As the clock has ticked in the last month, I've known this was coming and have avoided writing to avoid IT. But to stay true to the Green Parrot motto of No Snivelling:
To put it mildly, I have hated the cold weather here almost as much as the dread foreknowledge that I'm going north. I think this is the end of the blog. Thanks for having been here.
I wasn't quick enough on the draw to capture the hundreds of gulls that were wheeling and cawing over the grocery parking lot before they swept back out to sea, so I had to settle for another bird: the risotto I whipped up tonight with chicken, onion, garlic, yellow peppers and a touch of chopped pepperoni, for a treble note.
Yes, it's Christopher Peterson again, as the Divine Miss M, but this time we'd invited a dozen or so people from Robert's bridge club to join us for dinner at La Te Da and then see the show.
Dinner -- upstairs, in the "private" room, though it's a porch without walls -- was a lovely time. I wasn't worried about that.
I thought that Chris and his show might be a bit much for the half-dozen ladies of a certain age we'd asked along.
He's a class act, compared to the skank divas rampant on this little island, and his singing voices and that malleable face were as astonishing as ever. . . .
But when he got to Miss Bette's "faaaavorite story I heard last year," about apples with two flavors, "told to me by a nun," I wondered if there'd be spit-takes, or pacemaker failures, or worse.
There was hysterical laughter and applause, of course. As Woody Allen so famously said, sex is dirty only if you do it right.
I can't repeat the joke here (so much depends on inflections and timing). Ask me about it the next time you see me.
. . . and a bit of bacon, and roasted garlic, and a dollop of cream, and various cheeses, tossed with bisi (sweet green peas) and finished under the broiler: Savory ravioli di pollo al forno.
Perfect for a cool night -- and we've had another spate of them, in the 60s.
(Though the prep and cook time, under an hour, didn't give me enough time to warm up at the stove.)
Quite a treat, actually, to be invited onto a 65-foot motor yacht, moored in berth No. 1, right behind the Raw Bar in the Old Harbor, for drinks.
Robert called me between hands from bridge, to see if I was up for cocktails with the couple who own the boat. It turned out that another couple were there too, as well as Edie.
So there we were, rocking gently as the sun went down, and the boat folks went down into the galley and conjured up salads and pasta that turned cocktails into dinner, and into a bit of magic.
I have to admit that the conversation while they worked wasn't magical for me.
There we were, sitting on a boat that cost maybe a half-million -- maybe a little less, maybe a lot more -- with someone (not the boat owner) complaining about the confiscatory taxes that small business owners pay (the owner of the boat owns convenience stores, which are sort of the poster children for small businesses to me).
The non-boat-owner then went on to blame the economic mess we're all suffering from on Freddie and Fannie, because they provide loans to low-income people.
And I feel shame that, looking around at the boat and the harbor, I didn't raise my glass and bellow that YES, this should be a BIGGER boat. Oh, only if we'd wrung the po' folk even drier!
That's the old Turtle Kraals on the right, by the way -- the shed where they brought sea turtles for slaughter and canning a hundred years ago when the robber barons supped on turtle soup.
I've always been amused by the phrase "window treatment," since I never figured the windows were sick to begin with.
But I will say the sliding doors in the bedroom next to the pool let more light in than I'm comfortable with -- enough to bleach the bed skirt to pink, and to start attacking Amanda's fine old rug on the floor.
Besides, as I found again when I was showering when my mom and B.J. were here, I'm not that fond of having to pull our bathroom door shut for privacy.
So I finally persuaded Robert to find some draperies online -- lime green with fuchsia ribbon applique doodads, no less -- and with poles and brackets and an hour or so with the drill and hammer and screwdriver . . . voila!
They may have given Karl an even bigger reason to scowl.
I've been working on the ultimate recipe for a poached- pear dessert, and though it lacked any Val- entine's-red color, I gave it a quick shot when we got back from dinner with Dwight at Salsa Loca -- just for the two of us, and it maybe took 20 minutes.
