Scout Moves

We have thing at our house we call "the back porch," but it isn't really a porch. It's more like a room stuck on the back with the feeling of a porch. The floor is terra cotta tiles, and the walls are cedar with large windows. On rainy, summer evenings, it's a great place to sit and watch the weather, especially if there is thunder and lightning because one wall faces down hill, and you can see lightning strike the ridge on the other side of town. I was sitting on this "porch" yesterday with a visiting friend, and I took a good look at a little table I have had for years. I bought it at a neighbor's garage sale for just a couple of dollars, and it isn't good for much more than holding a little lamp or maybe a book. I decided it must be painted. Several hours later, this is what the table looked like: Here is a closer view of the top. The camera doesn't show the base color is actually more of a burgundy than a burnt orange, and the yellow flow...

My floral-designer sister is coming for a visit tomorrow along with my mother, and she will be arranging the flowers for Eustacia's grad party. One of the things she'll be using for a "vase" is a miniature watermelon with colorful flowers sticking artfully from carefully placed carvings. With that in mind, guess what this picture is cropped from? Click on it for the full image.

My plan for today is to buy ferns for the patio, replace the cushions on the wicker chairs on the porch, and make some real progress on the display of childhood pictures for Eustacia's party. I'm curious—where you live, do high school graduates have a large display at their parties of childhood photos, school awards, and various memorabilia in what basically constitutes a shrine? It's customary here, so we're putting it all together. While I'm doing that, you can watch my cats annoy each other. They usually try to avoid each other except when one stalks the other and starts and all-out fight, or when another cat appears in the yard, and Mike turns into Demon Cat in order to declare his territory. I'll try to get that on video for you. Today, the best I can do is show the two of them scrapping on the window seat. Here is Mike. He's a big boy. Here is Tiger. He is an angel with a bit of mischief. And here they are together.

It's been a whirlwind of a weekend, and the end of an era. Daughter No, 2 (let's call her Eustacia) graduated from high school Friday evening. The ceremony is pretty simple with a few speeches, and then each student walks up when their name is called to get their diploma and shake the hand of the president of the school board. With all due respect to that man, telling these kids they have the tools they need to succeed in life because they know how to beat the rival school on game day is one of the shallowest and untrue things he could have told them. Let's hope they weren't listening. On Saturday, Eustacia marched in a parade as part of the Canal festival. Small Town was built along the Erie Canal, and every year we have a festival with greasy carnie rides, greasy carnie games, and greasy carnie food because all of those things have something to do with the history of the era of canals. At the end of the parade, the band regroups for a stand-up concert. After that, we ...

Small Town held its Memorial Day ceremony at one of the cemeteries this morning, and the rain held off. Not only did it hold off, but the sun was shining after the clouds cleared. Tradition holds that the high school marching band, along with a police escort and the color guard from the VFW, march from the school to the fire station, and then they march from there to the cemetery where there is a flat-bed truck decorated as a dais, and a small crowd has gathered with little American flags handed out by a Boy Scout troop. The band plays the national anthem, and there are a few speeches. An eighth-grade boy is chosen to read the Gettysburg address, and an eighth-grade girl is chosen to read the poem In Flanders Field. After a twenty-one-gun salute, Raymond "Skeetz" Botdorf plays taps. He's at least 90—I think he may turn 94 this year—he learned to play the trumpet during WW2. Every year that he plays I am afraid will be his last. This year I was able to capture it, so I wis...

It's the day I have proclaimed a personal art day where I show you stuff I have painted, but I haven't painted very much this week. In preparing for next weekend's big shindig in honor of No. 2's graduation, I have been trying to clean up areas of the house one small area at a time. The corner of the family room where I usually paint has been cleared. But then No. 2 found this very cool letter E to represent herself—no, her name is not actually No. 2. She asked me to paint it anyway I fancy so that it would be suitable to display at her party, so I chose the colors of her cake and decorations and went to town. This is a giant paper mache block letter that must be three feet tall, which meant I had to reestablish my painting table, but it turned out to be a quick job and quick cleanup. Fortunately, she liked the end result. Here it is full view. And here is a closeup. This evening, No. 2 will graduate from high school, and that will be the end of her high school experien...

