Swedish Inventions

One of the delights of living in Cincinnati is the Scandinavian Society. This group is over 50 years old, although we only discovered it about five years ago, shortly before we moved completely from Spain to this city. Our first event was its annual Lucia Fest, but we really became involved when we were invited to join the Scribblers, a writing group that meets once a month. I also joined the Readers, which also meet once a month. These two groups, in which we write personal stories and share them by reading with our compatriots, and read and discuss books by Scandinavian authors, have not only brought me into contact with people of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Icelandic heritage, but have also enabled me to get to know and become good friends with some of them.

Somewhat less intimate than the monthly specialty meetings are the full-society bimonthly gathering for dinner, each one supporting a theme: one of the featured Nordic countries. Last night we were honoring and enjoying the heritage of Sweden. Swedish meatballs, and more importantly, baked salmon, were added to the usual delicious buffer fare at the Manor House restaurant. The program part of the evening featured a short history of ten Swedish inventions. The items enumerated crossed several fields but most had something to do with technology; they included some digital medical techniques, the three-cornered automobile seat belt, and the crescent wrench. Personally I did not even know what a crescent wrench was, though when I saw a picture I recognized it as one my father had many years ago.


Not mentioned specifically in conjunction with the Swedish inventions, but surely one of the great ones, is the name Ikea, which has been developing products and an innovative marketing concept for nearly 70 years, and that now is known worldwide. We, for example, have furnished homes from Ikea stores in four countries and stayed in airbnb vacation  places furnished "in Ikea" in at least two more. Ikea was a sponsor of the Swedish dinner last night and contributed a large gift basket with wares from its Ikea Foods department to a raffle for the benefit of the Society.

And Johannes won the raffle! It could not have come to a more deserving and appreciative recipient. We happen to live only 10-12 minutes from the Ikea in West Chester, and whenever I have a luncheon meeting, Johannes goes to Ikea to eat salmon. Both of us stop by every two or three weeks to stock up on their excellent rye bread mix and herring for our Saturday-night smørrebrød, or just to take a lengthy stroll through the furniture and furnishings display areas to see what's new. The gift basket had no herring or bread mix in it, but was filled with cookies, chocolates, tea, coffee, jams, and knackebrød, as well as a mug and cutting board and a couple bags--Ikea's sturdy bags always come in handy for gathering smaller bags and moving items. We keep several in our cars.

Now we look forward to exploring even more Ikea goodies in the weeks to come. I think it's time for tea and cookies.

Snowy Santa Fe

This Sunday I am not in Cincinnati, but in Santa Fe, New Mexico, about 7200 feet above sea level. We flew from Cincinnati to Albuquerque yesterday, starting the day at 2:30 in the morning to get to CVG for a 5:30 flight to Dallas and then on to Albuquerque. We were lucky with the weather if not the early-morning schedule. I had read in the Santa Fe newspaper that they had gotten 3 1/2 inches of snow on Wednesday and that they were due for an additional 5 inches on Friday. They got it, and there were no arriving flights on Friday.

When we arrived at 10:30 in the morning Saturday and picked up our rental car, we upgraded to a more weather-worthy SUV with all-wheel drive from our usual basic compact. At first we were not sure that we had made a good choice, as I-25 in Albuquerque had perfectly dry pavement. But north of the city there were patches of snow on the pavement, and 20 or so temporarily abandoned cars along the interstate from the blizzard the day before. Still it was not as bad as some of the driving I had to do years ago between New Hampshire and Connecticut, but that may also be because a glorious sun was shining and the tall mountains were covered with a white dusting.

The streets in Santa Fe seem not to have been cleared completely, and the sidewalks hardly at all. Presumably Santa Fe subscribes to the snow removal theory that someone told me Cambridge, Massachusetts did years ago: God put it there and God will take it away. God hasn’t completed the job yet, but there are lots of visitors in Santa Fe, this last weekend of the year, and they have tramped the streets to view the art galleries and clothing shops and partake of the tempting restaurants, so much of the snow is beaten down. I have my least fashionable, warmest boots with me, and they are keeping me warm and dry, and also upright.

