American in Paris

Joe High School is off to France with his Minnesota accent and 40 of his friends. In preparation, and at the urging of the French teachers who will accompany them, we bought him a pair of black pants to replace his jeans with artfully placed holes. We also bought a new pair of sneakers to replace the Pumas that have molded to his feet and barely contain his toes. The grunge look is fine if you live there, but why feed into ugly--literally--American stereotypes?

Tomorrow we will purchase some native crafts as gifts for his host family, who live near Avignon. I am so envious. Back in the day, high school trips like these were not the norm. Although they are more common, they do not seem to have given us a broader world view. It must take many generations for cultural exchanges like this to have any impact.

Endless winter

We could be living in Siberia or the Arctic Circle--oh, sorry, I forgot. It's melting. But here in flyover land, it's snowing on Good Friday. Of course, this is the earliest Easter since 1913--look it up if you don't believe me. But spring has officially arrived. There are no spring bulbs. There are no bits of grass peeking out. There is snow. The best spin to put on it is that the new stuff covers the grubby, disgusting old stuff. The record snowfall for today is 3.2 inches, back in 1992.

As usual, the weather folks are thrilled. Gives 'em something to do. And it can snow in the land of lakes until May. Then they have a brief vacation of about two weeks until tornado season, which they also love.

Mud Season

The phrase Mud Season appears to be a New England term. I don't know why, as it applies anywhere the ground freezes deeply in the winter and the air temp warms up quickly in the early spring. It certainly applies in fly-over land, e.g., Minnesota. Today was a case in point.

After being 0 degrees as recently as last week, today it hit 45 degrees. The melting snow and ice have nowhere to go, as the ground is frozen solid (see above definition of Mud Season). As a result, the water just sits there, turning whatever it is sitting on into mud. You can identify the advent of Mud Season by the appearance of cars. They look like something unprintable, but this is a family blog. The other sure fire indicator is the emergence of pot holes in exactly the same places as last year. They will be patched by our crack MN Highway Department, and will reappear again next year at exactly the same time and place. Predictability is supposed to be soothing. Maybe that's the function of Mud Season.

Grammar guru

Got a correction from a reader about my misuse of of the word "affect". So true--I blame it on the fact that in my work life I have an editor who is supposed to catch such gaffes. Anyway, for those of you who care about such things, here is a helpful way to remember the difference:

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/affect-versus-effect.aspx

Mitzi the cat

Mitzi is turning out to be a highly satisfactory cat. However, she looks like a gray striped basketball with a tail. Another negative: her claws have grown back, and she now scratches. She hasn't learned that when she rolls on her back and displays her substantial white tummy, it's an invitation to humans to rub the soft fur.

She had a brief excursion outside yesterday. The floor guy propped the door open when he was bringing in the wood and equipment. She slipped out, but didn't get far. She was waylaid by the enticing smell of the neighborhood tom cats, who have apparently baptized the doors with their scent.

Home improvement

When you are surrounded by piles of paper, stacks of books and scattered magazines and journals, cleaning up is very difficult. Home improvement projects, which require both cleaning up and eliminating inertia, are almost impossible. So when a project starts, even if most of it will be done by a paid specialist, it feels good.

Take the upstairs floors, for instance. Covered with ugly harvest gold carpet, the floors in two bedrooms were refinished some time ago. We left the other two bedrooms, the hallway and the stairs for later. One of the reasons was that when we pulled the carpet off one of the bedrooms, underneath was a cracked, broken and stained cork floor. Certainly very avant garde in 1960, when it was probably installed, but ugly now. And since we had already scraped the cork off one of the bedrooms, we were not about to do another one. So we lived with the broken cork, with the holes showing the hardwood floor beneath.

Last night and today we pulled off the remaining carpet (and all the staples) on the hall and stair floors. Unfortunately, under the carpet on the stairs, the steps were fir, the risers cheap pine, and the landings plywood. This required a quick change of plans. The floor sanding guy told us that he could deal with the fir, paint the risers, and let us figure out the landings. He couldn't install a new floor over the plywood, as it would raise the height of the step over the code limit. I spent the afternoon researching laminates, which should do the trick.

And though it will require massive disruption on the second floor, it should look nice and let us feel as if we have pushed back the jungle just a little bit. Of course, it won't have any affect on the piles of paper.