My dear friend Carolyn has moved to Georgia. Actually she is moving tomorrow, but we had lunch yesterday and said "good bye." We met at a cute coffee shop in Small Town Next Door (to my favorite place for joe, please don't take offense). We had sandwiches and chatted for the longest time about all sorts of things, hopping from subject to subject as we are prone to doing. She brought in this trinket, a plastic figurine of a teddy bear with a piece of embroidery in a hoop with something syrupy and gaggy about friendship written on it. Someone had given it to her several years ago, and she found it while packing up her house for the moving truck. She was about to throw it out when she thought I might have a use for it. I found one. We waited until the counter help went back into the kitchen and then carefully placed it on a shelf with cookbooks on display. It became a kind of hidden treasure so that when people stop in for coffee and look through the cook books, they'll ...

I wasn't going to play at my blog today because I am full to the brim with such a wide collection of thoughts and reasons to fret and things to do. Between No. 2's graduation and party and food for the homeless shelter and some odd work projects and band concerts, I'm fit for a nap to make it all disappear. On top of that, my dear friend is moving to Georgia tomorrow, and since she is moving away from the house next door, I have watching the moving trucks carry away her things for two days now. Sigh. I was going to write about that, but it makes me so sad, I will opt for the 5 Things Meme instead. Thank you to Maria and Dive for providing this diversion. 5 Things in my bag: •My wallet •My cell phone •Wads of odd receipts that should have been thrown out weeks ago •The "key" to my keyless car •A wrapped mint from a restaurant. It's friends with the tiny tin of mini Altoids, wintergreen. 5 Favorite things in my bedroom: •A big poofy bed with a down comforter and...

Over the weekend, we went to our first graduation party of the season. The graduate has been a friend of No. 2's for years, and we have gotten to know the parents pretty well. They're a nice family all around. Staggered along the long tables were candy dishes filled with pink and white M&Ms, and No. 2 suggested we have red, purple, and gold at her party. So, being the obedient mother that I am, I ordered four pounds of M&Ms in red, purple, and gold. The website is amazingly thorough with games and ads and ways to get you to buy candy. You can order nearly any color you'd like, and you can have the pieces printed with your school mascot or with messages for any occasion. Ours will just say the traditional "M." You can also get them delivered in little trinkets—candy boxes in plastic or glass or just cute little bags. I love M&Ms. I especially love the peanut variety with dark chocolate. And when I eat them, I sort the colors first and try to make sure ...

My orchestra performed its final concert for the season on Saturday with "country aires" as our theme. Two young women from Nashville, one a singer and one a fiddler, joined us to give our starched style some country wrinkles. Both of these women grew up in Small Town but have been living south to make their way in the music profession. A local band joined them so that we would have a keyboard, banjo, guitar, and steel guitar, and I was amazed at the music these guys played from. On their stands were pieces of paper marked with penciled-in chicken scratch, and they never missed a note. When they needed to stomp their feet on the stage for effect, they just did it. When the orchestra needed to stomp our feet on the stage for effect, we had to have Xs printed on the staff so we would know exactly when to stomp and how often. To give you an idea of how popular country music is here, our orchestra normally does pretty well in selling tickets, but for this concert we played to a ...

...to Daughter No. 2 She turns 18 today and will spend it eating cake and macaroni and cheese, although hopefully not at the same time. And she'll be playing Wii. This photo is from the Caribbean cruise we took over the New Year holiday.

...to Dennis Brain. Dennis Brain was one of the most well-known French horn players of the 20th century, and his recordings of the Mozart horn concertos are still regarded as "top shelf." Horn teachers will tell you, when studying the Mozart concertos, to listen to Brain's recordings and aim to play them the way he played them. It's an impossible goal to achieve, but it's good to have a goal that is always just out of reach even on tip toes. That way you'll never stop trying. Brain came from a long line of successful horn players—his grandfather, father, and uncle were all well-known in the UK and in the States, and his mother wrote the cadenzas that his father played when performing. He was also an accomplished pianist and organist, and he was fond of fast cars. I have heard several generalizations about horns players. One of the traits I've heard is common among professionals is alcoholism because it takes a great deal of nerve to play the horn. It's...

