is the challenge to remain normal.

Happy New Year!

We were part of a Chinese New Year's celebration last night, hosted by a couple who have recently returned from spending six years in China. It was a gala evening of wine, "real" Chinese food, a slide show of pictures, and good conversation.

Only once before have I celebrated Chinese New Year. That was many years--decades--ago, in Boston, when we went to a parade in Boston's Chinatown with some Danish friends. It was colorful, but not as elaborate as the parades and fireworks I saw on TV yesterday. I remember that the weather was very cold. Perhaps we topped off the afternoon with a visit to Joyce Chen's Cambridge restaurant. Joyce Chen pioneered Chinese cooking in the U.S. She had a cooking program on WGBH, the public television station in Boston, which aired in 1966-67, after the better-known Julia Child had begun to teach America how to cook French. Joyce Chen was the first TV cooking chef I knew, as I was still living in Ohio in the early 1960s when The French Chef began broadcasting, from Boston but not all they way to small-town Ohio.

The New Year's celebration last night was in a warmer locale, and the food was better than I remembered from Joyce Chen's restaurant, when I had been surprised by very sticky white rice. For one thing, we had the option of brown rice last night, in addition to the traditional white (but less sticky). With the rice we had an egg and tomato dish, which our hosts explained had been their regular Monday night dinner while in China, because that was what their housekeeper prepared. It reminded me a bit of the Egg Foo Yung that had been featured on one of the episodes of the Joyce Chen program that I had seen during my early married years, but the egg was fluffier and there was lots of tomato, which was an ingredient that I don't recall Chen using, and which I don't think I've seen in American Chinese restaurants.

Prior to the egg, tomato, and rice we enjoyed a delicious cold salad of diced cucumber and carrot with boiled whole peanuts, with a nice dressing that could be spiced up with various sauces. Most cuisines have a cucumber salad, I have learned, but this may be the best I have ever tasted. It probably would not be bad with garbanzo beans instead of the peanuts, but less authentic, I suppose. It would also make a refreshing main dish summer salad.

After the rice and egg we made dumplings, a traditional Chinese New Year food, we were told. Some of us made them, that is. I just watched, sampled, and observed a handy little plastic dumpling press that the hostess told me she had found at the CAM International Market in Cincinnati, a giant supermarket that I had stumbled upon and previously walked through in awe, but where I had been too unprepared to buy anything. Now I have a mission: that dumpling press is the perfect gadget I need to make mini-empanadas for an Argentine meal.

We had been warned that the Chinese don't do good wine, so I went prepared to stick to the Chinese beer that had been promised instead. But our host had found wine with labels depicting roosters, and since we were entering the Year of the Rooster, that was a good enough excuse to offer wine as well and still be in the spirit of China.

The Rooster is one of the twelve zodiac signs of the Chinese calendar and connotes fidelity and punctuality. That "punctuality" characteristic would prove that I am not born in any year of the rooster. Rather, I discovered, I was born in the year of the pig, which suggests a whole host of characteristics that are not particularly pleasing to me.  The best that can be said for the year of the pig is that it behaves itself and wishes no harm to others. Therefore I will refrain from any further comments on the Chinese zodiac.

On the Line

I did not go to Washington, D.C. for the Women's March last Saturday; I did not even make the trek to Washington Park in Cincinnati for the local "sister" march, though I support most of the various causes espoused so eloquently and peaceably by the hugely divergent groups of women who assembled worldwide to bring attention to women's rights and threats to them under the new U.S. administration.

Instead I chose to make one small, concrete effort on a single issue: feeding at-risk school children in Cincinnati. When schools close on Friday afternoon each week, a shocking proportion of students go home not knowing whether they will be able to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner during the weekend. Freestore Foodbank helps to reduce the number of students who may not eat, or eat nutritiously, on Saturday and Sunday.

I helped to assemble Power Packs. A Power Pack is a brown paper bag containing easy-to-prepare and shelf-stable food for one person for two days. The food in a Power Pack may include whole grain cereals, fruit and vegetable juices, sunflower seeds, health bars, complete pasta meals, and other healthy options. We had four assembly lines going on Saturday, and I was in station two of one of them. I received a bag in which my partner in station one had placed a cup of beef-a-roni and another cup of...I can't remember what microwaveable individual main dish. My job was to insert a bottle of some branded sports/health water that I had never seen before, and a tetra pack of cherry juice, balanced on its side. My partner on my right placed a cup of applesauce next to the juice, and some pudding. She then passed the bag down the line to three other people, who inserted more food items. I never had the time to find out what products they were putting in. At the end of the line, someone folded over the tops of the bags, someone else taped them shut, and another person packed six bags in a precise pattern into a cartoon and placed the cartons on a pallet.