We’ve already done some good viewing and good eating, though the only non-edible I have purchased so far is a Desigual blouse in the Dallas airport (Terminal A, near Gate 16, and I must remember to plan future DFW trips accordingly). We have four more days in Santa Fe before a leisurely drive back to Albuquerque, we are perfectly situated in the heart of the city, at Otra Vez en Santa Fe, which is a fine locale for mi primera vez en Santa Fe.

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.

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.

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.

A Sentimental Journey

I'll be back in Cincinnati soon--just in time to turn my ballot in a little early. In the meantime, I've been visiting friends in Spain, where I used to live, and I've been posting on my original blog, http://sundaysinspain.blogspot.com.es.

Musical Memories

I've been thinking about an upcoming trip to Spain to see friends where we used to live. Mostly I've been checking the logistics of air and train arrangements, hotels, and whom we plan to see when. Plus  I've been wondering about my packable wardrobe for three separate locations--and have just changed back to my original idea (beige, brown, and orange) from my second idea (blue), based on the realization that I don't have any shoes to wear with the blue outfits. Only in fleeting glimpses have I begun to picture myself actually driving around in the territory that we knew so well up until two years ago, checking out some favorite cafés, and thinking about a few items I may want to pick up at stores and markets that I used to frequent.

So this morning when we stopped at Kroger's on the way home from church to grab a single package of frozen peas (how I ever ran out of this staple in  my house, I do not know) and I heard the music of a jazz saxophone as we pulled into the parking lot, I sat bolt upright. Had I fallen asleep and slipped across the ocean unconsciously? Was I in Spain already? When we lived in Spain, you see, a regular sight and sound whenever we went to any one of the local grocery stores was the musician playing a tune outside the entrance door (and the exit door). I'm not sure if it was a long-standing cultural occurrence or whether it just started after 2008, when the economy got so bad, but it certainly persisted up through the rest of our stay in Spain. Some of the musicians were not bad and you were happy to toss a few coins into the case or box they had in front of them. There was one, though, that was horrid; he knew only one song and that not very well. It was almost as though you would toss coins in the box so that he would stop playing for a fraction of a minute while he thanked you.

The saxophonist in front of the Woodlawn Kroger store just after noon today was good, and nice, and appreciative when we immediately, on the way in, put some money in the hat to show our appreciation. I was sorry that he stopped playing for several seconds while he thanked us and wished us a good day.

We completed our purchases (discovering, of course, that we "needed" several more items besides the package of frozen peas that I had gone in for) and I made a point of telling the check-out woman how much I enjoyed the playing of the musician out front. Since I had never seen or heard a musician in front of Kroger's, I was really afraid that someone in authority was going to come out and tell him to move away. She smiled and thanked us, so I am hopeful that no one will do that. Then on the way out, I fished out all my loose change and again dropped something into his container, and again he stopped playing momentarily, thanked me, and wished us a good day. As we got into the car and drove out of the parking lot, I noticed he had switched tunes--there were two small twin boys standing with their father in front of him, and he was treating them to a short rendition of "Three Blind Mice."

I wish I had a picture of this musician to show you, but the only picture is the one that resides in my brain. It was a lovely foreshadowing to my upcoming trip into one of my past lives, prompting me to think about and recall places, images, and occurrences that were important to me. Now, as I remember, I am making a note to check the price of frozen peas at the Mercadona supermercado--in the twelve years we lived in Spain, I used that price as my own "McDonald's Index" of inflation and comparative pricing, watching the price go from 85 centimos steadily upward to over 90--or had it reached a euro?

Blue Lake, Michigan

One of the entries in the 2016 Fremont Harvest Festival Hay Art Competition 

I drove with two of my sisters this past week to Blue Lake, a little north of Muskegon, Michigan, to visit a cousin-by-marriage who I hardly knew. Our mutual relation, his wife, had died ten years ago, and because I have lived away from the Midwest for almost my entire adult life, I had never known her as an adult; my memories were from our childhood years, spending summers at a cottage in Lakeside, Ohio.

Those summers at Lakeside had obviously made an impression on her, for the house I visited nearly fifty years later was also at a lakeside. She and her husband had built a cottage next to Blue Lake soon after they were married, and it served as a summer home for them, both school teachers, and their four children during the children's growing-up years. As time went on, they expanded upward on the ground-level cottage, adding a main floor and bedroom/bath and balcony on a second level. It reminded me a lot of the house we had for two decades in New Hampshire. Our house looked out on a mountain valley; theirs looks out on a lake. Three of their four children live, with their own children, within driving distance and use this house as a summer and weekend retreat. One lives far way, in Chile, and I feel her longing to be a part of this family life even as she enjoys the enrichment and challenge of living in another culture.

