Immigration Crises and Family Values

In between the gross excesses of the U.S. political campaigns blared daily on the evening news programs you might find a few minutes, or occasionally a longer, thoughtful story, on the unending immigration crisis. I mean the immigration crisis playing itself out in Europe, though I can think of no reason why it should end there. Earlier we saw huge boatloads of refugees from war, crossing treacherous waters and arriving on land, and the ensuing chaos as the people tried to move farther along in their journey but were stopped by bureaucracies and fear. Many of these first arrivals were men who had left early and were trying to find a new home for their families. Now the families have joined the journey, and we tend to see unending lines, comparatively orderly, of men, women, and children walking hundreds of miles in long queues, still on their way north, still trying to find countries that will take them in, if only for the length of time it takes to pass through to a place that will accept them legally.

Here in the U.S. we tend to focus on our own immigration crisis. I have been dipping into an extraordinary book about the toll that illegal status places on children in families in the U.S. The author, Joanna Dreby, speaks about families in New Jersey and in Ohio. Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families is an academic book; her research is thorough, but imparted in plain English. What makes this academic title also a book for general audiences, however, is her recounting of her own story and that of her two children, who somehow entered into the uncertainty of a family living with illegality through some mishandling of paperwork discovered in a divorce transaction. There are hundreds of gotchas that affect thousands of children, and this book shows in painful detail how families can be torn apart in our own immigration crisis.

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Even though I haven't read it all, I need to take this book back to the library soon. I've already renewed it once and I just don't think it's right to keep it longer. But it's worth mentioning that getting the book represents a minor everyday miracle of the library system in Ohio. This title was not available through the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library system, but it came to my local public library from Capitol University, via OhioLINK, the consortium that links many libraries of different types in the state. I worked for multitype library lending and cooperation many years ago (in Massachusetts) and Ohio was a best practices model then. It is nice to see that the system still works. And it's always nice to see my tax dollars going for something good.

Back to Sundays in Cincinnati

It has been a very, very long time since I updated Sundays in Cincinnati. That's mostly because it's been a very, very long time since I spent a Sunday in Cincinnati. On the rare occasion when I was here, I was returning from elsewhere. Here's a round-up.

On August 9 I was in Chicago, relaxing after a drive across Indiana the previous day, and preparing to board a plane Sunday evening for a 14-hour flight to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. We made use of the time by finding a shopping center with a Barnes & Noble, where I bought three books, which I stored in the back of the car that we were leaving at a hotel near the airport while we were away.

The next Sunday was not in Dubai.  We had spent three interesting days there ("that's more than enough," the Emirates airline agent had said to us when we checked in, but we found plenty to do). On Sunday, August 16 we were in Cape Town, South Africa and it was the inauguration ceremony for the World Library  and Information Congress, sponsored by IFLA. The ceremony was a glorious colorful extravaganza with music and dance, celebrating Africa's story-telling tradition. It was only the beginning of a very exciting time at the conference itself and at several places--and with several people--in Cape Town and environs.

The following Sunday, August 23, we were back in Dubai, breaking up our return trip (9 hours from Cape Town, 14 to Chicago) by a single day at The Dubai Mall. Yes, we spent the entire day there, or at least that portion of it that was left after arriving very early in the morning Sunday and leaving very early in the morning Monday.

By Sunday, August 30 we were back in Ohio. But we were only returning to Cincinnati from farther north, Sidney, Ohio, where we had spent an enjoyable and emotional weekend while attending my 50th high school reunion. It was a treat to see and exchange conversation with so many classmates from 50 and more years ago.

Last Sunday, September 6, I was in Cincinnati--at least my body was. I managed to get to church and to Ikea to buy curtains and rods (we had had six new windows installed during the week and determined that we did not want to put the same old window treatments up over them). But I was a little "out of it," as I had also had periodontal surgery on Friday, aided by a good dose of sedatives and painkillers, thank you very much.

Today, September 13, I am also in Cincinnati. All day. And I have been here all week! The season has changed--I put on fall clothes last night to attend a Scandinavian Society of Cincinnati dinner, but I was back to late summer attire for church this morning. But fall activities have started, and the social calendar is already full. Scribblers group starts tomorrow, with the Readers group and Cincinnati's OLLI lifelong learning courses the following week. We are still in the middle of house renovations (replacing a wood-burning fireplace with gas), and that is a bigger project than first anticipated, as we have had a whole corner of the living room wall and flooring knocked out and now they are in the process of being replaced. We will reach a pausing point by the end of Wednesday, when the contractor goes on his late-summer vacation. That will give us time to finalize arrangements for house guests who will be with us next weekend--including Sunday--taking a spring vacation from Argentina.