In addition to the four assembly lines of packers, there were people uncrating products and moving them quickly from pallets to the assembly line, and removing the empty brown cartons, breaking them down, and dropping them into tall dumpsters. There were probably 50-60 volunteers there Saturday morning, some of whom were veterans, and others who were novices, like me. In two hours we filled more than 2000 Power Packs, moved them out to a loading dock, and replenished products in the assembly lines for the next group that was coming in. When we were told to wind up, I was just beginning to realize that I was tired of standing on my feet and moving in a limited, prescribed motion for two hours with no break. But it was a great feeling to know that some kids would eat better next weekend because of what we had done. I hope to come back for another shift next month.

The Freestore Foodbank's Power Packs are part of a larger national effort called Feeding America.  Perhaps there is one near you.

So Many Books ... More Time to Read

Each month in our Scandinavian Scribblers writing group we read aloud during the meeting what we have written at home. You learn something about your fellow writers when you hear them share their stories month after month. Their selection of topics, the details of what they relate, and the way they say it all contribute to the experience.  Most often we write personal stories, and therefore we have learned about our fellow members, their arenas and grandparents, their children, their work, avocations, and travel. This past Monday one of our members, who worked for many years as a scientist, reported on a technical study of the effects of reading on longevity.

The provenance of the report is amusing. Our Scribbler found the story in a Danish language newspapers, published in the U.S. Essentially he translated the brief article from Danish to English for us. It told of a Yale study of 3600 people over 50 years of age that concluded that book readers lived longer than people who did not read.  Subjects were divided into three groups: those who did not read books at all, those who read 3 1/2 hours per week, and those who read more. People who read for up to 3 1/2 hours per week were 17 percent less likely to die during the 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die. On average, book readers lived two years longer than those who did not read at all. Although a similar correlation existed for those who read newspapers and magazines but not books, it was weaker than for those who read books.

I did not catch all the details of the report during the meeting, but I congratulated myself for taking a picture of the news article tom the Bien newspaper so I could read it later. Unfortunately, my photo wasn't good enough for me to really read all the details. I noticed that the Bien article had gotten its facts from the New York Times. It was a simple matter, therefore, to run a Google search and find the New York Times story as well as other coverage in the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and professional literature and sites as well. Most of the coverage was markedly similar--three or four paragraphs, all with the same facts, descriptions, and quotes.Occasionally some analysis or even questioning would be added and a longer article ensued. Several of the articles named the original journal in which the results had been reported: Social Science & Medicine, September 2016 issue. I followed the links through to see whether I could get to the article, but no, it was behind a pay wall. The abstract was available for free, however:

Abstract
Although books can expose people to new people and places, whether books also have health benefits beyond other types of reading materials is not known. This study examined whether those who read books have a survival advantage over those who do not read books and over those who read other types of materials, and if so, whether cognition mediates this book reading effect. The cohort consisted of 3635 participants in the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study who provided information about their reading patterns at baseline. Cox proportional hazards models were based on survival information up to 12 years after baseline. A dose-response survival advantage was found for book reading by tertile (HRT2 = 0.83, p < 0.001, HRT3 = 0.77, p < 0.001), after adjusting for relevant covariates including age, sex, race, education, comorbidities, self-rated health, wealth, marital status, and depression. Book reading contributed to a survival advantage that was significantly greater than that observed for reading newspapers or magazines (tT2 = 90.6, p < 0.001; tT3 = 67.9, p < 0.001). Compared to non-book readers, book readers had a 23-month survival advantage at the point of 80% survival in the unadjusted model. A survival advantage persisted after adjustment for all covariates (HR = .80, p < .01), indicating book readers experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow up compared to non-book readers. Cognition mediated the book reading-survival advantage (p = 0.04). These findings suggest that the benefits of reading books include a longer life in which to read them.

After I read it, I determined that I need not try the original article. The level of scholarly description and statistical analysis was more than I can comfortably tackle. I sure would hate to use up my "extra" two hours of life reading academic jargon when it would be much more beneficial and fun to read a book.

Epiphany

I remember that it was an epiphany for me a few years ago when I realized that the serious Christian holiday of Epiphany coincided with the Spanish holiday of Three Kings Day, the day on which Spanish children received their Christmas gifts, brought by the Three Kings, not Santa Claus.

The Three Kings, or Three Wise Men, had to go on a long journey to get to the baby Jesus after they heard he had been born in Bethlehem. It took them 12 days--the Twelve Days of Christmas. Ah, suddenly all these yuletide references are coming together.

I loved the Spanish star, which showed motion from one point to another, where it hung over Bethlehem to show the way for the Wise Men. It was featured in all the belenes (the Bethlehems),  elaborate Christmas village scenes that were the centerpiece of each town's Christmas celebrations (no worries about celebrating a religious holiday on government grounds here).

I also loved the tradition of not having to have all Christmas decorations down by January 1st. Since Three Kings Day falls on January 6, and that's when the Three Kings come to deliver gifts, it is perfectly acceptable to have Christmas decorations up through January 6.