We had two late afternoon tours of the lake via pontoon boat--unbelievably peaceful, though I have a feeling that would not have been the case three weeks ago. We also were driven all around the small farming communities of Holton and Brunswick, and the larger city of Fremont. Farming has been an integral part of the area for generations and it continues to be so, but with changes. In Fremont we saw the destination for much of the produce we had driven past in the fields: Gerber Baby Foods, now owned by Nestlé, but still a huge concern in the city.

Several of the farms in the area are owned and operated by Amish people, who have been moving into the area in large numbers in recent years, according to my host, the head of the local historic association. We made a scouting expedition one day, and then the next day went back to make purchases at the Amish Whispering Pines Country Store, a fantastic natural and bulk foods emporium, where we paid by out-of-state check (no credit cards accepted, no ID required).

Where Did the Summer Go?

Well, it's been more than a month of Sundays since I last posted on Sundays in Cincinnati--it's been very close to two months. Not that there hasn't been anything to say. In fact, there's been too much. I am much busier here, and have a fuller life, than I did back in Spain, when I started the predecessor to this blog and wrote faithfully almost every Sunday.

So where, on this last Sunday before Labor Day, has the summer gone?

Two trips to Orlando. The first at the end of June for the American Library Association annual conference, where I also was able to begin helping my 92-year-old aunt prepare for moving into the assisted living facility in the community she has lived happily in independently for ten years, and for which she was now on a waiting list. That trip also occassioned an emotional visit to the site of the Pulse massacre, just a week after it happened. ALA had observed the tragedy with a moving service on the opening day of the conference, at which Congressman John Lewis' appeared.

The second trip to Orlando was just this past week, when I joined my sister Nancy to help with the actual move to assisted living. Again a very emotional time, as our remaining blood relative from that generation faced this loss of independence. We managed the details and left her in a stable and trusted environment, and she has recovered her native optimism and forward-thinking stance and is well on the way to making new friends as long as still seeing her old bridge friends. An unexpected benefit for me was the hospitality of one of Nancy's friends from high school, who provided a glass of wine each evening in a beautiful environment, a change of pace and concerns, and many fun moments as we recalled days from the past and learned what we had done in the almost 50 years since I had last seen her.

Volunteer efforts. I had made a commitment at the beginning of the summer to work two mornings each week at Catholic Charities to help in their efforts at resettling refugees in Cincinnati. I honored that up until the final weeks when schedule intervened. I also made a few trips to a different agency, Heartfelt Tidbits, which also teaches English to Nepalis from Bhutan, some of whom have spent 20 years in a refugee camp before being admitted to the USA. I have learned a lot about the resources available for teaching English as an additional language and about the hurdles that these people go through to gain a better life. No one chooses this path on a frivolous whim; in fact, they have little choice in which of the many countries throughout the wold they are sent to at all.

Lately Johannes and I have been out registering voters for the upcoming (but not soon enough!) election. We have concentrated on identifying Latinos who are US citizens and might not otherwise have voted before. We've learned a lot about the political process. I expect that effort will shift to getting people to the polls as we get to election day.

I was also one of about 300 volunteers at the International Federation of Library Associations' World Library and Information Congress in August, held this year in Columbus, Ohio, just up the road a piece. IFLA is always interesting and provides the opportunity to meet people from many countries of the world--this year 145. I was stationed in the expo hall for two days and learned about The History Connection, formerly the Ohio Historical Society, and how the city of Columbus came to be the capital of the state. My third volunteer stint was in the main hall on the last formal day of the conference in the Internet area, where I spoke with lots and lots of delegates and learned that many US Internet service providers--and especially the one supplying the Columbus convention center--routinely block emails sent to many African nations.

Other fun stuff. I attended several OLLI single session lectures on areas of Cincinnati history and culture (theater, publishing, Prohibition, philanthropy). I had lunch or brunch with a couple new friends from my Unitarian-Universalist congregation. I went to two new musical events, and in addition to enjoying the music, experienced two lovely family estates now reformed as foundations. I met with the Scandinavian Scribblers and the Readers, and my other book group and a women's group, and my regular Sisters (my own) gathering once a month. And on the work front, I weathered the demise of my tasks related to publication on an old platform and recreated a life as customer service rep on the new platform.