Plump up the raisins in rum and orange juice, with a dash of Peychaud's bitters. Poach the pears in simple syrup scented with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Plate it all up with a big dollop of mascarpone, and serve on the good china with sterling.
If it had been a dinner-party thing, I would have squiggled the plate with raspberry ribbons and garnished it with mint. But it was just the two of us, and I was missing my squiggler. And the raspberry. And the mint. But it did warm my heart: Robert said it was the best he'd ever tasted. Gotta love an easy date.
Our friends Barry and Harrell invited us to drift along on their dinner-for-four ticket at a benefit for the Waterfront Playhouse in a swell house in the Truman Annex -- sweet time.
I ended up talking with a former vice-chancellor at the University of Illinois, swapping notes on our times in Chicago (and it turned out she knew my cousin Walter there), though she went on to top jobs at Ohio State, the Cal State system and CUNY. Lord, how I love women pioneers.
But over on the other side of the room was a tall man with a beard, and people were whispering about him. I went over and introduced myself. (He's the center guy in the vintage picture.)
"Noel Stookey," he said with a big smile, shaking hands and introducing me to his wife.
I told him we'd gone to a Chattanooga concert he'd done, probably in 1985, when Mary interrupted her patter to ask what the hell those pretty plants were all along the highway.
"Redbuds," shouted the audience at the Tivoli Theater.
And I gave Noel -- Noel Paul Stookey, the "Paul" of Peter, Paul and Mary -- my condolences about Mary, but let him know that every spring I've thought of her when the redbuds bloom, and always will.
We got the loveliest Christmas card today from the woman who heads up the Lambda Legal Defense Fund. The group does such good work for people who can't afford to defend themselves against the onslaughts of an uncaring society. . . .
Which led me to consider that among the wonders of the world, getting a late card is nothing. At least it was THIS Christmas.
The card, after all, had gone through Tennessee, and damn close to the monkey trial town at that. Which to my mind is a warp backwards not of months, but of centuries.
Universal Cleaners, across from the library parking lot, was sure convenient -- and helpful: When Ref died and I had a dark suit packed and FedExed down, they had that sucker pressed in 15 minutes. (The guy who ran the counter went to Ref's church.) Still, after the first time I paid almost as much to have a shirt cleaned and pressed as I'd paid for the shirt, I tended not to use them much.
I figured something was up when they opened a new location on Flagler. That something turns out to have been a plan to demolish the '50s cinder-block building and put up a house. And so the walls, with their iconic mama cats licking kittens clean, crumbled this week.
You always have to wonder what the historic architecture commission is smoking, but particularly when it arrives at definitions of "contributing structures."
Last fall our friend Ferron fell on some medical hard times despite the VA, so I pressed some cash in his hand and said when he had a chance he should give us some tiny renderings of our house.
When he came by the other night, and borrowed a pencil to install the clapboard, and then sprayed the finished products with clear enamel, I was sure it was the right real-estate investment.
But even more to the point: As he sat on the back deck and sipped tea, dawdling while the little Sueñitoses dried, he looked up at the ever-changing clouds of dusk and said: "You know, this really is better than anything on TV."
"What on earth are those things?," B.J. asked at the back deck last month.
I swiveled around, and looked at the big spikes coming up out of the foxtail palms, and told her that with any luck they'd unzip themselves into new fronds while she and my mom were here.
No such luck, though this week they've started, dancing in the breezes.
[By the way, I've heard that some people in other parts of the country don't have sunshine and warm weather. My sincerest condolences. And you can make it up to us by gloating about your conditions next hurricane season.]
Not to be outdone by chandelier-cleaning, I pulled out the ladder, the Finish Feeder and some good rags and tried to put the best face possible on Amanda's highboy.