I may post more detail about some of my recent adventures in the coming days--I have several jottings--if there is time. At any rate, I am delighted that we are coming to a stable period where our activities are mostly contained within the boundaries of one state.

The Origin of "Pringles"

I had coffee and conversation with a friend at Panera in Finneytown this week. Finneytown is one of the north-of-Cincinnati residential areas that I have passed through frequently on the bus or in the car as we go into downtown Cincinnati by way of Winton Road.  Though I have thousands of hours of commuting time in all sorts of weather and road conditions under my belt, those days are past, and I am no longer an adventurous driver. Nevertheless I felt perfectly comfortable driving there by myself in the middle of a sunny afternoon, and I arrived early, as I usually do, since I don't really believe that you can get "everywhere" in Cincinnati in about a half hour, and always allow more time. I am wrong more often than I am right--it almost always takes less time than I allow.

We were in my friend's neighborhood, and after we talked, I offered to drive her home. I was watching carefully where I was going, so I could get back again, and after we made a couple turns I noticed the sign for Pringle Drive, though that was not where we were headed. Then she remarked casually that Pringles were named after this road! Oh, that's where the inventor lived? I asked. No, but the product manager at P&G who was working on their potato chip product back in the '60s happened to live in this general area, before the new product with the innovative shape and container was named. He and a colleague or two car-pooled, and as he passed one day he noticed the name of the street and thought it was catchy. Neither he nor any other Pringles associate actually lived on Pringle Drive, but the street is forever enshrined because its name caught his eye and his imagination.

Pringles, which I have seen in numerous countries throughout the world, is one of the hundreds of consumer brands that I recognized as a Procter & Gamble (P&G) product even before I came to Cincinnati. But it turns out that my recognition is outdated. Since I moved here and read The Enquirer I have been aware that P&G is downsizing, selling off tons of its brands. They sold Pringles in 2012 and it is now owned by Kellogg.

The Wikipedia article about Pringles gives a good history of the "potato snack," as it is now called, and speculates--but without this exact story--about its name. I like this one.

Two-Car Family

Nothing makes me feel more American than the fact that we have once again become a two-car family. Two cars for two people. During most--but not all--of our working life in New England, we had two cars and set off for work in different directions and on different schedules. But when we moved from New England, with one of us retired and one working at home, we downsized to one car.

It's hard to believe that we existed for a good five years with no car at all. That was in Spain, when we lived in an apartment on the main street of Roquetas de Mar, with a bus stop outside the door and within four or five blocks of the sea-side promenade.  We walked; we biked; we took the bus to the nearby city of Almería; we depended only occasionally on the kindness of friends to drive us to an event; and we occasionally rented a car when we wanted to go farther afield. We were in much better shape physically than we are now.

Five years later, but still in Spain, we were in the process of moving farther to the east and northward up the Mediterranean coat to the Torrevieja area in Alicante province. It was a minimum three-hour car trip (without stops) between the two areas, and it took us almost a year to explore the new area, decide on a new house, sell our apartment, and get settled. Even before we chose the exact house we eventually moved into, we knew we were going to need a car, because everything was so much more spread out in the Torrevieja environs than it was in Roquetas. We bought a "new" used car from Goldcar, the company we had used for renting umpteen cars to go back and forth. It was a silver-gray Ford Fusion, German-made but American-branded, the first American car I had personally ever owned. Throughout our life in the U.S., we had been regulars with Volvos and Toyotas after my husband gave up on the blue Camaro convertible my father had encouraged him to purchase in 1967 "because he knew Susanne would like it."

The house that we moved into in Algorfa, near Torrevieja, was within a five-minute drive of everything you would ever need on a daily basis, and a good deal more. It was within walking distance of nothing, however, unless you counted the Sunday outdoor market (but you would die of gas fumes walking along the road to the market because of the hundreds of cars that came from longer distances). And so when our good bikes were stolen we did not replace them, and we got used to driving the short distances to shopping and entertainment together, or occasionally as a single, but only a couple times did we ever have a conflict when one of us wanted to be in one place at the same time that the other wanted to be in a different place. It worked for our semi-retired, active, but joint life in Spain.

