Scout Moves

Fracas' Monday Melee. 1. The Magnificent: Name someone you absolutely adore, and tell us why. I adore my neighbor Jane. She has been devoted in raising her two children, both brilliant musicians. And she cares for her 90-plus year old mother, watching her like a hawk. She is a home-health care nurse and funny and honest and open. And she has a wonderful dog who wags his tail when he sees me from across the street. 2. The Muddy: Tell us something about life you just don’t “get”. Arrogant grousing. There are people who think they can do any task better than the person trained to do it and don't mind telling everyone else how smart they are. Through all this flooding here, people who push brooms for a living are griping about how the engineers are managing the dams and acting as if they could do it so much better. Let people do their jobs, and shut up. 3. The Magnetic: Name something or someone good (or bad) you’re drawn to and you just can’t help it. Tell us if you want to change...

Frank and Jesse James were notorious outlaws who ravaged Missouri and Kansas in the name of the Confederate Army and various guerrilla leaders. Missouri was a divided state with the territories near the southern border being pro-slavery, and the James family were slave owners. After the Civil War was over, the guerrilla fighters turned to robbing banks, stage coaches, and trains, allegedly focusing on enterprises owned by former Union interests. Some legends show Jesse James to be a bandit, and others equate him with Robin Hood for standing up for small farmers against infringing corporations. Regardless of the truth behind Frank and Jesse James, their mother was certainly no Maid Marian. Zerelda Elizabeth Cole was born in Kentucky in 1825. After marrying Robert James, she moved to Missouri where her husband was a slave-owning hemp farmer and a Baptist minister. Robert died while preaching to gold miners in California, and Zerelda soon married a neighbor to help her get back on her fee...

I like the idea of brand loyalty—the process of developing a solid product and satisfying customers and maintaining quality over time so those customers stick with you. I am loyal to some brands of things and will not veer off course unless these brands change and become disappointing instead of fulfilling. That happens sometimes. In the interest of updating product lines or following trends, companies have discontinued some of my favorite things. Here are a few of my favorite things that are still available: I'm not a big chip eater, but I am loyal to Terra Sweet Potato Chips. Eat them. I buy Green & Black's organic chocolate in various flavors depending on my mood when I'm standing in the candy aisle. Two of my favorites are Maya Gold and Hazelnut and Current. Try them all, and choose your favorites. I can barely stand going in or walking past a Bath & Body Works store because the collective scents are overwhelming, but they sell a wonderful shower soap called Bre...

As the result of a recent horn lesson, I am learning a new piece—Hunter's Moon by Gilbert Vinter. It was written in 1942 for John Burden who was the principal horn player of the London Symphony at the time. Hunter's Moon is a bright horn solo that is light hearted and perky. It actually says at the top "with good humour." I have been working on a more sombre piece with darker tones and longer notes, so this is quite a change of pace. This week my teacher suggested I do a little reading on what is known as the hunter's moon and the traditional British hunt so that I could better tell the story when I play the notes. The hunter's moon is the first full moon after the harvest moon and usually appears in October. It rises about thirty minutes earlier than the moon normally does, so hunters had that much more time to chase their prey. The horn solo has more to do with hunting than the full moon, though, with that uplifting horn call and constantly moving melody—the...

I'm talking about food, people. I did a little cooking over the weekend and made tarts—one savory and one sweet. Tarts are so versatile, and I'm still talking about food. You can create almost anything from the base. You can make beautiful things using a proper tart pan with a removable bottom (every kitchen should have them in different sizes), and you can create lovely and rustic free-form tarts. You can get all tarted up, so to speak. The key is to do what you like and use your favorite seasonings and fruits and shapes. The leek and ricotta tart here is more rustic with a square crust. I love this simple recipe, which would also be great with caramelized onions and prosciutto replacing the leeks. The orange tart is more refined. It calls for a refrigerated pie crust, which I used because it was a busy day, but I would suggest making your own crust. It doesn't take long, and the texture will be much richer. Simple Leek and Ricotta Tart Makes 4 1 pound (500 grams) ricotta ...

Now that I have discovered acrylic paint and cheap canvases, there's no stopping me in my attempts to figure this stuff out. I went to Pat Cattan's over the weekend—it's a craft store with an art supply section where I found brushes and paints and canvas boards for anywhere from $2 to 59¢ depending on the size. I bought small canvases so I wouldn't be overwhelmed with large projects. My first small project was to trace an existing art piece and transfer it to my canvas and get to painting. I chose a cave drawing circa 13,500 B.C., figuring if those people could paint, so could I. This is an ancient cave painting of a standing bison found in Spain: And below is my version of it. Kind of looks like a wart hog, doesn't it? I was working from an image printed in an art history book which looked slightly different than the one above. That's my excuse. This cute little canvas is about 2 x 2 inches. I've got more. Wanna see? Here is a rooster to go with my rooster/...

