In awe!

I’m temporarily interrupting the looks, books, cooks and occasional travels you normally read about here, for a topic I just can’t overlook.

I’m in awe of the brave, feisty, and very smart students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for fearlessly taking on the NRA, the United States Congress, the President, and the rest of the establishment that has repeatedly turned a deaf ear (at the least) and otherwise stood in the way of sensible gun control. The determination and straightforward message from the Parkland, Florida students has moved students and teachers, parents and grandparents, and so many more across the country to join them.

It would have been much easier to stage a vigil, comfort each other and privately manage their grief. What they experienced should happen to no one. But they chose to dig in and fight back. Hard.

They are focused. They aren’t giving up. And they are moving the needle.

A blog is a unique medium. It’s fun to share books and recipes and travel, but it’s also personal. And some days the elephant in the room is just too big to ignore. How can I talk about a trip to Italy or a book I just read when yet another gunman walked into a school, killing seventeen people and injuring more than a dozen others. I’m angry that it’s happened, and I’m even angrier that it’s happened so often we just pause to light candles, shake our heads and move on.

To those of us who don’t like guns, who view them as war tools and instruments designed for killing (because what else is an automatic weapon for?), time to step up and support them. Have their backs, vote, agree that this is the time. And to gun owners, who are hunters or who have a personal weapon for protection, it’s also time to think about weapons we need and those we don’t need and why registration and licensing may be advantageous. (This is a big concession for me. I’ve always lived in a gun-free home.)

There’s nothing normal about gunmen shooting up a school, or concert-goers, or nightclub patrons or any of the other hundreds of gunfire victims. Is it me or is there a real disconnect when one dog dies on an airplane in inexplicably awful conditions and Congress immediately proposes appropriate legislation, but hundreds die in schools, churches, nightclubs and concerts and the same Congress says “the time is not right”? More to the point, do we care more about guns than our children?

There are no easy answers here. This is a complicated stew of second amendment rights, lobbyists, money, mental health support (more money!), and a polarized public unable to move. I think we all have a part to play.

Whew! I had to share my thoughts. I hope you’ll tell me what you’re thinking.

Thanks for stopping by. See you next time!

Three things for this week in this season

There’s so much going on this season, and when things get a little crazy, I get really indecisive. (Seriously, as in should I wear boots or shoes to the store? Cook pork chops or pasta for dinner? Everything gets to be an issue.) It’s not surprising that I couldn’t decide what to write about this week, so here are my top 3 topics: traveling wineglasses, necessary conversations, and a new book.

The traveling wineglasses came out of their boxes last weekend (you may remember last year’s post about them here) to welcome friends to our holiday open house. I hate to hang numbers on things, but this has been our holiday tradition for more than four decades. Once in a while I get a little weary of this whole thing (as in, should I really be having yet another party?) but then someone says, “We always look forward to this…” And the truth is, we do too.

Since we have had so much “practice” at this party, Steve and I have developed a routine for getting it together and we have simplified, simplified, and simplified some more. It is, after all, about getting together with friends. For the last few years I have been serving prosecco along with the customary wine and beer. I did it at first as an ice breaker. But now I think, on a Sunday afternoon, it’s what people enjoy drinking. (Back in the day we served eggnog and then for a while it was spiced wine. Talk about an evolution!) Bubbles are much more fun!)

I have learned to keep the menu simple, so I can enjoy the party. This year it was really just meat & cheese trays, some veggies & dip and Steve’s burgundy meatballs. It’s pretty easy to “dress up” the trays with fancy olives, some fruit, even little cornichons or nuts. The meatballs are the “hearty” snack and definitely made ahead. We re-heat them on the stove, then pop them into a chafing dish for the afternoon. I made two batches of cookies and bought some and, voila! we had a sweet tray.

Although we have an artificial tree, I love fresh greens. I bought three big bundles to use inside and out with seeded eucalyptus and red winterberries. They pretty much arranged themselves. Next year I may try working fresh greens into some of my artificial greenery.

And that was the extent of my party planning.

We live in interesting times.