Today is sunny and clear and cooler than it has been in this otherwise hot and humid summer--much hotter and more humid than last year, at leaf as I remember it. Tomorrow is Labor Day, and it feels like fall is coming. I wore my all-white pants and top outfit to church this morning, with the white shoes that I laugh about not wearing after Labor Day. I think we still have many more warn days ahead, but there is something about that change in the calendar that says we are moving along to colder weather.

There is one thing I had really wanted to do this summer that I didn't: I didn't ask the Cincinnati Parks department to build a petanca court. Maybe next year.

Danish Connections

Since my sister-in-law arrived from Argentina a month ago, I have been speaking Danish at least half the day. Carmen claims not to speak English (though she manages several words from time to time in social situations, especially those involving shopping, ice cream, and one-on-one with family and close friends). She has been a resident of Argentina since the age of 14, when she emigrated with her parents and her brother (my husband) from Denmark. Theoretically we could speak Spanish together, but her first language and my second is Danish, and that is the language in which we talk best about the little things and the big things.

So busy we have been, talking about past memories and current concerns, that the Nordic dinner at the White House on Friday, May 13 passed by us without notice. It also passed by the U.S. media outlets that we watch without notice. But then there was Facebook and postings from Danish friends to alert me to the speeches made at the state dinner. And later there was email to actually send along the links to listen to the speeches from President Obama, the prime minister of Iceland, and the prime minister of Denmark.

If you read the transcript of the toasts made that evening, you may wonder, as I did, whether there had been a few toasts before we got to Mr. Obama's remarks, and to Mr. Jóhannsson's, and to Mr. Rasmussen's. There were a lot of jokes, but what interested me primarily were two paragraphs from our president's talk.

He spoke of N.F.S. Grundtvig, a Danish pastor and educator, who was a 19th-century proponent of  of the Danish folk high school movement. These folk schools were attended by some youths, but mainly working adults, and provided education on many practical and cultural topics. I knew that the the folk high school idea had achieved some international recognition, but I did not know that there had been a school inspired by the folk high school movement in the U.S., in Tennessee--hardly a bastion of Nordic influence. But the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tennessee traces its roots to Grundtvig, and the Highlander Folk School has played an important part in the civil rights movement in the United States. The Highlander school provided a place, in the segregated south, for blacks and whites to meet together to learn how to resist racism. Rosa Parks attended a 1955 workshop at Highlander four months before refusing to give up her bus seat; Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis were trained there, and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the Highlander's 25th anniversary celebration in 1957. According to a history of Highlander written for children, the song "We Shall Overcome" became a symbol of the civil rights movement at the Highlander School.

Shortly thereafter, the Highlander Folk School was accused of being Communist and was closed down by the state of Tennessee. The ideas engendered there survived. Grundtvig knew that knowledge was the best tool to fight for freedom, and so did the people who moved through the Highlander Folk School.

Department Store Shopping Then and Now

When I was a child in the 1950s, shopping was limited in the small town in which I lived, but there were usually four or five trips a year to Columbus or Cincinnati to go to the dentist and to buy new school clothing. The dental excursions invariably took place on Easter Monday, which comprised our spring vacation,  and then once again before school started in the fall. The fall trip also was the major “new school year” outing. These went to Columbus, a two-hour drive from our home in Sidney, over country roads. A special trip once or twice a year took us to Cincinnati, also a two-hour car ride, but with patches of interstate; this trip combined a visit to a family friend, the college roommate of my maternal grandmother. In between the longer trips to Columbus and Cincinnati, we would drive forty miles to Dayton for any shopping needs that we could not fill in Sidney.

Our destination shopping target was not a big-box, one-level, suburban Target department store (the one with a capital T): it was a real multi-level, downtown Department Store (one with a capital D for Department): Lazarus, Shillito’s, or Rike’s. All three of these stores are gone now, and my mind does not make much of a distinction between the three , but walking into any one of them was walking into a special world for the day, with more luxury than I had ever experienced in my young life. 