Boys High School Swimming

Another swimming season is over. Joe High School acquitted himself well, I thought, achieving a personal best in the 100 back and 200 free. However, not quite good enough to go to state. And he is very disappointed that he didn't do better. Maybe next year. Maybe he'll take the coach's observation that input equals output to heart. Or maybe not.

New cat

We broke down and got another cat. Being catless for four months was hard. Our new feline is unlike her predecessors. She is round, gray and quiet. She is also affectionate. That is a nice change from the aloof princess that Judy the cat became.

We got her--her name is Mitzi--at the humane society. I strongly recommend them. They paid for her to get checked by the vet, cut her nails, gave her tests for feline leukemia and cleaned up a head cold. The boys love her.

Southern food

A quick guide to southern food from the January trip. The main point was to rediscover the glories of Pierce's Pit Barbecue in Williamsburg, VA; we used to eat there a lot in the dark ages. It's North Carolina style, lots of lean, smoky meat, not a lot of sauce, and not too sweet. And the smell around the place was even better than the eating. Some guy said that you can't go home again. Probably recreating your first barbecue love is impossible, too. And Pierce's has morphed into an actual restaurant, rather than the shack that I remember.

The Varsity, in Atlanta. Started in 1928 as a Georgia Tech hangout, it now bills itself as the world's largest drive-in. If you like grease, go there. The barbecue was just OK, but you should go for the scene.

Lek's Railroad Thai in Montgomery, Alabama. The food was good--it's rare to have a bad meal in a Thai restaurant, wherever it is. Of course, being a food snob, I was surprised. And, the bonus is that it's in the old railroad station, and you can watch the freight trains glide through, with exotic locations and long-defunct railroads a reminder of the days when trains mattered.

Capital Inn, in Montgomery, Alabama. Go for the breakfast with grits, biscuits, and bacon.

Sinclair's in Montgomery, Alabama, is supposed to be a place for generation x and y. Our family group, itself populated with generation Y types, ate without incident. I can't remember what we had to eat, except we drank lots of iced tea and coca-cola and the server had a lovely honey-sweet accent. When in Rome...

The Downtowner Restaurant, Selma, Alabama. If you want biscuits for breakfast, go early. When they're gone, they're gone.

St. James Hotel in Selma, Alabama. Go there. Please. It's a lovely gem that is in danger of going under. The main dining room appears to be closed, but the bar, a lovely wood paneled room, was open for the first time in several months the night we were there. We had all kinds of good appetizers, including onion rings, hummus, ceasar salads, and other stuff. The server was nice and attentive, even though the place was buzzing.

The Battlefield Inn, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. It calls itself the best kept secret in Vicksburg. There may be a reason. Vicksburg establishments fight for the tourist dollar, and the Battlefield Inn was no exception. They provide two free drinks for overnight guests, two parrots in cages by the door who will talk occasionally, and an undistinguished dinner and breakfast at a reasonable price. Many of the guests on a Friday night appeared to be locals celebrating the end of the work week.

Ground Zero Blues Club, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Like the Varsity, the Ground Zero is a place you go to experience, not to eat. The barbecue was so-so, the beer selection pedestrian. But they have a brownie that is quite amazing. The club, owned by actor Morgan Freeman and a local attorney, is dedicated to recreating the atmosphere of a juke joint for the upscale crowd. Interestingly, the band was white, as were almost all the customers. Only the bouncers and cooks were African-American. The night we went, a large crowd celebrating someone's 40th birthday was in attendance. 'Nuff said.

Sonic. Locations throughout the South. The onion rings at the Varsity are better, and that's saying quite a bit.

Civil rights history

When you go to Selma, Alabama, be prepared. Selma is a very poor place, full of derelict storefronts and a long strip outside of town full of junkyards, check cashing places and used furniture stores. There is a nicely maintained synagogue, but we were told that the Jews had all left. Apparently there's an endowment. There are lots of churches, many of which are of the unaffiliated ecstatic persuasion. There's a feed store and mill that also sells pecans for $1.00 a pound unshelled and $1.30 a pound if they run the nuts through the sheller. We bought five pounds.