We bought a car here even before we moved back permanently to the U.S., because we knew we were going to move, and we knew we would need one. The used Avalon sat in a rented storage area for the last six months we were in Spain. Now we are permanently and fully back home in the U.S., in a condo where I, at least,  can actually walk to drugstores, the hairdresser, restaurants, a liquor store, and various other establishments (but not a good supermarket), and where there is a a bus stop outside the door that takes you into the city. Our activities have changed, though. We still go to a number of social events together, shopping, and medical appointments. But we have added adult-ed classes, a book group, and meetings with other painters and writers. During the spring session of the OLLI adult-ed classes, I gave up two desired classes because we could not coordinate the drive schedule. And if I go off for a lengthy book group and luncheon meeting with the car, Johannes feels cooped up not being able to drive ten minutes to Lowe's or the frame store or somewhere else to work on a project.

Johannes has always said that his next car would be an electric car, so off we went a month ago to look at a used all-electric car. We test-drove it and agreed to think it over. But we failed to pass by a Toyota dealer on the right side of the street on the way home without stopping to look, so several hours later we found ourselves the new owners of a used Prius, which is partially electric.

The Prius is now sharing space with the Avalon in what used to be a comfortably open double garage with one car and a lot of side space. Now it is cramped and we have to be careful how much we are carrying when we get into or out of the car--either one of them. The Avalon has become somewhat neglected, since the Prius gets twice the miles-per-gallon that the Avalon gets and suits almost all our driving needs. Only twice, I believe, have both cars been out of the garage at the same time. I don't think we are driving any more--in fact, maybe less, since we no longer have to make some contorted trips to accommodate two passengers in two different places. The OLLI schedule will come out in a couple weeks, and I am happy that I can choose what I want without worrying about whether Johannes will choose a course at the same time at another location.

I do, however, have to worry about which car my sun-glasses and a/c sweater are in, where the library books and reusable grocery bags are, and whether I have the right keys for the right car at the right time. And then there is the matter of the garage door opener, of which we inherited only one when we bought the house. I am sure we can buy a second, but then we would have to program it!

There is always a price to pay.

A Walk in the Park

The walk was a week ago Friday and the park was Smale Park, a large park in various stages of development on Cincinnati's riverbank, adjacent to downtown Cincinnati and immediately across the Ohio River from Covington, Kentucky.

The day started with a bus ride into the city. It had been nine months since I had taken the bus, and I planned to catch it at a different stop from where we had run after it in the mall parking lot last fall. This stop was a short walk from my garage door. I checked the schedule carefully, planned on getting there ten minutes ahead of time, since only one bus comes per hour, and allowed five minutes for the walk. The walk took one minute tops, and the bus came fifteen minutes after the published time. Still, I was in the city at the Government Square depot just 45 minutes after I got on, on time. The route passed through areas with which I was familiar, and I was glad to see that I could get to two grocery stores, historic Findlay Market, and the Music Hall by bus if I ever feel the need to do it that way.

Meeting up with my sister at Fountain Square was easy, and we walked down Walnut Street toward the riverfront. Our first stop was to look around at the various statues in front of and around the Great American Ball Park. We had heard the sculptor talking at an earlier OLLI lecture this summer, and there were still signs of the 2015 All Star Game that had taken place just three days earlier. The weather was good: bright and sunny, not humid, and still under the 91 degrees F. that would show up on the temperature gauges later in the day.

We moved on to the 45-acre Phyllis and John Smale Park itself and saw its welcoming water cascade and splash-and-play water fountains roomy enough for a baby stroller to be driven through, which was happening. On to a 19-foot earth-based piano with 32 bells and keys and chimes that ring out when kids dance on them--if they are big enough to trip the sensor (For very young children it takes a team effort). We stopped on the waterfront and observed how high the river has grown this wet summer, and my sister oriented me to the several towns along the other side, in Kentucky Walking  farther west we eventually came to Castellini Esplanade, with picnic table and benches recalling the names of many early farmers who came from what are now three states to sell their produce.

We never found the spiral labyrinth we had read about, but some people did, for that is where you can rent bikes, segways, and tandem or quad-cycles to navigate around on, and we saw lots of people on those, especially the bicycles for two side-by-side. We did find Carol Ann's Carousel, a lovely old-fashioned structure with paintings of Cincinnati landmarks, and watched as children found their places and whirled around, and as parents and grandparents watched them with enjoyment.