A few weeks ago I impressed myself by getting our tree dressed early. (Step 1 in my party plan. Get it done so all the boxes are cleared away.) The next day I was up in time to see a news message on my iPad announcing that Matt Lauer had been fired for inappropriate workplace behavior. Now Al Franken has been pushed out of the Senate, and Roy Moore came this close to winning a Senate seat.

The good news is that the women who helped launch the conversation are on the cover of Time magazine. Well done!

On the one hand, I am both uncomfortable and tired of hearing various recitations of sexual misconduct. On the other hand, the women who have come forward have shown remarkable courage. This is a singular moment in time and a conversation we need to have. We need to listen to their stories and keep listening. Sons and brothers and husbands and co-workers need to learn that this is not acceptable behavior. Girls and women should never settle for anything less than a safe work place. I can’t wait to see where this conversation takes us.

On a more positive note…

Earlier this week we heard former Vice President Joe Biden speak during the Chicago stop on his American Promise Tour. What a wonderful and refreshing evening! He sat onstage at the Chicago Theater with Leslie Odom, Jr. and talked about the purpose behind his book, Promise Me, Dad (which was handed out to everyone in the audience), his career as a public servant, the commitment he made early on to always, always put his family first, his role in the Obama administration, and more.

The audience was packed and remarkably diverse in every way. We all hung on to every word, laughing at his stories, bursting into spontaneous applause at his observations of American history and politics, and shedding a few tears as he described his son’s battle with brain cancer. My daughter looked around the packed house at the Chicago Theater and summed it up perfectly: “This makes you wonder what could have been if history had played out a little differently.”

So now you know what I’ve been up to and why I still need to finish shopping, tackle holiday cards, and maybe do a little wrapping. But, in truth, the Biden book is calling my name. And it’s so nice to sit by the tree.

Wishing you the warmth of family & friends, as well as the peace of the season as we head into the holidays!

Thanks for stopping by. See you next time!

To the class of ’67

With “besties” Laura, left, and Pris, middle. I’m on the right.

I have hinted in the past that I had a big, BIG reunion coming up, the kind with a stunningly large number attached — 50. (If you are doing the math please bear in mind that I graduated when I was 7 years old!)

I enjoyed our 25th reunion and we had a mini 40th event that was fun. Although I passed on a few of the 50th reunion events, I was excited to attend the Saturday night dinner. I just felt lucky. Lucky to have a reunion and lucky to be able to attend.

First and most important, this reunion was a huge success. It was fun, heartwarming, and a little bittersweet since we missed those who could not attend. It was also, as one friend pointed out, oddly comforting to be with these people who had shared so much of our daily lives, often from kindergarten or first grade all the way through high school graduation. We weren’t all best friends, or even friends for that matter, but we were classmates. In it together.

Framing those four years

One of many group shots, here are junior high classmates. But I think most of us attended the same grade school as well.

Frankly, the Class of ’67 has always thought itself a little special. Our high school years were book-ended with the Kennedy assassination in the fall of our freshman year (when we were old enough to grasp the historic aspect but too young to really put it into perspective) and a deadly tornado that devastated our community late one Friday afternoon a month before our graduation.

We all have our own stories of seeing or hearing the funnel cloud; many of the boys were still at school for athletic events and, after taking cover inside, walked back out to total devastation. Nearby buildings flattened, cars and buses tossed around like toys, and even some loss of life. Now, of course, we know to call this traumatic shock. Fifty years ago we walked around in a fog for weeks, eyes to the sky for signs of another storm.

Because the same tornado heavily damaged the high school itself, our graduation was held outside. (Our choice, as I recall, as opposed to holding it at another school.) At some point late that day, clouds began rolling in. By the time the evening event was underway, the sky was ominous and only a handful of students (including me, because I was a Brown) actually received our diplomas, before everyone ran for cover in the building. It was a real downpour. Most of the class received their diploma from a teacher, standing on a cafeteria table, calling out names. No speeches, no Pomp and Circumstance. Just a lot of wet students and parents milling about.

One more thing to make us feel special, the graduation that wasn’t.

Back to this weekend…

If happy hugs, shared memories, and iPhone photos are any evidence, this reunion was a great success. But many of us agreed the reunion also had a comfortable and comforting warmth to it. We were all middle class baby boomers, the sons and daughters of the “greatest generation.” We communicated using the family phone, had Friday night curfews, and were happy to drive a well-used car. We graduated into the Vietnam era and its accompanying angst.

