Shake like a snow dome
Little flakes of story swirl and settle in this week’s posting
Subtlety
This photo is remarkable not because it shows the clutter on a small table in my apartment. No, what I value about it is the shadow of the pins in the pincushion.
To make this image, I had to notice the subtlety of the shadow.
Also subtle, the play of light in and through a glass of water. I was in the dining room at Rose Schnitzer Manor when I noticed the contrasts.
Check in
Quotation
One more sweet winter description:
In the far field, fat Durham cattle stood apart, all facing into the wind, attentive as an audience attending a concert. Mature trees, bark lacquered black, fingered upward. The twigs formed fine black traceries against the white sky.
—from Horse by Geraldine Brooks.
I read a fair number of books for book clubs. Some of them are a chore to finish. This is the first one since Demon Copperhead (three months ago) that was actually fun to read. And I’m not even into thoroughbreds.
Welcome winter
The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, is Thursday, December 21, 2023, at 7:27 pm PST. It’s the official start of winter, though we all know it’s been winter since about November 1, when the Celts celebrate the beginning of winter with Samhain.
Solstice
Just a week till the Solstice— Darkening days, Middle of winter, Silent and cold. Silence inside me, Already shriven Waiting for—what? The season demands it. What should I do now? Watching and waiting, Holding my breath Because I could see it? Not from Spirit, no, Understanding comes Only from within me— Tamp the pipe on the rock.* The dottle of my soul Little pieces of sin Misshapen intentions, False starts and stops. Winter reforms me, Forged in frigidity. Fire in snowdrifts, Lighting the way.
*A note on the imagery. I smoke the occasional pipe. One must occasionally knock out the ashes and bits of charred tobacco, known as dottle.
Our season
‘Celebrations’ was the theme for December
In the eighth decade of my life, I feel the celebrations of years past shimmer and recast themselves in my memory. Now I celebrate less, just opening a few presents from the kids, going out to dinner with Robert on our December anniversary.
But I remember past celebrations: the feasts, the gatherings, the music, the cheer. Baking cookies or stollen, wrapping presents, walking downstairs and inhaling the spicy scent of the Christmas tree.
Those things are past now. I haven’t bothered with a Christmas tree since before I got married 19 years ago. No, not since my younger child left home in 1998, actually.
It’s been a long time since I traveled to a holiday concert.
I’m left with memories of things past. Shifting, shiny memories. Stuffed away in the cotton wool of bygone years.
And that is enough.
Nostalgia
The first time I remember feeling the tristesse of nostalgia was at this time of year. Maybe I was 9 or 10. I was waiting for my mom to pick me up at The Hub,* a small shopping center in Richfield, Minn.
*Amazingly, this outside mall, which opened in 1954 at 66th and Nicollet, is still in business.
Dusk had fallen, and it was snowing. The headlights of cars were circular snowballs.
I felt that pull in my gut, the feeling that I had been in this scene before. Suddenly the scene became richer, overlaid with earlier memories that spoke to me of winter and the comfort of warm places.
I still carry that feeling with me.
Why is it that certain scenes and impressions resonate with us? Stay with us?
Long past
I also used to have these moments of otherworldly clarity, when my surroundings seemed to crystallize. Everything was, for a long instant, shiny and perfect. A bakery window. Pumpkins and squash at an outdoor produce market. The recycling bin in Berkeley where hardy undergrads smashed glass with 2x4s.
Is there a term for such moments? Not deja vu; the impressions weren’t from the past. They were intensely present. Only once have I read of another having such a vision, and I have forgotten where.
Those were, apparently, the visions of youth. I haven’t experienced that sort of clarity in years, maybe decades. Or maybe I do, but the vision is so overlaid with prior experience that I don’t notice it as special.
Learning to see
Perhaps the perfect moment is what I see when I take a photograph. Everyday items arranged in a special way. A trick of the light. The intervention of human ingenuity in an urban scene, like this fire hydrant.
The Universe moves in mysterious ways, bringing us gifts daily, hourly, minutely. So many do we squander! At least, I do: not getting the best shot with my phone camera, not writing the passing idea in my journal, not noticing at all.
Because we can’t notice everything. The world is just too full of wonders.
I glean what I can. The rest lies in the field of memory and bliss, waiting for the crows to scavenge.
It’s all good
Remember that waste and destruction are an integral part of life. Without atrophy, nothing new can be birthed.