Small Town is well past the peak of blooming beauty. We had several weeks to enjoy vibrant trees all over town, but now we're just about all green. With the exception of a few dogwoods that are hanging on for dear life, Small Town has its summer play clothes on and is almost ready for popsicles and sunshine and a very cold Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade straight out of the bottle. There are several streets in town that come alive in the spring. They look like ordinary streets most of the year, but in April and May, you want to reroute your trip through town just to drive under their canopy of blooms. At its peak, Slingluff, named after a founding father, is like a giant trellis of white. Broad Street is lined with a dozen of the lushest looking flowering trees I have ever seen. And the front yards on Walnut are dotted with beautiful colors mixed throughout the evergreens. Before spring winds shook free all the flowers, I caught a shot of these few trees nearly on fire. They ins...

This picture is a mystery. Well, it isn't a mystery to me because I put it here and I know what it is. Take a guess—if you're really stumped, click on it for the entire picture. Hint: it likes a certain kind of weed.

I am in the middle of that one week out of the year when the orchestra and the summer band overlap with four assorted rehearsals and a concert all in one week. When I sat down to think through the schedule, I made a mental note of the dates and times of the orchestra rehearsals and then the band practice. I must have done that three times just to make sure I wouldn't forget anything, and each time I used the word "rehearsal" when thinking of the orchestra and the word "practice" when thinking of band. I wondered why that was, and I wondered why I would never switch the two. To me, orchestra practice and band rehearsal don't seem to be matched phrases. Maybe it depends on the groups. Maybe if the band weren't such a bang-splat-crash ensemble, it would feel more like a rehearsal and less like a practice. And maybe if the orchestra were to play in some filthy garage and tell jokes when the conductor sets down his baton, it would seem more like a practice an...

As Lulubelle has pointed out, May is melanoma awareness month, and it's nothing to laugh at. But let me tell another sunburn story in which I laugh at myself, not at my damaged skin or the dangers it could lead to. Chicago in spring is a lovely thing to experience—what can be green becomes green, the lake is lovely to stroll beside, the crazies come out of their winter hiding place. My college was situated at a busy intersection with very little green. We had trees planted in holes cut out of the pavement and little or no grass, but we did have a roof. My dorm building was ten stories high, and we often used the roof to enjoy the sun away from the street noise. It was an ugly place to be, but if you closed your eyes, it could be whatever you wanted. You could be in Aruba if your imagination was powerful enough. One day I went up to the roof with a passel of other girls, and I stretched out on a large towel to take a short nap and feel the sun on my skin. After about 45 minutes, I ...

The title here may lead you to think I'm about to launch into a post about evangelizing the lost in a heartless way, but actually, I'm about to ramble about a sunburn as a reply to Dive's post about British people and their fair skin. So....... Several years ago we went to Cancun, Mexico for a brief vacation. It was spring break, and you really don't want to be anywhere near Cancun during spring break unless you enjoy mobs of drunk and obnoxious college kids. We managed to stay out of their way, for the most part. We stayed at the Camino Real, an old hotel on the tip of the peninsula with its own private beach and away from Señor Frogs. We arrived at night, so I wasn't sure of my bearings, but in the morning, when I stepped out of our room's back door and stood in the lush grass, and I faced the ocean and the rocks and the lizards sunning themselves on the sidewalk, I knew I was going to like this place. After a leisurely morning, we found our way to that privat...

We spent last weekend at the lake doing relaxing things like breathing in and out. We also played Monopoly during which I was called a communist because I wanted everyone at the table to own just enough but not too much. It's that kind of thinking that leaves the person with the boot having to mortgage their measly railroads just to pay rent on Mediterranean. We played Yahtzee, had dinner at the marina, watched movies, ate chocolate, and read books. I woke up early on Saturday morning to rain and cloudy skies, and I saw a man fishing in the inlet by the house. He was wearing a yellow rain slicker and a yellow hat, and the only sounds you could here besides the rain on the water and on the leaves was the call of an occasional bird. I had brought some paints and a tablet of paper meant for acrylics, so this is what I painted (9x12): The next day at home, I painted the scene again on 9x12 canvas and tried to correct a mistake or two. I'm not sure if I succeeded, but at least the w...