[A small design discussion here: When we were putting our house together, Robert was all seagulls and sand, but I thought we shouldn't be afraid to hark back to the island's history as a wrecker's paradise, when precious 1800s flotsam found its way into nice homes. For proof, see the Audubon House, or see ours.]
I dunno if it's the salt air, but parts of the highboy get ashy -- the parts, I think, that were refinished in the 1870s, according to the pencil notations inside the back wall. Whether it was fire or water, something took a terrible toll on it.
The thing itself was built in the 1770s, if you look at the dovetails, feel the drawer bottoms, consider the handmade nails, the fine bonnet top and the hand-scraped legs. Probably somewhere in the Northeast, and assuredly of lovely cherrywood.
If you look at that sweet tenon piece to the left of the carved drawer, you get an idea of it.
And of why I like to keep it looking buff, even if it does leave the house reeking of turpentine for a while.
Speaking of Saturday's item, I'm offering a freshly ironed $20 bill to the first person who can provide a diagram, footnoted to cite accepted sources, of the following sentence, sic as it is, which is punctuated as well as my editorial skills allow:
"I think, kind of tougher to, um, put our arms around -- but allowing America's spirit to rise again, by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God-fearing nation where we're not afraid to say, especially in times of potential trouble in the future here -- where we're not afraid to say, you know, we don't have all the answers as fallible men and women -- so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again."
[Ah, well, my GAWD, says Blanche. Lock up the chirren! He's a . . .
a . . . . He's a . . . He ADMITS he's a PEDANT!]
I know other people think the big sports event of the weekend is between New Orleans and Indianapolis, by way of Miami, but the one I've been focusing on was in Nashville (heaven help us), at Opryland (gettin toward hell here), with Sarah Palin (paging Mr. Dante -- Dante, party of 2 million. Dante!).
Garsh-DARN, gee!! She told us, several times, that she was SO proud to be an American.
Do ya think you might be wise to check your wallet around someone who tells you repeatedly how honest he is? Or to count the chips in play when a sworn officeholder abandons a job for "principle"? If they profess faith, you might ask what happened when they took the oath for their term, with a hand on the Bible?
Maybe they were just distracted by the 6th-grade cheat notes on their left hand.
- - -
You are now moving seamlessly to 1926. Please keep your annotated hands inside the vehicle at all times:
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
Last summer we asked Jon, our garden guy, to find some bougainvilleas with a few shots of color to make our southern deck "wall" more interesting.
The green things there -- aralias of various kinds -- were doing OK, but
. . . they were green things.
They are all very much larger green things now, but among them are a few delicious bits of tropical heat.
They'll need pruning and braiding in years to come, but their thorns will make that stretch of fence a fortress.
Sometimes, no matter what the calendar says, you have to do spring cleaning.
Of course, it helped that Robert thought a bunch of his bridge pals were coming over for drinks before a dinner and show.
But whatever, he was there cleaning the chandelier. And though he's a little rough with the crystals, and they may never hang plumb again, it shines like the day it was cut.
(And when I see pictures like this, I think of old Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, the last surviving granddaughter of Queen Victoria. In the lean years after World War II, she is famously said to have penned in on a dinner invitation, "Tiaras if Possible.")
The car in the picture was in the second lane, mind you, out from the curb on North Roosevelt, making a hell of a rooster-
tail.
The curb lane was even deeper.
Of course this happens on an island that is mostly glorified rock: If things aren't graded well, rain stands until it runs off or evaporates.
What the picture doesn't show, though, is the fella with an umbrella (which will be totally inadequate) trying to figure out how he'll get by thie sidewalk without taking a bath.
Temperatures Monday, by the way, were still in the 70s, so my errands were perfectly comfortable in a cap and nylon jacket. [And the plane in the palm landed just fine.]
Bike up a couple blocks, and west till the land ends at the Truman Waterfront, and you come up on the Mohawk and Ingham, Coast Guard vessels in our little maritime museum.
As I noted in November, the Ingham is the most decorated vessel in American maritime history. When you look at the battle ribbons, you get a sense of that: a little like looking at a chestful of fruit salad on a full-dress uniform.