They had escalators to take you from one floor to another, and there were six or more stories, and even something called a mezzanine. For one of them, you parked and entered in a lower floor and took the escalator “Up to the Basement.” If there was time, we would take the elevator all the way to the top of the store and take the escalators down through each floor, briefly seeing the extent of the offerings. We did not need all the various departments on the several floors; since we were only four girls we could bypass the boys’ and men’s departments easily—but we did span the children’s, teens, and occasionally the women’s clothing departments. And shoes, although we had a decent shoe store in Sidney and found it much more fun to buy shoes there, where we could look through a machine and see whether our feet bones fit nicely into the shoe or were crowded.

I always looked forward to the reward after the clothes-buying was done: the book department, for there was no bookstore in Sidney. I was always allowed to buy the next book in the series that I currently was reading. I went through The Happy Hollisters; Vicki Barr, Flight Stewardess; and Cherry Ames in all her nursing adventures. Notable throughout the stores was the level of service: there was always a person to help you find what you were looking for, whether it was to search to see if the right book was stacked under the counter, or to check on you in the dressing room and run out to get the same thing in a different size  or color so you didn’t have to get dressed and do it yourself.

The very special event, however, was lunch in the department store dining room. I remember the carpeted dining rooms at Rike’s and Lazarus—when we came to Cincinnati we usually had lunch instead with the lawyer husband of Nana’s friend at The Cincinnati Club. The Cincinnati Club was very fancy, almost uncomfortably so for young girls, and there was entertainment in the dining rooms at Rike’s and Lazarus. There were fashion shows! Women would come into the dining room and parade between the tables wearing the newest styles, and either a loudspeaker or the individual models themselves would tell you about what they were wearing as they swirled their skirts or opened their jackets to reveal the matching blouse or sweater underneath. My sisters and I enjoyed watching the models while we waited for our chicken a-la-king in the white ceramic covered chicken dish to be brought to the table. And then after the main course we had to make decisions about dessert—an extra special treat since we did not usually have desserts at our house. Nancy usually had a “snow ball”—a scoop of vanilla ice cream encased in coconut, but I almost always opted for the Baked Alaska pie—peppermint ice cream  on graham cracker crust, with a meringue top with chocolate sauce. 

After lunch we probably still had a few items to search for, but our last stop was invariably Will Call, the department on the parking level where all our purchases from throughout the day had been collected for us so we did not have to carry them around ourselves. We would get in the car, present the receipts which entitled us to free parking for the day, and drive home.

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We have been doing a lot of shopping with my sister-in-law over the past ten days. We have gone to several places that call themselves department stores—Meijer, Kohl’s, Sears, and Macy’s—but none of them can be considered a big “D” Department Store from the old days. They all have multiple departments, and Kohl’s is even on two levels, and Macy’s (at Tri-County) four, but none has the broad selection of the old department stores, and certainly not the style.

Service is noticeably absent; you can look all over for a checkout counter at Sears and Macy’s, and checking out is just about all you can do there. Knowledge of the product does not reside in the head of any sales attendant—whatever knowledge exists is what is printed on the package, which is why we bought underwear from two stores and then returned underwear to two stores when we could not figure out the proper sizing. The only real help from a sales associate came in the intimates department at Macy’s, who did a quick measure above, below, and across (the ladies will know what I am talking about here) before going into the fitting room, then brought the one garment that fit the requirements, and left us on our own. I moved in and out of the fitting room to change sizes for the customer and then expand the purchases to nightwear. Then when we were ready to drop a couple hundred dollars at the checkout desk, we still had to wait for more than ten minutes for attention. They didn’t have the six undergarments we wanted and had to order them to be sent to the house—and that process took at least 10 more minutes.

There is, of course, no quiet, refined, carpeted dining room at the Macy’s in Tri-County. Outside of the store and far down the mall walk there is a food court with at least ten “restaurants” – all with uninspiring choices, all self-service, and all sharing tables in a crowded, noisy, messy hall.

The only advantage that the shopping experience of the 21st century has over the shopping experience of the mid-20th century that I can see is the transportation: virtually every big-box store offers scooters for sitting and navigating around the warehouse-like interior; so does the mall, and even Kohl’s offers rolling shopping carts for those who want support to lean on while they search out, select, and collect their purchases.