I almost hesitate to say Happy Easter because I know not everyone who will pop in today celebrates Easter Sunday or acknowledges its significance. Also, it seems like such a serious day for a flippant word like "happy." Happy Birthday. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Halloween. Saying "happy Easter" doesn't quite fit, although I like Easter bunnies and Easter eggs and Easter baskets and Easter dresses—all light-hearted traditions. Easter peeps should be banned, however. When I was growing up, we went to church on Easter Sunday, like we did on all Sundays, but all I remember about the special day are the pagan-like traditions, happy ones. It was customary for us all to get new dresses that were not to be worn until the big day. With the dresses came delicate white hats, white gloves, lacy socks, black or white patten shoes, and sometimes a little matching purse. We would be lined up on the front steps of the house for a picture, and then we paraded ourselves to ...

Lynn, all the way over in England, has heard about the flooding in Ohio and has asked about my well being. We're fine. I think the flooding in Missouri is far worse. Locally, the rivers are on the brink of spilling but aren't expected to create real wide-spread disaster. A town just north of here has closed its exit ramp off of the interstate because it is connected to a bridge that crosses the river, a bridge that is now underwater. The residents of that town have other access roads, so they aren't completely isolated. We have a lake house east of that town that sits beside a lake controlled by a dam. Our main access road to that area has been closed, so we haven't ventured out there to see what's going on. I have read the water level at the lake is at a record high, higher than when the area flooded a few years ago. During that flood, the people who owned the house before us marked the water level on the lamp post down by the dock, and now it's not quite an in...

Did I say I needed to paint more fruit, and did I hear someone say let's see some more? I'm sure I did. Here are two more attempts at this acrylic business with a red apple and a bunch of grapes. With one tiny tube each of bright red and blue, purple was hard to come buy, but I got as close as I could. Click on the picture for a closer view. I think this is the last of my $1 canvas experiments. If I keep this up, I'll have to invest in some nicer canvas and paint something that hasn't been drawn in for me. I'm nervous though. It's like taking a little kid who has been forced to color within the lines and giving him a blank sheet of paper and telling him to go wild with the box of crayons.

I went to a band concert last night. Daughter No. 2 was part of an honor band that is assembled every year and made up of top musical students from various towns in three adjoining counties. They rehearse twice with a guest conductor and then perform a brief concert, usually four or five pieces. Sometimes these concerts are band and choir combined, but last night's event was exclusively band, one for middle school and one for high school. Some people might wince at the prospect of having to sit through a middle school band concert. Squeaky clarinets are akin to shrill violins. And 50 or 60 kids all playing at the same time but not all playing in time can be like wading through Jello salad with your shoes on. Yep, some people might not enjoy listening to kids that age play, but I love it. I love that they all tap their feet but not necessarily on the beat. I love that they play in the rests. And I love when a song has a stinger at the end, and one kid plays it a beat late. I espec...

I found something new at the grocery store. It's actually kind of old, but it's new to me. It's called city chicken, and it comes cubed and skewered. If you think it looks odd for chicken, that's because it isn't chicken. It's pork. Sometimes city chicken is made with veal, but this is pork tenderloin. People have always been creative with their food beginning with the first human who wondered if mushrooms are edible. And the one who first sat down to eat a lobster was a genius. People are more creative in adversity than in bounty, which would explain bread pudding and anything cooked with intestines. During the Great Depression, chicken was hard to come by outside of farms that raised them. In cities like Pittsburgh, pork was much easier to find and relatively inexpensive. Not wanting to do without, people started cutting up pork, breading it, sticking it on skewers to look like a chicken leg, and calling it "city chicken." The pretend drumsticks were...

Sometimes while I am working, I turn on the TV in the next room for atmosphere. That only works for me if what's on is an old movie—there is something magical and atmospherish about the soundtracks and the dialog. Generally, new ones don't count unless they're absolutely fabulous like The Princess Bride or Joe Versus the Volcano or Silverado. We'll get to that one later. The other day I was working away, being productive and focused on the job at hand, when I heard a familiar piece coming from the speakers on my television. It was the opening theme to How the West Was Won. Now there is a movie with a soundtrack, a patchwork of American melodies from start to finish. But the theme is the thing, the piece that makes me perk up and hum the horn parts. And does that piece ever have horn parts. It has been one of my favorite band pieces since I first started playing the horn, and it makes me happy. It makes me so happy, in fact, that I stopped working and got on over to iTun...