Life got increasingly more complicated.

Some of us have traveled farther from those roots — literally and figuratively — than others. There are no rock stars in this group, no zillionaire titans of business (at least that I know), just a bunch of older baby boomers who have done the best we could. Where we have been didn’t matter one bit this weekend. We were sharing time together.

To classmates I reconnected with this weekend who may be reading this, am I on to something here? Or am I over-thinking it? Thank you for your warmth and friendship and a great time (and extra, double-huge thanks to the hard-working committee that put this together). To the classmates who missed this event, we’ll see you next time.

To the rest of my readers, if you have a reunion opportunity, I hope you just go.

One very good friend and two museums

We have not seen the sun here in Chicago for 10 or 12 days. It’s getting old. Really old.

It hasn’t been “Chicago cold” (sub-zero or at most in the teens) and there is no snow. And while I certainly don’t bemoan the absence of cold and snow, they at least provide a little drama. This is just bleak, damp, often rainy, and gray. Very, very gray.

What have I been up to, besides complaining?

placewhite3 Last week one of my oldest friends, one I never get to see enough of, suggested we meet in Elmhurst (another Chicago suburb) to check out exhibits at the local art museum and historical society. What a great day she planned for us!

The art museum is connected to the Mies van der Rohe McCormick House (one of only three houses that he built in the United States) which it acquired some time ago. The pairing of the house with the museum reflects the museum’s philosophy that “people from all walks of life and professions can learn how to see and to think differently through the study of art, architecture and design.”

The exhibit we saw is called “Sense of Place,” and it’s designed to consider the various ways we “map the places of our lives.” It also celebrates the museum’s 20th anniversary by recognizing its founding artists. I have to say, Laura and I were both (a) impressed by the museum and (b) taken aback by the opening gallery in this exhibit, a residential room, completely washed in white paint — chairs, sofa, tables, lamps, books. And it invited visitors to leave their mark, so to speak, using available crayons or colored pencils, to doodle, scribble, whatever. (Mine is at the start of this post.)

Since the exhibition opened in December, it was already heavily doodled. In fact, finding a blank space for our own doodles was tricky. And I honestly don’t know which I found more unnerving, the totally white background or the scribbles everywhere. What do you think? (This was called Welcome Home Coloring Book, by Donna Castellanos, mixed media, colored pencils, salvaged furnishings.) I think initially at least Laura and I both started channeling our mother/grandmother selves, “you wrote on what?”

placewhite4 placewhite1

The exhibit as a whole (it included 39 artists, some with more than one work) offered a genuinely diverse view of “Sense of Place,” everything from video to collage to oil on canvas. (And this is where I wish I’d taken more photos, but I just got caught up in looking! And I have to apologize for what I do have here, it’s pretty paltry.)

bestmedicine We both loved this oil on canvas, Best Medicine, by Cassandra Swierenga. Did we like it because it was a familiar medium, great color, a happy, loving moment between a mother and three daughters? Probably all of the above. It seems reminiscent of a time and place you have experienced and hope to again.

marionmahonygriffin After the art museum, we stopped for lunch at a wonderful restaurant, then walked over to the Elmhurst History Museum to acquaint ourselves with Marion Mahony Griffin (1871-1961), one of the country’s first female architects and a central figure in the Prairie School of Architecture. It’s impossible to overlook the impact of architecture on Chicago, particularly the Prairie School and Frank Lloyd Wright, but Marion Mahony Griffon was a revelation to us.

Marion Mahony was Wright’s first employee and a key member of his Oak Park Studio for 15 years, but her work, as well as that of others in the studio was downplayed by Wright. Interestingly, her senior project at MIT was the design for this home and studio. If you visit the Wright home and studio in Oak Park, built somewhat later, it’s impossible to ignore the similarities.

mmgrendering

Architectural historians believe that Mahony’s distinctively-styled renderings, which share many similarities with Japanese woodblock prints, contributed significantly to the Prairie School style of architecture, landscape and design.