Christmas cookies
I used to make Christmas cookies. Just a few recipes, every year. Sugar cookies, frosted and dusted with colored sugar crystals. Pepparkakor, a thin Swedish gingerbread. That was it, pretty much. Much later, I dabbled in pfeffernüsse and lebkuchen,* but only for a season.
*Part of the fun about making lebkuchen is finding the wafers that are the base of the cookies. Called Oblaten in German, they made of flour, starch and water, the same ingredients as Communion wafers. I found them at the Edelweiss Deli in Southeast Portland.
But that was then. Today, those cookies are memories.
As I noted in the check in, I have slipped the bonds of the holidays. That ship has sailed, that plane has flown, that kite has slipped its string and blown away.
All that’s left are recipes. Here’s one that isn’t necessarily a holiday offering. Shortbread is just good anytime, especially with afternoon tea.
The best things in this world are simple. This spectacular shortbread has three ingredients: butter, sugar and flour. I got the idea from Crumpets and Scones: Indecently Delicious Teatime Fare from Around the World, by Iris Ihde Frey.
Shortbread
1 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar, preferably superfine
About 3 cups flour
(I usually make half a recipe. It’s plenty rich.)
Cream the butter and sugar and then blend in the flour, using as little as possible to create a short dough.
Don’t work the dough any more than you have to, or it will be tough. Just pat it gently into round or square baking pans, about 1/2-inch thick. Don’t push too hard or, again, it will be tough. Score lightly to make it easier to break apart later. You can use a fork for this.
Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes. The edges should just begin to color.
So buttery! So delicious!
Going Dutch
There’s a Dutch Bros* coffee drive-in down the road from where I live. The first time I bought a drink there, or at any Dutch Bros outlet, was the day I lost my purse, but that didn’t keep me from returning. The coffee is good.
*There’s no period after the “Bros,” pronounced “Broze.” It’s not an abbreviation.
In my wheelchair, I was the only roll-up customer, but while I was there, maybe 20, 25 cars queued up for the drive-through. Every one of them was black, white or gray. Not a colorful car in the bunch.
Same deal when I returned, at a quieter time of day, and wrote this poem.
Cars at Dutch Bros
The cute little Fiat with young folks. Girls in a scary black Tesla. Looming over the cars, Tall condos look down from above. Curious conifers, too Can they smell the coffee? Four in the afternoon Eight cars in line. Don’t people need to sleep? Gray, gray, gray A Toyota, a Chevy, a Nissan. White, black, gray, gray, gray. There’s a BMW, California plates. The latte is finished. Still no cars of color. My coffee came from the walkup window. Nobody uses that window. Everyone drives to Dutch Bros. I remember Dutch Bros from an episode of the reality show “Undercover Boss,” featuring one of the brothers who founded the firm, Travis Boersma. He was so impressed by this one employee that he showered her with perks. But, I wondered, what about all the other deserving employees, the ones he didn’t happen to encounter? It didn’t seem fair. I stopped watching “Undercover Boss” after that.
Fraud!
I got scammed that week, but I was able to dodge any bad consequences.
At issue was a small piece of furniture I put up for sale on Craig’s List. The first person to respond sounded as if they really wanted the item.
( “They” is the pronoun I’ll use as I don’t know the gender of this person. Emails came from “Lori,” but the check(s) were from someone named Robert.)
They seemed eager to buy. The next thing I knew, they had sent me two cashiers checks, each for $2,900—more, way more than the $200 I asked.
The instructions were to deposit the checks, take out what was owed me plus an extra couple of hundred (a blatant appeal to greed), then give the remaining cash to the “movers” who would come for the piece.
Alarm bells
I didn’t deposit the checks, of course. Instead, I called the Oregon Attorney General’s Office’s fraud division, where a helpful volunteer knew all about this scam.
As soon as I deposited the checks, she said, the fraudsters would stop payment, leaving me in the lurch for the money I gave to the mysterious movers. Plus, they would be able to lift my bank info from the info on the canceled check.
I should have taken a photo of the checks before I cut them into bitty pieces and recycled them. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I was rich for maybe half an hour.
Snow screens
Nobody took me up on my request to list some more snow movies in the comments last week. No surprise there. But I did come up with a few more on my own.
One is “Togo,” about an undersized pup who becomes the leader of a sled dog pack. It features Willem Dafoe and Julianne Nicholson and a cast of canines. At one point, the musher and his team race against time to bring medicine to sick children.