I was standing in an unusually long line at the register of the craft store waiting to buy dowel rods and things for Daughter No. 2. She needed to build a suitable cage-like thing to protect an egg in her physics class—you know, that egg-drop project that kids have been doing for years. So, I was standing there waiting and waiting and waiting, and I fell prey to the $1 bins. No. 2 said more than once, "you don't need that," but when something is only $1, of course I do need it, and there is no arguing. I got a bag of clips, the kind you clip on chip bags to keep chips from going stale. I use those things for frozen peas and powdered sugar and whatever else I don't want spilling all over the pantry. And then I bought these—two small canvases stamped with the outline of an apple and a pear. And I bought a small pack of acrylic paint. It's all crap, I realize, but I needed it. All of it. And all for just a $1 a piece. I have never painted with acrylics, and I suspect...

Lynn has asked to see more photos of all of our snow. Well, I hate to disappoint, but after a week of occasional rain and temperatures in the 40s and 50s, here is what's left: Actually, this picture is from yesterday morning, so right this very minute, all that is left is a puddle on my glass-top table. There are still piles of snow around town where it had been plowed up, but we're mostly green grass and muddy fields now. We are also full to the brim with swollen creeks and rivers. Small Town has a dam that was built in 1936 by the US Army Corps of engineers, and it's being watched closely to make sure the river doesn't get too far away from where it belongs. There was a devastating flood in 1913 that caused a lot of damage in Small Town. This old dam, in need of reburbishing, assures that won't happen again, or at least we like to think it does.

This is the founder of Pi Day, Larry Shaw. Yes, it's Pi Day which is observed on 3/14 in honor of π being 3.14blahblahblah. Here's what I know of π—nothing really. A couple of years ago Daughter No. 1 set out to memorize as many digits of the thing as she could, and at one point she could recite more than 200. The Guinness World Record for memorizing π digits is 67,890, which looks like a joke, but it was verified when Lu Chao of China recited them in 24 hours and 4 minutes. Today also happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday. I'm not sure how many digits of π Albert memorized in his day, or maybe he didn't bother to memorize any, being so occupied with charming the western world and being a star. When Albert was a boy, he didn't do well in school except for math in which he excelled. Here's what I know of math—nothing really. I took a basic algebra class in high school and just didn't get it. I kept asking my teacher how I would use that subject in my a...

A new coffee shop has opened up in the next town. It's only about five or ten minutes away, so I went there with a good friend the other day. It was the shop's opening day, I think, and the people behind the counter were just getting the hang of things. They had been trained in taking orders, using the equipment, and creating heart shapes in the frothy cream on top of their fancy schmancy coffee drinks. My friend ordered a mint mocha which proved to be a problem because that wasn't one of the things they had been trained to make, but they did their best. I ordered a small cappuccino, just a plain cappuccino with no shots of flavor and nothing fancy. As the girl was punching the order into the cash register, she said, "OK, but do you know what a real cappuccino is?" She just wanted to be sure. Do I know what a real cappuccino is? As opposed to what? Maybe she meant an artificial one like what you get at McDonald's, the gas station kind which isn't cappuccin...

This is my flutish collection. I don't have an actual flute, but I have several things somewhat like a flute. The biggest thing is the tenor recorder I have played for you before. The smaller thing just like it is a soprano recorder. Then there is the Navajo tourist flute I bought at a shop in Colorado, and there is a tin whistle, and there is a fife from a gift shop in Williamsburg, Virginia. I have misplaced my antique tin whistle and the little horn pipe made from the ash shot out of Mount St. Helens. The black thing is a tonette, a little doodad Daughter No. 2 picked up from Restoration Hardware. It's a replica of the preband instruments we all learned to play in elementary school. Elver Joseph Fitchhorn, a band director in a small town in Ohio, developed the song flute in the 1930s as a way to teach young kids the basics of playing music. The patent on his invention read "Design for a Musical Instrument of a Flute-Like Nature." Fitchhorn played the French horn in...

I don't buy magazines very often. I only subscribe to one— Gourmet —and sometimes I just flip through it and set it aside because the recipes are unapproachable or not likely to be liked by the people I cook for. There is never a surprise in Gourmet , and besides the occasional great recipe in the Everyday section, there are few things I tear out. I would enjoy my issues of Gourmet more if they had fewer ads and something like Betsy McCall, a paper doll with a set of clothes and accessories to cut out and play with under the dining room table. My mother subscribed to McCall's when I was a kid, and I was allowed to read the Betsy McCall adventure and cut out the doll and clothes. If Betsy went camping in the story, she would come with a set of khakis, a tent, and a canteen. If she went to the tropics, she would come with a grass skirt, a swim suit, and a beach ball. Paper dolls were the thing to play with when I was a kid. They were cheap or even free, and they provided hours ...

