Cookie Monster: Not Always Blue and Cuddly

Posted on June 21, 2012 by J. F. Booth
cookies

Cookie contraband.   (Photo credit: freakgirl)

Cookies have been getting me into trouble all my life.  I love cookies – and cakes, and pies, and chocolate candy.

But recently, the trouble is not the calories or pounds, not the missing cookie from the cooling sheet, not even the cookie crumbs on the couch. Nope.

Cookies are putting me on the “check those packages” list with the wise mothers of my young friends – children of all ages for whom I like to bake cookies or ship off a jar of jam.  Yup.   I pack up the sweets and head for the post office before I can stop myself; cookies for the twins, brownies for the sometimes-quarterback star of flag-football, jam for the tap-dancer in her pink tutu.

“Stop, Jan!”  I tell myself.  (Echoing the pleading from moms of my acquaintance.)

I do know that the dear children in my life have no particular interest in sweets; but, sadly, I do. Why can’t I just send a book or write a note to tell them they’re in my heart?  How can I stop sending baked goods for every occasion – and for no reason at all?

I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of the cookie jar on this one.  And here’s how the story crumbles: I can blame my failing on my mom and aunties and grandma.  (Whew! That’s a relief.)

Grandma, Mom and Auntie’s baked goods were particularly precious gifts for their children on special occasions.  Raised by the generations who had fled from famine in Ireland, the Great War in Europe, and the Great Depression – sugar, eggs and butter were precious commodities.  Along with the financial sacrifice, baking was time-consuming and tedious. The many steps of baking had to be squeezed in between laundry, house cleaning, gardening, cooking, mending and canning.

Taking the time and spending the resources to bake a birthday cake or a pie or a batch of cookies showed me or my sister or my cousin just how precious we were to the family. And since the gift could be shared, we felt magnanimous – OK, OK, maybe a little put-out too that the piece of cake with the rose on top went to Aunt Ruth and not to me, “the birthday girl.”

My dear Aunt Helen loved sending “care packages” to her distant grandchildren and their friends. She had an assortment of special cookie cutters in shapes appropriate to the holidays – flags for Independence day, oak and elm leaves for back-to-school, wreaths for Christmas… you get the idea.  She’d make up batches of decorated sugar cookies and off they’d go to far-off homes and college campuses. (Aunt Helen collected oatmeal boxes – round and cardboard, because cookies didn’t crumble if they were  packed in an oatmeal box.)

When my mother was having the family over for dinner – anywhere from 12 to 25 people, she dedicated an entire day before the occasion to baking cherry, apple, mincemeat and French-silk pies, a chocolate cake and several types of cookies. Mom would have considered it a slight to her guests if she’d offered them only one kind of pie or if she’d ignored Uncle’s preference for cake.

Now, all this is to say – my trafficking in cookies is my misguided attempt to send a sweet kiss and hug in those treats.  “Those cookies are made with lots of love,” I assert pathetically.

The problem for me is deep-seated, one that I must overcome before I’m banned by wise mothers from sending or delivering or carrying treats of any kind to my young friends.

I’m going to try to do better.  I’ll keep you posted on my recovery…          

Posted in Life Lessons | 9 Comments

Speak Memory

Posted on June 13, 2012 by J. F. Booth

Do you ever wonder how you came to enjoy peanut butter on hard-boiled eggs? Or why you like bicycling or wearing red? I do. Following that train of thought, I’ve found glimmers of how ordinary experiences have molded who I am today. 

… I looked back and saw myself walking to school… It’s the 1950s, and I live in a small town.  Every day I walk to my elementary school in the morning, to-and-from school at lunch time, and home again in the afternoon.  It’s perhaps a mile each way.  Until I am in third grade, and every “First Day of School,” my sister and I are accompanied by our mother.

We walk beneath mature oaks and chestnuts that arch over the narrow streets stitched together by wooden houses with large porches and carefully tended lawns.  Cars pass at a leisurely pace bearing men to their factory jobs or offices. Pick-up trucks rattled past carrying produce for the farmers’ market or supplies for local construction sites.