I do like to think small, breaking bigger things down into chewable pieces, or when tasks and events mount, "doable doses" might be a better phrase. If I look at a list of book covers that need to be designed, and the list extends onto three pages, I can easily feel buried and over my head. But if I look at one title at a time, and check it off as I go, then my job becomes manageable, and work gets done. If I look at my giant, smelly cat who is so big he can't reach his hind parts with his washcloth tongue, then I shake my head with frustration over what a monster he has become, and why can't he wash himself, and why does he have to be such a neurotic eater, and why does he turn into Anti-Christ Cat when he sees another cat in the yard. gggggrrrrrrrrrrrr But if I look at Mike's cute, pink nose and his pretty, green eyes as he rolls over to show me his fluffy, white tummy, he is suddenly more pettable and loving, and his stinky back end is something I can tolerate ...

When I was a kid, we used to put waxed paper over a comb and make a kazoo sound with it, and we used to blow through an empty Good 'N Plenty box to make a squeaky kind of annoying sound, and we were good at humming with and against the hum of the vacuum cleaner to make different sound waves. We never thought to make an orchestra from vegetables, though. I wish we had. Here is a brief demonstration on making musical instruments from vegetables featuring my new hero: And if you're thinking you prefer ensemble performance to solo playing, then here this is for you:

I'll give in and have a crack at this meme that's going around. It's the one where you put your iPod on shuffle and press "next" for each question. Then, you record the answers. I skipped the Christmas stuff and most of the instrumental stuff, so there isn't one horn concerto in the list. 1) How would you describe yourself? You're All I Need to Get By as sung by Michael McDonald. I have read through the entire lyrics, and I can't pick a single phrase for this answer to make sense. I do like the song, though. 2) What do you like in a guy/girl? Strange by Patsy Cline. 3) What is your motto? Turn Around as sung by Nanci Griffith. Yep, this seems to be my motto these days: Where are you goin' my little one, little one? Little dirndles and petticoats, where have you gone? Turn around and you're tiny Turn around and you're grown Turn around and you're a young wife With babes of your own 4) What do your friends think of you? Up On the Roof as ...

It's summer band season again, which means weekly sweat baths in a rehearsal room and six or seven concerts at parks and festivals. In the past seven or eight years, this band has grown from 50 members to over 70, and we have practically outgrown the band shell at the park. I wasn't at the first rehearsal last Thursday because I was attending Daughter No. 2's own concert (her very last one, by the way), but I understand 85 people showed up for practice, and another 30 are expected to squeeze themselves into that band room this coming Thursday. We'll all have to hold our breath and scramble for a chair to sit in. When I was in high school, our band director used to tell us to grab a freshman, sit the kid down in the grass, and then stand around him and inhale on the count of three. He promised we'd steal the oxygen from the kid and make him pass out, but it never worked. I suspect this summer band season will be similar—I'm not sure there is enough air in the roo...

Happy No Pants Day . Traditionally it is observed the first Friday of May, although "tradition" is a loose term since the day has only been observed since 1986 or so. There are rules—you're supposed to wear boxers or bloomers or something similar, but skirts, dresses, and kilts are considered cheating. On the other hand, organizers agree that since the day is meant to bring humor to your spirit and freedom to your legs, they don't want to put too many restrictions on participants. They also agree that we all need to lighten up a little. From their site: "When large groups of people parade around in public without their pants, amazing things are bound to happen. At the very least, you’ll take your drab, wretched life a little less seriously, at least for one day." I won't be a party to such a display because frankly, I like pants. Who's Frank? Now that we have looked at pantsless bums, let's look at some art. I set out three small canvases, each a...

Julia Child was quite a cook, wasn't she? She was likely the first "celebrity chef" that got people interested in cooking beyond making macaroni and cheese and tuna casserole for the family dinner table. She hosted popular cooking shows and wrote cookbooks that still serve as culinary bibles, but she was so much more. Julia was born into a privileged class—the "leisure class," she called it—in Pasadena, California in 1912 in an age when women weren't expected to do anything but reproduce, be an accessory to their husbands, and roll bandages for a cause. She floated through school and went to Smith College in Massachusetts, the family alma mater. She excelled at sports there and had a high time at speak easies. When asked what she wanted to be, she was always quick to point out that she wasn't expected to want to be anything. Women were either brood mares or secretaries, she recalls, but she wanted to be neither. She moved to New York City to work as a wr...