Ohio got more than its share of snow these last few days with record-setting snow fall from top to bottom. Airports in Cleveland and Cincinnati and points in between were closed, and my patio table was covered over in measurable stages. See? This is what it looked like Friday around 4:00. I went to the grocery store that morning to stock up for the weekend, thinking I might not be able to get out later. I was right, and half the town agreed with me. There were more shopping carts in the aisles than I believe I have ever seen, and I had to park nearly a block from the front door. This is what my poor table looked like the next morning after hours of freezing rain chiseled away at the pile of snow from the day before. Over night, we actually had thunder snow, which is something I don't recall witnessing before. It's a little creepy to see lightning and hear thunder during a whiteout. It seems to defy the laws of nature, but this is March. All kinds of weird weather things happen ...

As Dive has requested—my dashboard so that you can psychoanalyze me. This is the dashboard from my laptop, slightly different from the dashboard on my big work computer. I change things from time to time, adding a game and then taking it away when it bores me. Sometimes I have a widget that shows the night sky at various locations, but it malfunctions and updates so much, I have taken it off for now. I particularly like the ShakeASpeare. If you click on the parchment, his insults change. You can't see all of the photo that currently serves as my desktop, so here is the full shot. There has to be a story there.

Amelia Earhart was a vanguard, a woman who wore trousers, believed in equality of the sexes, and flew an airplane all at a time when women were expected to sit quietly and keep their legs hidden under a big skirt. Disappearing somewhere in the Pacific wasn't the only thing she was famous for—Amelia was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and she held a number of other records. She was an author, an advocate for women's rights, and a champion for aspiring female pilots. It's quite possible none of those things would have been true about her had it not been for the influences of her mother. Amy Otis was a young woman of genteel society, the daughter of a well-known judge who sometimes took her on trips out west instead of going to school. They climbed Pike's Peak on one of those trips, and Amy claimed to be the first woman to make the entire climb. That's disputed, but the fact that she climbed it in 1890 when women weren't encouraged to be so adventu...

I walked in the house the other day and found the mail sorted on the kitchen counter. Husband had pulled it out of the mailbox and left a stack for me and a stack for No. 2 accordingly. I don't get a lot of mail addressed solely to me except for catalogs—and boy, do I ever get the catalogs—so I was excited. I recognized the SASE right away, the one I had sent to a literary agent just four weeks before. They tell you to include a SASE so they can more easily reply to your submission. This reply was a rejection, but the blow was softened because the other item in my stack was my membership card for MENSA. So, take that, you loser agent who doesn't know real marketable talent even when it lands on your desk in the form of three chapters and a query letter. Who wins today? I do. If you were hanging around here last year, you may remember my writing a novel I called Maryann . I have since retitled it Mrs. Branch and have started looking for an agent. I have sent inquiries to seven ...

I was sitting quietly in church on Sunday, minding my own business and picking fuzz from my sweater, when the choir stood up to sing their song for the day. Lately, the director who is a brass pal of mine has been choosing old gospel tunes from the early 1900s and having his choir sing them a capella. I like that he keeps the old traditions alive when they otherwise might be discarded. Their song this week was No Tears in Heaven, and when they started singing, I couldn't help but mouth the words. I grew up singing that song and remembered almost all of the lyrics. My grandparents in Alabama in the 1970s When my mother was a girl in the 1930s, her father was asked to lead the singing one Sunday afternoon for one of those all-day occasions with dinner on the ground and lots and lots of music. He agreed and decided to bring his family along as the special music for the day. They had formed a quartet with my mother and her siblings, and my grandfather on bass. The man had a booming vo...

Daughter No. 1 came home over the weekend, although she doesn't call it "home" anymore. I remember those college days when I started calling my dorm room "home," and the house I grew up in became "my parents' house." I still say she came home, though. She has become interested in baking, so we made a cheesecake together using my favorite cheesecake recipe—white chocolate with a cookie crust. I decorated it with chocolate curls, although you can see from the picture that I have trouble making those. I melted chocolate and spread it in a thin layer on a plastic cutting board. After chilling it until it was solid again, I used a spatula at an angle of about 45˚ to push the chocolate into curls. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I also made a raspberry sauce by stirring a bag of frozen raspberries in a saucepan over moderate heat. I added an unmeasured amount of sugar (not quite a cup, I bet) and stirred until the sugar melted and blend...

Another Monday Melee 1. The Magnificent: Name someone you absolutely adore, and tell us why. My friend Carolyn is truly adorable, and she's about to move hundreds of miles away, something I keep pretending isn't true but now is eminent. Last week when I was very sick, she called to check on me, and several times she asked is she could get anything for me when she was going to the store. She also helped me out with some yarn I wanted for a new project. Sometimes it's just nice to be taken care of. 2. The Muddy: Tell us something about life you just don’t “get”. I don't understand why some people take care of their property, and some people are slobs. Most of my neighbors take pride in their yards, but all it takes is that one pig who dumps all of his trash and old toys and leftover crap in the yard to make the whole neighborhood look like an episode of Sanford & Son. I guess it's no different from how people present themselves personally. 3. The Magnetic: Name so...