According to Wikipedia, when Wright left his first wife and fled to Europe with his second in 1909, he offered the Studio’s commissions to Mahony. Although she declined, she was subsequently hired by Hermann V. von Holst, who had accepted the work. In this capacity, she retained design control and was the architect for a number of commissions Wright had abandoned. She eventually partnered with Walter Burley Griffin on a number of projects. Mahony and Griffin married in 191l, eventually taking their prairie style to projects in India and Australia. After Griffin’s death in 1937, she completed their unfinished commissions but did little more to further her own career.

In so many ways, it seems, Marion Mahony Griffin’s talent was co-opted by the men around her. And that’s a familiar story. I’m so glad we “discovered” her!

See you next time!

Friendship lessons

vernelill I’ve been thinking abut this post for some time. Last spring I reconnected with two old friends. It made me think about the friendship between my mother and her best friend and what it taught me about friendship.

My mother first met her best friend when she was just 3 or 4 years old. At the time, Mom spoke English, and Lil spoke only German. (Not at all unusual in their pre-depression era Chicago neighborhood.) But you know kids, a doll is a doll and pretend is the same in any language and they became friends. Lil moved away for several years, before moving back across the street in time for them to be high school buddies. They were best friends until my mother died at age 89. Mom used to say that their friendship as adults was helped by the fact that their husbands and kids got along, and I’m sure she was right about that. But I also think it was a long, shared history, a healthy respect for their differences, and their determination to not let the friendship ball drop. (That’s Mom, left, and Lil, in a WWII-era photo. )

I learned an important lesson from them. Friendship has to be elastic to accommodate changes large and small throughout a lifetime.

This spring I had lunch with a high school girlfriend I had not seen in decades. We rekindled our friendship on FaceBook in a group for an upcoming class reunion (it’s a whopper!) and that in itself is amazing since I am terrible at FaceBook. It turns out that we both have adult children and grandchildren living in the same city. (Which I guess means we also could have run into each other in a Columbus, Ohio, Barnes & Noble!)

As sometimes happens with old friends who knew you best and knew you when, time stopped and we picked up our conversation as if it was never interrupted by husbands, children, and careers. This is someone I went to Sunday school with and to algebra class, we sewed together and worked on the year book, and eventually we began to shape what would become our adult lives.

We didn’t waste time reminiscing; we were too busy filling each other in on the last few decades. As we recounted the joys and challenges of raising children, working inside and outside the home, and negotiating life with our aging parents, we realized we had traveled parallel paths and operated with the same values that had launched us years ago. There are some things that just never change.

So, Pris and I sat in a Panera Bread, talking for four and a half hours. Even then we only stopped because we had long drives home. And it got me thinking about the friends we leave behind however unintentionally because we get busy, move away, have babies, take another job.

Sometimes life just gets in the way of friendship.

A few weeks after lunching with Pris, my friend Barb and her husband were in town to visit family and they met us for breakfast. Barb is my Lil, my friend who lived down the street the whole time we were growing up. We spent as much time at each other’s houses as we did at our own. We have moved off in different directions any number of times, but always manage to reconnect. We just resume the conversation. (Which sometimes requires a marathon phone call!)

withbarb

(Here we are, in late grade school I think. I’m on the left. And since neither of us has ever had a naturally curly hair on our head, I’m sure that was taken shortly after our mothers had worked their “home permanent” magic!)

Barb and I don’t just know each other well, we know each other’s extended families, and family histories. We understand, without asking questions, the little mini-dramas that play out. We share and laugh over memories that even our husbands can’t appreciate, because after 40-odd years of marriage to our spouses, Barb and I have known each other longer. We mourn each other’s losses as our own (Our breakfast together was all the more heart-warming since our last meeting had been for her father’s memorial service) and share our joys (we became grandmothers at about the same time).

There really are friends with whom you can lose touch for many months, then pick up the conversation as if it never ended.

Friendship is so quirky. Some friends pass in and out of our lives easily. We work together but then one moves on to a new job, or we have kids in the same class or on the same team, but then they grow up. And that’s okay, because I think we are enriched by any friendship.

But then there are the others, happily, that are with us forever. One of the real rewards of retirement, for me at least, has been the opportunity to spend more time with friends and nurture the friendships old and new that I often just didn’t have time for during those demanding career years. It’s a wonderful and surprising bonus!