Then we made our way to Moerlein's--"the official after-game gathering place"--for lunch, and afterwards we walked back up into downtown and toured the Hilton Netherland Plaza and rode the elevator up to the 49th floor of the Carew Tower, the "highest elevated building in the city of Cincinnati," to get a view of the city and the winding river that separates it from Kentucky. Finally we walked back to the Government Square area and found our respective buses and returned home after a special day for me of learning about some of the highlights of Cincinnati history and architecture.

Spanish Tapas in Cincinnati

I've been too busy to write about them before, but there were two significant events in June before we left to sell our house in Spain. The first was that we "catered" an afternoon of tapas at our new home here on June 7; the second was that we "catered" an evening of Danish smørrebrød the following week.

Both these events were sponsored by my first sister and brother-in-law as fundraisers for their church fellowship. Both had been planned for months--the seats were auctioned off at the church last October--and the dates had been carefully selected to avoid any foreseen conflicts with the four hosts involved. The first change was that both the sponsor-host and the caterer-hosts moved house between the auction and the event. As the time neared, we all decided that it would be easiest to handle the food preparations and serving at our new home, and that gave us the motivation to get things organized for entertaining after our move, as well as help in doing it! Perhaps not knowing the guests in advance removed some of the tension from first-time entertaining, too.

For the record, here (below) is the menu for the tapas festival, the first event.

Taste of St. John’s

An Afternoon of Tapas

Sunday, June 7, 2015

“Bienvenidos”

Cava

Endibias (endive with tuna filling)

Tortilla Española (Spanish “omelet” with potatoes, spinach, and onion)

Olives

Almonds

Queso manchego (Manchego cheese) and jamón serrano (serrano ham)

At the Table

Cóctel de Gambas (shrimp cocktail)

Barras de pan (Bread)

Albóndigas (Meatballs) en salsa con guisantes (peas)

Patatas alioli (Potatoes with garlic mayonnaise)

Gazpacho

The quintessential Spanish summertime soup

Paella Valenciana

with chicken and chorizo

Sobremesa (Afterwards)

Dulces (sweets) y café

From my point of view it was a good party. I had fun planning a diverse but representative menu, canvassing food stores throughout Cincinnati for the right ingredients, and working with my sister on the project. There were no culinary disasters. The guests said they had a good time, and the conversation flowed. There were enough left-overs to spread around the next day, but not too many. That was a good thing, because by then we were on to Denmark...!

A Danish Dinner

There are plenty of tapas restaurants in Cincinnati--and everywhere else--so the guests at that event had a pretty good idea of what to expect. But Scandinavian food is not as well known, and the Danish open-faced sandwiches called smørrebrød are not available in restaurants here. They are, however, available in our home almost every Saturday evening, so preparing for this event was not difficult at all. The only problem was accepting that some of the wonderful food combinations had to be left out, because, after all, the dinner had to be consumed in one sitting. Below is the menu that I finally settled on.

Taste of St. John’s

June 14, 2015 at 6:00 PM

Smørrebrød

Danish Open-Faced Sandwiches

Snitter

Appetizers

Hardcooked Egg with Herring Bits ~ Paté of Sprat with Cucumber

 “Victor Borge”

The favorite sandwich of the Late, Great Dane

Smoked Salmon, Egg, and Shrimp on White Bread with Dill Mayonnaise & Caviar

“Stjerneskyd”

 A Shooting star, or fireworks

Baked Breaded Tilapia with Remoulade, Shrimp, Caviar, & Tomato on Dark Bread

 “Hans Christian Andersen”

What the Famous Storyteller Ate When He Wasn’t with Company

Mushroom & Chicken Liver Paté on Whole Wheat Bread, with Tomato, Aspic & Horseradish

“Summer Salad”

Egg with “Italian salad”

or

Sliced New Potatoes with Curry Mayonnaise and Fried Onions

Citronfromage

A classic light summer lemon dessert

There was a bit of a cosmetic glitch in this dinner, with the lemon dessert, which is definitely not traditional with the smørrebrød but is traditional in spring and summer, and the weather was perfect for it. It tasted fine, too. Again, the conversation flowed--this time with beer--and inspired.