So now I have begun thinking of January 6th as the day that I should start thinking about taking down Christmas decorations. And since it fell on Friday this year, I figured I would have the weekend to remove traces of yuletide from my house. But we had gotten only a few decorations up this year, since we were doing a major kitchen renovation, which somehow seems to spill over into the rest of the house--at least the first floor--and we got them up late. And then we had an unexpected event on Friday that demanded attention through Sunday. So here I am Sunday evening two days after Epiphany, and the decorations are still up. I'll get to them tomorrow, maybe. Well, probably not, since I will be out all day. Tuesday, then.

But then there is the Danish Christmas song:

"Julen varer lige til Påske."   [Christmas lasts until Easter.]

So I still have time. And the julenisser (Christmas elves) can stay nestled on the mantle for another day or two.

Planning for the New Year

I spent a couple days this week filling in the pages of my new 2017 calendar with activities scheduled for the new year. There are a lot of them, and I hope I got all my commitments down and can avoid some of the conflicts--and more importantly, forgotten appointments--that I experienced in 2016.

This necessary exercise made me realize how much my life has changed in the past two years, since we moved from Spain. Petánque, Spanish classes, and the next tapas run no longer are the most important dates noted in my calendar. This week I wrote in dates for my monthly writing group and two reading groups, quarterly and monthly musical performance events, monthly "senior" luncheons, church committee and service dates, a few upcoming medical appointments, and a whole slew of courses and presentations for which I registered in the winter OLLI trimester. I also wrote in the dates for two trips that are already scheduled, and checked for the optimum dates for a third trip in the "definitely-going but not sure when" category.

Notably absent were two trips that I have been making yearly for a couple decades or more. These would be the semiannual conferences of the American Library Association. Although I am still working part-time and would still benefit from this regular immersion into education, networking, and entertainment, I have decided this year that my priorities are shifting and I would rather allot my money, time, and energy to newer areas of interest--one of which presents a conference opportunity at the exact same time as one of the ALA meetings. I still pencilled them in on the calendar, so I would be aware of when they were happening, but I'll be participating only from my desktop.

There is a posting going round and round on Facebook suggesting that each week of 2017 you put a piece of paper into a jar with a few words noting something good that happened to you that week, and then at the end of the year, you would be able to look back and see that you had had a good year.  I "liked" this when I first saw it and said to myself, "After all, that's what SundaysinSpain, the predecessor blog to this one, was all about." I wrote it to concentrate once a week on something good, funny, or thoughtful about the experiences I was having while living in Spain, and then sharing it with family and friends at a distance, and the occasional unknown person from the public who stumbled across it by chance or a Google search. I had been pondering why it was relatively easy for me to post in that blog religiously, as it were, almost every Sunday, whereas it is obviously difficult for me to do so with Sundays in Cincinnati.

One reason for the difference was that I was less busy in Spain than I am here; I had fewer things to do and therefore it was easier to pick an event or a thought to write about Here I have far more that I do, and I am enjoying it, and therefore it is harder to pick one thing and concentrate on it. And of course, since I am doing more, there is less time to write. Another reason is that I no longer have the need to communicate with my family through the distance, because they are here. I don't imagine that my Spain friends make it a point to look at Sundays in Cincinnati for a post each week, while my family in Cincinnati did let me know if I failed to write in Sundays in Spain.

The compelling reason for posting less often in a blog, though, is undoubtedly that I am posting more often on Facebook. That is something that many of the Spain friends do see, as well as more-distant family and friends from Denmark, Argentina, and other parts of the U.S. Actually, I don't post on Facebook as often as I "share" a post, and even though I never share a post that I haven't read completely (going to the source link and waiting for it to load, then reading it, and then going back to Facebook) I have to say that the effort that goes into the Facebook post or share is less than what goes into a blog post.

But my FB posts and shares are almost always more substantive than what's in a 140-character tweet. I tweeted briefly, by the way, from December 2007 through some time in 2012, generating fewer tweets in five years than Donald Trump does in a month. And even a tweet is longer than a few words  on a piece of paper stuck in a jar for a year.

So I know I'm not doing the jar thing in 2017. I do use, and keep, my yearly calendars as a sort of diary, but the entries there would be little more than the words-in-a-jar approach. And I have no intention of joining the president on Twitter, though I would do that it it would keep the mainstream media from using their airtime to tell me over and over again what he had posted. I would like to say that I will return to blog posting "religiously" every Sunday, but it is in fact my new-found "religion" that is one of the reasons I find it difficult to do that. So it is a toss-up as to whether the best chronicle of my year will be here or on Facebook. Facebook, of course, will remind me 365 days or fewer from now of what it thinks is significant of what I posted this year. But that's their evaluation. So I'm going to make greater efforts to return to a chronicle here.