The boys are in blue jeans and corduroy jackets. We girls wear skirts and dresses to school; we are not allowed to wear pants.  In the winter, to keep warm some of us slip on flannel-lined corduroy pants under our skirts and over our goloshes.  During the day, those pants hang in my locker until I don them for my walk home.  We don’t use backpacks; I carry in the crook of my arm, my notebooks and homework and a spiffy pencil case (carefully selected each September.) When I get older – probably sixth grade or so, I also carry a very cool purse of pink plastic which contains a cotton hanky (handkerchief to my mom) and a mirror.  (I’m not allowed to wear make-up until ninth grade.)

I realize now that our walks to school were part of our social upbringing.  Each day we see the same people – the housewives sweeping their porches, the elderly men walking their dogs, the same red sedan with the four men heading for the auto plant.  In addition, as the months pass, our walk becomes a bit of a parade.  We live at the outer reaches of our school’s catchment, so as we walk the blocks to school, my sister and I are joined by other boys and girls heading to school too.  Some girls are dragging their younger siblings along, some boys are tuning up for their daily tease-fest.  Moms wave at us from their porches; dads honk as they head off to their own work.  By the time we arrive at the school yard, we are perhaps seven or eight children of varying ages – giggling and whispering.  We are a small clan of neighbors and friends.

Walking that mile four times a day – morning and afternoon, and at lunchtime round-trip, gave us time to play in a very unstructured way. Our bodies were exercised; we learned to chat and interact in a more-or-less civilized manner; we looked after one another, and quarreled with one another, and made-up after our quarrels.

I came to love walking. I  still do.  While my morning and afternoon walks were social events, our lunch-time walks were quiet; not many children walked home for lunch. So my group walks were balanced against my more introspective noon strolls. (Talking to my little-sister hardly seemed worth the effort most days.)

Continue reading →

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Refocusing the Conversation: Thoughts on E.L.James’s Shades of Grey Trilogy

Posted on May 24, 2012 by J. F. Booth

Yes, I admit it, I too have eaten of the apple, devoured it and two more, actually. And those three juicy fruits were delicious – yes, that Fifty Shades Trilogy, designated “Erotic Romance” fiction.             jacket art

I want to talk here about the fun of these three novels, why they are successful, in my opinion.  Let me note that  E.L James wrote Fifty Shades… for adults, for readers who are all too familiar, perhaps,  with the landscape of adult relationships.  The novels’ characters, like their readers, are past the age of consent.  (Contrast this with Nabokov’s Lolita – definitely a male-centered erotic novel in which the main female character is a girl of twelve.  And her seducer, Humbert is “middle-aged”.)

E. L. James’s three novels are fun to read for several reasons.  For one, the characters are young, idealistic, sometimes funny.  Second,  in the novels sex is consensual, often playful and plentiful.

Third, the heroine is a smart, funny, confident young woman whose fitting last name is Steele.   The all-too-perfect hero -yes, Christian Grey is his name, has overcome a childhood punctuated by his addict-mother’s death, physical abuse and sexual exploitation to become a gifted classical pianist and a titan of corporate America. The almost-too-well adjusted heroine has loving relationships with her mother and her mother’s husbands #2 and #4. (Oh, and did I mention that both Anastasia and Christian are beautiful – graceful and lithe, as we might all wish to be or remember having been?)

My fourth reason for enjoying the series is that before Fifty Shades of Grey, Vol. I,  ends these beautiful young people are happily married and facing life’s struggles – how to deal with their  architect and whether or not the heroine can continue her dream-job now that her husband has bought the business for her. (And by the end of Fifty Shades Freed, Vol. III, the still-happy couple have a child and another on the way.)

What’s also fun about the novels – all three of them, is that the sex is consensual, more-or-less healthy, mutually satisfying, plentiful and between a couple madly in love with one another. Yes – they’re married in Volume I and remain in love and married through Volume II and III.  