There's a lovely jewel of a hotel in the midst of this desolation. Apparently city fathers acquired and renovated the St. James Hotel, at the Selma end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and near the National Voting Rights Museum. The museum has a labor-of-love quality that is kind of endearing. There is a small gift shop, and there are some great photos documenting the three attempts to march from Selma to Montgomery. Only after the death of Rev. Reeb, a Boston Unitarian minister, was enough national attention focused on the efforts of the civil rights marchers to allow the march to happen.

All this is rather depressing but inspiring at the same time. Change is possible, despite the odds.

The civil rights enterprise

On our trip to Atlanta, Selma, Montgomery and Memphis, we visited a number of civil rights shrines. Here's the executive summary of Memphis:


The National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis, Tennessee. This is the site of the assination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is a monument to the civil rights movement, albeit with a steep admission price. This was the last museum we visited on our trip, and we had museum fatigue and did not actually go in. Rather, we looked at the balcony where MLK was standing when he was shot. We admired the 1968 cars parked in front of the motel. And we wondered about the makeshift tent across the street, where a women has lived for the last 20 years, protesting the gentrifiction of a still pretty gritty neighborhood and the desecration of King's memory by the museum. Jacqueline Smith was the last resident of the Loraine Motel before it was foreclosed in 1982. She advocates for spending the corporate dollars directed toward the museum on homeless women and their children, using the Loraine Motel as a shelter.

When we parked in a very close-in spot in the parking lot, an attendant came rushing out, asking us to move the car. The reason, we were told, was that it was a bad neighborhood and she couldn't watch our car properly unless it was in her sightlines from her perch under the eaves of the museum. The whole thing was somewhat surreal. We did not go to Graceland.

Journey to the southland

OLGS, the three Joes, and I had a post-New Year's trip to the south. This was not a trip where we lay on a beach and drank pina coladas. Rather, it was educational, like most of the stuff that goes on here at the headquarters of domestic tranquility.

The theme of the trip was Civil War-Civil Rights. We visited Atlanta, Tuskeegee, Montgomery, Selma, Vicksburg and Memphis. We also had a non-program detour to Clarksdale, MS, home of the delta blues. Finally, we visited Maxwell Air Force Base to collect some info. about my dad's unit in WWII.

We did all of this in five days. And I've had enough barbeque, bacon, biscuits, grits and sugary tea to last a while.

Happy New Year

It can only improve.

A recent Pew poll suggests that our long national nightmare may be over, or at least having insomnia. We'll see.

PS-The city of Minneapolis cancelled the fireworks last night--too expensive in this era of no-frills government.

Fruitcake

What's the deal with fruitcake? It's highly fashionable to hate fruitcake. However, bucking fashion trends as usual, I love fruitcake. An old friend sent two large hunks of homemade fruitcake, wrapped in cheesecloth to hold the brandy. It is excellent, and I've been adding more brandy. It can't hurt.

My mother used to make a fruitcake that was pretty much nuts, dates and raisins. It was close to black in color and quite wonderful. And in days gone by, when I was into the DIY style of domestic achievement, I would make a fruit cake, trecking all over New York to find real candied citron and other delicacies. My roommate and I would soak all the fruits in cognac for several weeks before we put the thing together. We ate a great deal of the fruit before we actually baked the cake.

So try it--you might like it. Just stay clear of the store-bought stuff.

Urban wildlife

Never let it be said that the inner city has no wildlife. In addition to feral cats, squirrels, raccoons, bats, rabbits, skunks and the odd deer, we have bald eagles and opossums. On Saturday, in the midst of a blinding snow storm, an eagle soared above the Lake Street bridge. As we stopped for the light, old Abe checked us out through the sunroof window, circled around a few times, and decided we were not appropriate prey and flew up the Mississippi in search of better grub.

Then, on Christmas day, we were headed out the side door to visit a neighbor. When we opened the door, there was a large possum sitting right outside . He didn't seem inclined to move, so we left through the back door. He followed us up onto the neighbor's deck, leaving those distinctive possum footprints in the snow. He had a nice coat, but his face and tail were something only a mother possum could love. Apparently, they are not the brightest of mammals. Wikipedia says they have a "small braincase".

If Tom the cat were still alive, he would have protected us from the visiting fauna. Guess we need to look for a replacement.