See you next time!

The party, the painters and an empty nest

Was it just last week that I was blogging about our “Annual Open House”?

The party was fun for us, and, I trust, for our guests. We ate, we drank, we toasted, we kissed hello and good-by. We told stories and jokes. We made promises to get together more often in the New Year. Yes, it was good.

In fact, we had so much fun that I never did get a chance to snap any pre-party or party photos. I did, however, think to get a few post party shots. If tables and countertops littered with empty wine bottles, glasses and platters are any indication, this was a successful event.

postparty

But wait, the week gets better.

The morning after the party, the painters arrived at 7:30 to paint the upstairs and downstairs hallways, the stairs, the bathrooms, the master bedroom and related woodwork (which had been stained a dark walnut, necessitating sanding and priming before moving on to two coats of white paint). They’ve done a beautiful job and we love the colors and the new white woodwork. We’ve also trashed the house, emptying the master closet and the linen closet into a spare bedroom, along with miscellaneous lamps, artwork, and accessories. We can’t find the laundry. The power cord to my laptop was missing for more than a day. You know how this works. Maintaining any sense of order during a project like this is hopeless for us.

Friday, they finished up by painting the ceiling in the kitchen and family room. So, that morning we cleared the counters, took down the mantle decorations, and I took another picture of the same island countertop.

painterkitchen

Actually, I think this picture (below) says it all. New paint job, Christmas angel and artwork re-hung in the hall amid the painters’ gear. Not the schedule I would set, but as my husband, a.k.a. “the scheduler,” pointed out, we’ll begin the new year with all this freshened up. And sometimes you just have to roll with it…

painterhall

Which brings me to the second half of this post.

The holiday season always delivers an emotional mix. There is joy in the unvarnished excitement of children awaiting Santa, the good cheer of family and friends savoring the season, the music, the traditions large and small, and, if you are so inclined, the Christmas story itself. For me and for many others there is also nostalgia for holidays past.

My mother and father and my grandparents before them absolutely loved Christmas. We had no exotic traditions and some Christmases were leaner than others, but there were always festive trees and tables and visits with extended family and friends. Lots of laughter and story telling. And that is what I think of when I think of holidays past.

Steve and I did our best to carry those traditions forward with our own family, sharing the holiday with my mother and aunt and uncle, and, when they could join us, cousins, and friends. There was always a harried dash to church on Christmas Eve that ended with the magic of singing Silent Night in a candlelit sanctuary. (Never mind that my daughter once attempted a short nap in the midst of the live creche scene and my son came this close to singeing the hair of a fellow acolyte as they walked down the aisle.) And that was just Christmas Eve.

Although my mother, aunt and uncle are no longer with us, we now have a pair of grandsons who bring a whole new kind of joy to the holiday. So we travel to Ohio to celebrate with our kids there and my daughter-in-law’s family. And our traditions morph with theirs. And I am so very gad we are part of it.

Like dealing with the painters, sometimes you just have to roll with it…

Being an empty nester is not always easy. You have to learn to share your kids with their adult lives, careers, new cities and new partners. You can’t always have everyone at your holiday table or even preside over your own table. If you’re going to let change taint your holiday, well, I really think that’s your fault.

Yes, I want my kids to call me, visit me, invite me and still need me. Once a mom, always a mom. But I think my kids also deserve my respect: to live their own lives, make their own decisions, raise their own kids. (And if, as my friend Jill says, I have to sometimes bite my tongue, I can learn to do that too.)

We’ve been empty nesters for more than a decade, and I’ve come to the conclusion that to succeed in these multi-generational times, we need to bring a little more to the equation. We need to continue to grow ourselves. It’s pretty easy to get stuck in “I was…” or “We always…” when we should really be working on our flexibility gene. What difference does it make if we have turkey and all the trimmings or ham and hash brown casserole? More importantly, perhaps we need to stop worrying about the empty nest and start feathering its successor.

It’s something to think about when we’re done wrapping packages, addressing cards, baking cookies, and recalling those Christmases past…

I wish you a wonderful, joyous, overindulgent holiday however you spend it!