Check out as well the kill-credits to the left on the superstructure: One U-Boat and . . . 10 pot interdictions.
This is what war has come to.
So, you head out from the house and turn left on Duval and there, a few blocks south, next to the Scrub Club and just north of Katha's old Chicken Store, is a smoking pile that smells like somebody's trash heap in a place where they don't keep so close an eye on such things.
It's Hugh Morgan's childhood home, as it turns out, and it was doomed by the time the firemen got there.
If ashes to ashes is the rule, this falls as one undeniable set point.
Mallory Square has been cut in halves over the last few months to accommodate a replacement of its surfaces, but one constant has prevailed:
Will Soto has been there. Not right now on the high wire (not enough length), but dancing on the slack rope and juggling.
As he has been since the '70s.
When the Cultural Preservation Society got the lease for Mallory Square sunset festivities from the city, he was the senior performer.
And as a senior myself, I'm glad he's still juggling those torches, and knives, and jibes.
Eat your heart out, Monet: My picture came together, too.
No matter how much my mom is miserable, because she chooses to be, I'm joyous to let her caregiver, B.J., have a chance to be herself here and have an actual vacation.
One crucial question is, of course, food. We all need it, but some love new tastes. And B.J. could eat anything on a menu, while her husband back in Tennessee is just fine with beef and potatoes.
So we've fed her lobster, and yellowtail, and grouper, and snapper, and hogfish (this is at Hogfish Bar), and wahoo, and shrimp.
Mission accomplished.
Mom and B.J. have been here coincidentally with the regatta, which meant that when we went out to Salute for lunch, there were dozens of boats on the south horizon with spinnakers set, speeding left to right.
Thrilling.
But no more so than when we went to the Truman Waterfront today and saw them pulling out those big Farr 40 contenders, rocking in the air, centerboards positioned just so to fit in their trailers.
Mom was being difficult -- which is a little like saying fish swim in water -- and decided she didn't want to go to the butterfly conser- vatory.
B.J. wanted to go, and I of course wanted her to feel as if this was her vacation, not just another part of her job.
So she and I went.
And wept, as the early risers fluttered about us in iridescent blues, greens, reds and oranges.
There are precious few religious experiences in my life, but this was one of them.
It's almost a law here that you have to take tourists to Blue Heaven, and we wanted to let B.J. know that her time here with my mom was not just a job.
So of course we ended up with lunch among the roosters, one of which was jumping up to eat from my hand at the end of our meal. (I think B.J. really liked the morning-caught lobster, which is somewhat more difficult to get in Tennessee).
But over by the ping-pong table was this old sign, with letters a foot wide and a lizard less than half so.
Co-existence on a coral rock.
Yes, that is Robert with a flaming candle in his ear. B.J., my mom's caregiver, is gleefully holding it.
As a bit of back- ground: She's here with my mom, and Robert had jammed wax deep into his ear canal. And, as the natural-healing store around the corner confirmed, what you need is a hollow candle to suck everything out on a stream of hot smoke.
It did pull some goop out, but there was still a visit to doc-in-a-box.
All in all, it told me that it was wrong to think that there was only one of Robert's orifices that was flaming.
I knew Mrs. Sweeting's service was going to be at St. Peter's -- she'd been such a key parishioner in her 96 years, as a teacher when they had a school, and Sunday School teacher all along, and head of this and that guild and league -- but it wasn't till I saw Skipper scrambling up the street with his snare drums that I knew she was going to get a musical march to the cemetery.
Skip is about the size of the little fife player of yore, but he handles drumsticks as if he were tall as Bubba Low Notes' tropical tuba.
And with police lights flashing at both ends of our tiny block, they launched a spirited version of "Amazing Grace" as they carried Miz Irma out of the church for the last time and the big bell tolled, and tolled, and tolled, and tolled, and tolled.