It’s a well-made Disney movie.
“The Ice Road” is a gritty race against time (with Liam Neeson as a truck driver!) to save diamond miners trapped after an explosion. There is a villain, and ice is also a character. So are a trio of color-coded Kenworth tractor-trailers rigs. On Netflix.
And, of course, “Fargo,” where Frances McDomand pukes in the snow, now streaming on Max and Paramount+.
An acquaintance mentioned an episode of of Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery” called “Silent Snow, Secret Snow.” It is based on a well-known short story by Conrad Aiken. In it, a young boy retreats into his fantasy world of snow. She said it was used by her psychology professor as an example of autistic behavior. This 1971 episode, narrated by Orson Welles, is not available for streaming just now.
News from the frozen north
The Littlefork Times and Northern Echo comes in the mail once a week, but I don’t always have time to read it. Looking over past issues, I see that I missed stories about an 850-pound pumpkin and heroic efforts to stamp out an invasive species of cattail.
Higher postage rates have pushed the Littlefork Times beyond what I can afford. I’ll be sorry to see them go. I might even miss the easiest Jumble in existence, with three- and four-letter words (can you guess “TWE”?).
I’ll miss the run-up to Sno Fun days in February, and more recipes like “Pimento Mac and Cheese.”
Journalism is a tough business, and I wish the editors well.
I still subscribe to The Rainy Lake Gazette out of International Falls, my home town, which is available electronically. Here’s a cute “Pet of the Week” photo.
I went looking for another Northwoods small town news operation that was online and found the Rice Lake, Wis., Chronotype.
Rice Lake is in the north of Wisconsin, although it’s only 106 miles from Minneapolis (much of Minnesota is north of Wisconsin.) I know about it because one of the new residents at Rose Schnitzer Manor hails from there. I love that this tiny burg, population 9,040, has not one but two sister cities: Miharu, Japan, and Zamberk, Czech Republic.
I have trouble keeping up with the one magazine, The Atlantic, and the several newspapers I subscribe to online.* I don’t know how you all do it with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. I really don’t.
*I gave up on The New Yorker years ago because I couldn’t handle having so much good reading turning up every week of the year. Issues would pile up and reproach me from the coffee table. Upon checking, I see that I do have a subscription. But I ignore it.
Tuba love
At the “Tuba Christman” affair downtown on Saturday, I once again donned my “Let me write you a poem. It’s free.” placard, and I was fortunate to be asked to write half a dozen poems. Here’s one of them.
A man named Salvador took a picture of me and my sign. He wanted a poem about the scene in the square.
About this place
The overtones! The energy! Cold fingers on the tuba keys, Warm breath in the brass. A tall tree with yellow lights, And other colors, too. Pigeons keep watch on us, Wings washed in sunlight. We dress for the season in woolens and down, Colorful sweaters matching the tree. Santa hats, yes, and plenty of stocking caps. Someone with reindeer ears, A lonely balloon and curious dogs. All of the fabric of holiday time— Weaving and living, lives knitted in love. Let’s head home tomorrow, today is for living. Keep us in cheer. Take my photo now!
Check out
More on 20 minutes
It usually takes me more than 20 minutes to dress. I can’t just step into my trousers. I’ve got to struggle into these braces. The walker and I take some time gathering clothing before can I sit on the edge of the bed and struggle into clothing.
This is the one time in the day I crave distraction, but can’t easily get it. It’s too much trouble to lurch up and turn on the radio. The TV’s in the other room. Too early for audio books.
So what do I do? I stick with silence. I practice being present. I notice how my feet look. I time how long it really takes to put on my shoes (not very long at all, even with compression hose and AFOs—ankle-foot orthotics, or braces).
I think about breathing. I think about sitting up straight. I move my arms around and above my head. Keep loose.
This can also be a time of prayer and gratitude. Breathing in and out: Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you.
For all the blessings. For healing. For everything.
Now I am ready. I brush my hair and twist it above. It’s time to turn on the espresso machine. It’s time to write.
And for you
Maybe you could message me and let me know how the writing is going.
I wish the best for you.
—30—
Thank you, Sue. I’m astonished that folks take the time to read what I put out there. Your writing, too, is special.
You're not the only one overwhelmed with a world of wonderful writing. It seems there are many who have a lot to say and they say it so well ... ah, the benefits of being able to edit one's opinions into perfect prose. This is yet another fine piece of writing and observing the environment in which you live. Bravo!