Within the novels, the domination-submission component, which is the focus of media attention,  is more legend than reality. The hero and heroine engage in lots of talk with only a bit of show. And, as we know as adults – talk is good. Learning how to communicate is one of the main threads of the trilogy – and certainly a skill worth mastering.

So, all this is to say to my sisters, “Go for it. Enjoy these delicious reads and don’t apologize because you enjoy the long, full-on sex as well as the impossibly romantic plot lines.”  To my male readers I say, “Try it; you may enjoy the read too. Certainly, you may garner a few tips that will make your sexual interludes even more fun for both you and your partner.”

And so,with a sigh of delight and satisfaction, having enjoyed a good read, I look forward to James’s next novel.  And in the meantime, I think I’ll go back to my shelves and reread the erotic works of Anäis Nin, In Favor of the Sensitive Man, and Other Essaysparticularly her essays on the delights of a “sensitive man,” and George Sands‘s more veiled novels of love and possession, and one of my all-time favorites, Colette, particularly her memoir Earthly Paradise.

Take your time, Ms. James.  I’ve got some delicious reading to keep me company.

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Serendipitous Musings From a Casual Gardener

Posted on April 27, 2012 by J. F. Booth

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime of puttering among the weeds, annuals and perennials in my gardens.  At times I’ve loved working in the garden, and sometimes – not so much. 

Motivated by requests from my dear friend, R, let me share with you, if you have a moment, a few things I’ve learned from my gardening experiences. 

Caution: my observations are not those of a master gardener, only a happy one.  In the words of Ogden Nash,
           My garden will never make me famous,/  I’m a horticultural ignoramus.

1. Gardening is like eating or exercise: I never finish, and I never figure it all out.  I’ve given up making a plan for getting my garden “in order.”  That’s never going to happen.  By the time I finish weeding one flowerbed and turn to the next, behind me, in the freshly turned soil, weeds are pushing their way into the sunlight. “Relax,” I tell myself. “You’ll get to that weed eventually – or not.”  And guess what! Sometimes, that weed turns out to be a lovely, mystery flower – fragrant and luxuriously colorful, the star of the garden for one, brief summer.

2.  [a corollary to #1] The axiom for my garden, if I wish to remain sane, is,   “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”  I never, and I do mean never look at the big picture when it comes to gardening chores. I’m an inspirational gardener. (Doesn’t that sound great?) I might look up from reading and think, “The pond really does look a bit murky; let me get some of the leaves out of the bottom.” I do not wait.  I grab an old bucket from among my gardening tools, roll up my pant legs, and kneel over my little pond, scooping out handfuls of dead leaves here and there ’til the urge passes.  There is still muck in the bottom of my pond, but never mind. It is a bit cleaner than it was 30 minutes before.  And, my pond, my goldfish and I have enjoyed a happy, though brief encounter.  

3. If you love it, it’s perfect! Need I say more?

4. Nothing is permanent; enjoy the surprises.  I’ve learned to see gardening as a negotiated truce. The weather, the plants, the earth and I will all try to get along and compose ourselves with some beauty and grace.  The outcome may not be what I’d dreamed of or hoped for, but such is life.

5. A few tricks to ease the way: These may not be new to you, but then again…

    ¤ Keep a trowel and gardening gloves handy. (See Tip #2) When you see a languishing mum, move it – don’t wait; if a volunteer petunia appears, replant it now to a comfy flowerbed.

     ¤ Pesky pets peeing on your flowers and pooping in your grass? Try mothballs. Generously sprinkle mothballs among the flowers and in the grass.  Your garden will lose a bit of its olfactory charm for you, and more importantly, for Boots or Rover too. Continue reading →

Posted in Nature | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

One of my articles published recently in Lancaster Farming

Posted on April 23, 2012 by J. F. Booth

Md. Farm Advocate Uses Planning, Perseverance and Patience – Lancaster Farming.       

Here’s a recent article I wrote on a dynamic lobbyist for the Maryland Farm Bureau, Valerie Connelly [right], pictured here with State Delegate Kelly Schulz.  The article is in Lancaster Farming, an agricultural weekly.

Posted in On Writing | Tagged , | 2 Comments